The use of images & dialect
01.25.2005I just learned you can watch Santa Cruz TV (Megavisión) as an online live feed.
I'm watching it now, as ads for various things run between a variety news show. But they just ran an ad, that's part of the "¡Autonomía Ya!" campaign that went like this:
"We're known for our joy (images of Carnaval) ... our frankness (two cambas greeting each other) ... our hospitality (similing camba offering the viewer a mug of cerveza) ... our intitiative (man working on an oil rig) ... valor (close-up of the Roca y Coronado monument) ... But now, against centralism, we'll show something else: Our love for Santa Cruz ..."
And now there's an lengthy news bit about the pre-carnaval preparations in Santa Cruz, focusing on how rich the camba version of Carnaval is, the typical regional food festival, and other such elements of cruceño culture.
In 10 minutes, I saw three things that at least implicitly encourage an individual cruceño cultural identity, against the "centralist" tradition.
I know some people thought Carnaval celebrations might alleviate some of the political tensions. I never thought that'd be true. Carnaval (which in Santa Cruz has more in common w/ Brazil's Carnaval than the one in Bolivia's western, Andean regions) serves an important function of cruceño cultural identity politics, and can easily be used to mobilize on the basis of regional identity politics. The explicit use of the recent pre-Carnaval events (which started weeks ago) as pro-autonomy platforms, and the fact that the association of Santa Cruz comparsas (the groups that organize individual Carnaval floats) gave their official support to the Comite Cívico's call for autonomy, is predictable.
And now there's an ad for COTAS Movíl (the Santa Cruz regional phone company's mobile division). I've seen more & more explicit uses of camba dialect in TV/print over the past years. The COTAS slogan — "COTAS, es Santa Cruz ... COTAS, sos vos" — is an example. So's the ad for the news paper El Mundo that zooms on various monuments to camba heroes, before the tagline: "El Mundo, un periodico para gente como vos".
Finally, of course, it wouldn't be Santa Cruz TV w/o a several-minutes-long exposition of cruceña models on the runway.
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NOTE: One of the marks of the camba dialect is the use of the "vos" pronoun form. A while ago, I wrote a description of the differences between cambas, kollas, and chapacos, if you're interested.
UPDATE: I know it's not a scientific poll, but another Santa Cruz TV station (Unitel) has a poll on its news program's site (Telepaís) asking what the solution for Santa Cruz is. So far, "independece" is up (215), followed by "total autonomy" (94), then "no change" (85), and finally "partial autonomy" (14).
Posted by Miguel at 06:25 PM
Comments
You are absolutely right that Carnaval can only help their stronghold on the cause. Perhaps they timed these mobilizations just right. If so, that was a shrewd and clever political move.
I wonder who is paying for those ads or are they in-kind donations?
Posted by: eduardo at January 25, 2005 09:02 PM
Oh my god..I just re-read your archive post. I don't even remember commenting, but I just read my defense of Ruben Costas. Oh my. :P
Posted by: eduardo at January 25, 2005 09:06 PM