Podcasting the Global South: Radio Ambulante’s “Latin American Stories” and the Re-Making of a Transnational Latin/x Narrative Sphere

Abstract

This essay examines the content, production, and distribution of Radio Ambulante, the multilingual Spanish-language podcast hosted by novelist Daniel Alarcón (2012-present), within the context of entrenched US/Latin America media industry divides. While transnational approaches to studying and understanding US Latinx media—particularly literature—have dominated the field since at least the turn of the twenty-first century, contemporary Spanish-language or multilingual Latin/x media remains largely marginalized. By examining Radio Ambulante within Alarcón’s trajectory as a novelist, US Latinx and Latin American literary histories, and the changing Latin/x media landscape, I show how the podcast’s intermixing of literary and linguistic traditions as well as media platforms indexes an expanding Global South Latin/x narrative sphere. Further, while Spanish-language, pan-American intellectual and literary movements have historically been male and upper-class dominant, Radio Ambulante attempts to counter this bias through its multilingual content and resources and its training for Latin/x producers and journalists, possibly shifting this narrative sphere in even more significant ways.