Radio Onda Azul, a station at the service of education for more than five decades

Puno, Peru.- Radio Onda Azul, the educational radio station of the Bishopric of Puno, is considered as the third official medium with the greatest arrival in the area, it is a radio that has frequencies in medium wave and modulated frequency that geographically cover 75% of the population of the Puno region. This radio is characterized by having trilingual production, in Aymara, Quechua and Spanish; It also has a long history of education through radio, which began 50 years ago with the experience of the "Radio Schools" for distance education.

The station is located in the Puno region and was founded in February 1958 by the Maryknoll Fathers, in support of the evangelizing work of the diocese.

Like many local and regional media, Onda Azul has been severely affected by the National Emergency situation due to COVID-19, but even so, it continues to carry out public service work on the front line, bringing timely and relevant information to the entire user population in the area. and also disseminating the programs of the “I learn at home” strategy of the Ministry of Education.

In a dialogue with the administrator of Radio Onda Azul, Yovanni Manrique, you can learn more about the role of radio and the situation it is going through at the moment.

Throughout the existence of Radio Onda Azul, what has been the main contribution of radio in the region?

Being part of the Catholic Church and having a means of communication as a social proposal, the evangelization part has been vital for the development of this means of communication in the department of Puno. I say vital because it is in support of the pastoral work carried out by the diocese of puno, to the parishes, in short, everything that the diocese of puno means. However, the pastoral part is immersed in what is the educational part. In the 1950s, the Maryknoll missionaries realized how illiteracy was very high, and they implemented the so-called radio schools. What happens today with this pandemic has already been revealed by Radio Onda Azul in the 1960s in the last century, radio schools, distance education, is something that is maintained to this day with its different programs in Quechua, Aymara, and Spanish. In these 62 years, this has clearly marked the trilingual work of this station at the service of the population.

How do you understand this evangelization from the radio, considering that there are people who do not have a religion or a religious belief?

We are framed in the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, and this social doctrine allows us to cover many topics. In the totality of those who work in radio onda azul, none is a priest or a religious, on the contrary, we are all laity and that committed secularism makes us propose many topics, such as agricultural, legal, economic, social issues. We touch all of the topics. And on the informative topic. What's the big little difference? It is to revalue and maintain the spirit of the human being, to keep the person in front of any problem that may have arisen, to maintain an image of integrity of the human being, it is a small great difference that characterizes, so that we can transmit our belief and training to society , whatever the religious condition you may have. The difference between a story that is provided in Onda Azul and in other information media is how the news is treated from the human side, from the truth.

What is the difference between a national radio and a regional radio like Onda Azul?

It is something that has been seen for a long time and it is a subject that is also under debate. The particularity for this area, the same we could say of a radio in Cusco, for Arequipa and for other areas, is like regional radio, the local radio plays the issues according to the idiosyncrasy, according to the ecosystem, according to the altitude (3810 masl) according to this socioeconomic reality that is framed, in the case of Puno, based on Lake Titicaca. Knowing all these considerations allows us to make a particular radio proposal from Puno.

What is the role that radio has been playing in the context of the pandemic and the national emergency?

Like all human beings on earth, learn public health, delve deeper, interview, put yourself before all the inconveniences that have arisen as a result of the decisions that have been made worldwide and also from our country. One of the problems was misinformation, we have proposed to confront and wage war on the misinformation that comes from social networks. The other issue is to bring the population closer to the authorities. All of our newscasts, the three editions from Monday to Friday and the two on weekends, are saturated with information that allows us to bring the voice of the population to the authorities for decisions that can be made at the national level and also at the regional level. We are also spreading the “I learn at home” programs, thus contributing to distance education in these times of pandemic

What have been the main difficulties that you have gone through from the radio in this context of National Emergency?

In these two months there has been a reduction in advertising. The Radio is 100% sustained, there is no financing from anyone. Self-support for the sale of advertising and spaces continues to this day, but publicity, both state and commercial, has been greatly reduced. Fortunately, there are institutions that continue to bet, but maintaining the radio with 35 to 40 workers, with a transmitter of 10 kilos of power plus a transmitter of 4 kilos of power in Frequency Modulated (FM) has a very high cost in terms of maintaining the operability. Until February of this year there were no problems, but since March we have already had problems. The main difficulty has been the economic one until now.

The MTC has given a series of measures to support broadcasters. Do you know them? Are they using them?

Of course, anyway, he was going to catch us, because in February, March we had to pay the canon, we had to pay our responsibilities, which by the way are up to date, but that is what we have as support from the Ministry of Transport and Communications during this year. What is now being applied is what has been established as a measure for the operation of a communication medium in this quarantine stage. At no time has it stopped working, and all the health precautionary measures have been taken, what's more, recently a percentage of the radio workers underwent rapid tests and all have come out negative and that gives us security to offer a better service to our listeners.

Fact:

Radio Onda Azul is affiliated with the Latin American Association of Radio Education ALER and the National Coordinator of Communications of Peru - CNC.

Source: CONCORTV