“Communication in Service of the People”: Activating Audiovisual Human Rights Collections in Chile

Abstract

This article compares the state-sponsored Museum of Memory and Human Rights (MMHR) with Chile’s first community television station, Señal 3 La Victoria. Despite their vast ideological and organizational differences, both institutions care for audiovisual collections that contribute to the historical memory of a country still publicly reckoning with its past. By focusing on the day-to-day challenges community human rights archives face, as well as the creative solutions they deploy, this article situates the explicitly local mission of community archives within the political and technological conditions that circumscribe (or strengthen) their ability to preserve and activate their collections. In an era of accelerated media convergence and conglomeration, and as digital technologies become a standard tool for both preserving and providing access to analog and born-digital human rights collections, media regulation (or the lack thereof) will directly shape the potential for human rights archivists to effectively activate the collections they care for in the service of the communities they document.