Colombia is a besieged and deeply misunderstood country. While hostage negotiations and the “war on drugs” make headlines, indigenous Colombians are actively building an alternative battleground for justice and peace-and they’re using the airwaves to do it. Award-winning journalist Mario A. Murillo introduces the world to Colombia’s popular media movement, a fierce and creative force of change in this war-torn nation, linking the global struggles against media, corporate, and state plutocracy. Voices of Resistance vividly chronicles an indigenous-led, broad-based national effort to effectively transform society through media and organizing. The storytelling focus in these pages is indigenous radio, particularly the community-built media hub Radio Payu’mat. In one example of grassroots innovation, an indigenous reporter rides alongside a march on a radio-cicleta -a tandem bicycle with a loudspeaker and small transmitter. His bike-radio sends reports back to a student-run radio station, which relays that signal to Radio Payu’mat’s 2,000-watt transmitter.

As a result, a much larger audience suddenly has access to an event typically ignored by Colombia’s commercial media. Unfolding against a backdrop of corporate globalization, militarization, and a racist media and political system, Murillo documents a community’s resistance to a long history of undemocratic media that has deliberately excluded marginalized voices from the national airwaves. Voices of Resistance is the first book in English to reveal the convergence of a powerful movement with a national campaign for media and, ultimately, social justice. Mario A. Murillo is a host of WBAI’s Wake Up Call and the author of Colombia and the United States and Islands of Resistance .