17 Apr 2026 WACC partners advance rights-based approach at landmark communication gathering in Latin America

WACC project partners from across Latin America and the Caribbean joined hundreds of communication practitioners, community media organizations, universities, and civil society actors from more than 20 countries at the 3rd Festival JUNTANZA for Communication from Our America in Quito, Ecuador.

Alma D. Montoya from Grupo Comunicarte, a WACC partner in Colombia, during the opening ceremony. Photo: CIESPAL

The gathering, hosted at the International Centre of Advanced Communication Studies for Latin America (CIESPAL) in late March, provided a platform for sharing experiences, building networks, and developing proposals that respond to the rapidly changing media, communication, and community development context in the region.

“The Festival demonstrated that the communication rights movement across Latin America and the Caribbean is alive, diverse, and deeply committed to social transformation, and WACC partners are at the center,” says Lorenzo Vargas, WACC director of programs, who led the WACC delegation and helped to plan the event.

An opening ceremony that combined indigenous rituals and music from different regions of Ecuador set the tone for the three-day event. WACC partners were among those who shared their communities’ challenges and hopes using symbols of resistance and community – the geranium flower, fire, water, and local fruits – following a traditional Mushuk Nina (Fire Renewal) ceremony coinciding with the March equinox.

Communication for climate, digital justice

WACC Programme Director Lorenzo Vargas (l) during the panel “Communication for a new way of life” on eco-social transition. Photo: CIESPAL.

A panel on eco-social transition in which Vargas took part called for a narrative shift from a human-centered worldview, where nature exists to serve human needs, to a life-centered perspective, where all living beings possess intrinsic value independent of their utility to humanity.

“Communication plays a crucial role in transforming our vision for society and thus building critical awareness around the climate crisis,” he notes.

“The forum emphasized that there can be no food, territorial, or cultural sovereignty without communication sovereignty – the capacity of peoples to narrate their own stories and shape public discourse.”

Digital sovereignty was another major theme. WACC partners from COMPPA in Mexico and ALAI in Ecuador were among the participants who expressed concern over how global technology corporations exercise censorship, including the removal of content documenting human rights violations and the blocking of activists.

“We call for a critical pedagogical approach to digital platforms – not rejecting technology outright but putting it at the service of social movements, ensuring that technical innovation does not displace human connection or grassroots organizing,” said Paulo Lara from Article 19 Brazil, another WACC partner at the event.

Examples of communication rights in practice

WACC facilitated spaces during the Festival for project partners to discuss how building on a communication rights foundation strengthens their work on issues ranging from advocacy for community media and meaningful internet access to women’s representation in the media.

“Our partners brought a rights-based perspective that enriched the broader conversation and helped connect local struggles to a transnational advocacy agenda for communication and digital justice,” Vargas says.

GMMP Latin America coordinator Cirenia Celestino Ortega (r) from CIMAC, a WACC partner in Mexico, presents 2025 findings for the region. Photo: Vilma Peña-Vargas/WACC

Delegations from Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Guatemala described how popular communication serves as a tool for social accompaniment, human rights defense, and the building of collective identity.

Participants consistently affirmed that communication is not mere entertainment or information transmission, but a form of political action linked to education and culture, rooted in the legacy of educators and communication theorists such as Paulo Freire and Mario Kaplún.

Findings from Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean formed the focus of a session dedicated to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), WACC’s flagship initiative to advance gender justice in and through the media.

The stagnation or setbacks in gender indicators revealed by the 2025 GMMP are “a challenge to the dignity of women and men, linked to all dimensions of life,” said Cirenia Celestino Ortega, GMMP coordinator for Latin America and Mexico and director of CIMCA, a WACC partner in Mexico.

Roadmap for rights-based advocacy and collaboration

The panel on digital justice included Paulo José Lara from ARTIGO 19 Brasil, a WACC partner, with Lorenzo Vargas from WACC as moderator. Photo: Vilma Peña-Vargas/WACC.

The Festival concluded on 21 March with the adoption of the Equinox Declaration (Declaración del Equinoccio), in which WACC partners and other participants recognized themselves as forming a living, ecumenical, and consequential communication rights movement.

“The Declaration situates community, popular, alternative, feminist, and citizen communication as a political struggle rooted in the defense and exercise of the right to communicate, and affirms the centrality of women, youth, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, rural, and LGBTIQ+ communities in this movement,” notes Vargas, who co-drafted the outcome document.

With the Declaration, signatories have committed to a range of rights-based actions that critique the status quo, as well as continue to develop alternative models of communication and information that center trust, local voices, and local ownership.

“The Equinox Declaration captures the spirit of what we experienced in Quito,” says Vargas. “It is both a reaffirmation of the enduring relevance of community communication and a forward-looking agenda that addresses the digital, environmental, and political challenges of our time.”

For WACC and its partners, it provides a roadmap for continued collaboration and advocacy, he adds.

Looking ahead, the Festival is expected to catalyze a transnational network of grassroots organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean that will jointly promote communication rights and social justice, as well as a strategy document to guide future advocacy efforts by WACC and its partners.

The Festival JUNTANZA was co-convened by CIESPAL, DW Akademie, WACC, ALER, AMARC-ALC, SIGNIS-ALC, Radialistas Apasionadas y Apasionados, and other leading regional organizations. WACC partners participated in the context of WACC’s Communication for All Programme supported by Bread for the World-Germany.

Equinox Declaration • Declaración del Equinoccio

Discover the Festival’s
– vision for communication from the Americas
– commitments by the participants
– demands for action

Download Declaration • Descargue la Declaración