Formerly known as Proyecto de Medio Chiapas, ProMedios de Comunicacion Comunitaria (Spanish for Chiapas Media Project (CMP)) is now a binational partnership between the United States and Mexico. The Chiapas Media Project is now a project of the Americas Media Initiative.
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History
The Chiapas Media Project (CMP) was an award winning, bi-national partnership that provided video equipment, computers and training enabling marginalized indigenous communities in Southern Mexico to create their own media.
Founded in 1998 by Alexandra Halkin, CMP instructors worked in close collaboration with autonomous Zapatista communities. Indigenous women and men in Chiapas and Guerrero with little formal education, and often working without reliable electricity, produced videos on agricultural collectives, fair trade coffee, women’s collectives, autonomous education, traditional healing, and the history of their struggle for land.
Why video and internet in the middle of Mexico’s southern jungles? The Zapatistas are the most documented indigenous movement in the history of the world, with hundreds of videos, films, books and websites created by people looking in from the outside. Until CMP, temporary visitors have controlled the medium and the message. With the introduction of this project, the communities can tell their own stories from their own perspectives.
Construction of several media centers in the state of Chiapas was also facilitated by CMP, including facilities for video production and satellite internet access. CMP staff have screened the videos at film festivals, college and university campuses, and other locations across the globe.