Sounds of the Baguazo: Listening to Extractivism in an Intercultural Radio Programme from the Peruvian Amazon

Abstract

This article examines a fictional radio programme from the Peruvian Amazon as a response to extractivism in the region. Etsa Nantu: Pasión en la Amazonía (2012) resulted from a six-month collaboration among Peruvians deeply concerned with how the media had portrayed Indigenous opposition to extractivism after the 2009 Baguazo, a violent struggle between the Peruvian national police (PNP) and protestors in the area surrounding Bagua, Peru. Not only does the radio drama serve as a medium for Awajún and Wampís participants to imagine alternative outcomes for such encounters, it also dramatises critical interculturality – placing Indigenous worldviews on equal ground with Western ones – to prevent further conflicts. I argue that because radio constitutes an aural format, different audiences’ listening practices will diversely mediate the hearing of these messages. In exploring listening as a challenge for allowing marginalised voices to speak to broad publics through the radio, the analysis also highlights sounds of the Baguazo in Etsa Nantu that non-Amazonian listeners might not hear. I propose auditory attention to such sounds, even when listeners cannot fully understand them, as a way to practise the interculturality proposed by the programme.