Indigenous Radio Programs Get a Boost

Venezuela’s new Minister of Telecommunications, Socorro Hernández, pledged to support the expansion of an innovative project that is putting Indigenous-produced content onto public radio in Venezuela.

The Bolivarian News Agency (ABN) reports today that Hernández responded to a request for assistance from The Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, which is headed by Nicia Maldonado. The program in question is a co-project with Venezuelan National Radio (RNV).

Indigenous groups in six towns across the country have already begun to participate by creating and producing content that is broadcast locally in their native tongues. Infrastructure from the Telecommunications Ministry will help grant three more communities access to the airwaves.

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MOMA, Meet Venezuela

New York City has a big Venezuelan population – over 10,000 people – but it is a community that has lacked representation in the arts. Finally, the Modern Museum of Art is paying homage to the Venezuelan roots of modernism by featuring works by the painter Alejandro Otero as part of the its exhibit, “New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930–2006: Selections from a Decade of Acquisitions.” Visitors can catch Otero’s eye-catching abstract collages at MOMA from November 21st to February 25th. Special gallery lectures are available on Thursdays and Fridays.

More Than Magical Realism!

At a glance, Latin American literature can seem dominated by magical realism, the genre synonymous with Gabriel García Márquez and his momentous novel, 100 Years of Solutide. Venezuela never had its major author of the Latin “boom” period, but that doesn’t mean the country lacks literary traditions worthy of export.

One of Venezuela’s many under-appreciated authors, Adriano González León (pictured here), passed away earlier this month. He was best known for his book, País Portátil (Portable Country), which was published in 1968 and made into a movie in 1979.

The tale of one rural family, País Portatil narrates the political and economic crisis of the 1960s in Venezuela. The struggle of each generation to overcome obstacles and stand up for their rights is an underlying theme – no surprise, for González is known for railing against the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

País Portátil is the best-known work by Adriano González León, but he hated the thought that his long career would be defined by only that book. González also wrote Viejo (Old Man), a novel that came out in 1995 and made an impression on at least one reader; Gabriel García Márquez once commented that he wished he had written it.

Others have called González’s writing “a different way of looking at the world” by combining poetry and prose in a unique style. He also used memory as a literary device to “create a dialogue between the present and the past.”

Like Latin American writers of his generation, González had a cross-over career as a politician; he served as Cultural Attache to the Venezuelan Embassy in Spain during the 1990s.