Making Waves

Stories of Participatory Communication

for Social Change

PRODERITH

1978 Mexico

BASIC FACTS

TITLE: Programa de Desarrollo Rural Integradodel Trópico Húmedo (PRODERITH)

COUNTRY: Mexico

MAIN FOCUS: Rural development in tropical wetlands

PLACE: San Luis Potosí, Yucatan, Chiapas

BENEFICIARIES: 800,000 peasant farmers

PARTNERS: Facultad Latino Americana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua (IMTA), Secretaría de Agricultura y Recursos Hidráculicos, Mexico(SARH), Comisión Nacional del Agua, Mexico (CAN)

FUNDING: FAO, World Bank, Gobierno de México

MEDIA: Video

SNAPSHOT

The charismatic old man, with his white hair and white beard, sat cross-legged in front of a video camera for hours on end. He held forth about the past, about the Revolution, about the greatness of Mayan culture and about life today. He deplored the decline of such Mayan traditions as the family vegetable plot, explained how he cultivated his own maize, and complained that today's young people did not even know how to do that properly. He accused the young of abandoning all that had been good in Mayan culture; they would sell eggs to buy cigarettes and soft drinks, and so it was no wonder that diets today were worse than they were in his youth, and so on.

Scores of people sat in attentive silence in the villages as these tapes were played back. In the evening, under a tree, the words in Mayan flowed from the screen, and the old man's eloquent voice and emphatic gestures spread their spell. For many, it was the first time they had ever heard anyone talk about the practical values of their culture. It was also the first time they had seen a peasant like themselves on "television", and talking their own language. Frequently they asked that the tapes be repeated again and again.

The desired effect was achieved: the people began to take stock of their situation and think seriously about their values. Thus, the ground was prepared for when PRODERITH began to discuss development proposals. There is also a good example of the communication system helping to create participation. In one project area the technicians had proposed a drainage plan to cure the regular flooding that occurred in a particular place. A peasant thought that the plan would not work because, in his opinion, the technicians were wrong in their analysis of the cause of the flooding. The peasant was video-recorded as he explained his reasons, scratching a diagram in the soil with a stick to illustrate his point.

This tape was shown to the technicians. They studied the situation again, and they found that the peasant had been right.

From FAO casestudy on PRODERITH.

DESCRIPTION

The Programme of Integrated Rural Development in the Tropical Wetlands (PRODERITH) had two distinct phases: from 1978 to 1984, and from 1986 to 1995. From its inception PRODERITH received full technical support from FAO and loans from the World Bank. Institutionally, it depended initially on Mexico's SARH, but this evolved during the following years, as government institutions suffered political and administrative changes.

The objective of PRODERITH Phase I was to increase agricultural production in the tropics, improve the living standards of poor farmers and conserve natural resources. The activities included building roads, soil conservation, credit and social participation of peasants. Ultimately, community participation became the overall goal and although a Rural Communication System was created within the project, the PRODERITH acronym actually became a synonym for the communication and, in particular, video activities.

The overall development strategies can be encapsulated as follows: First, it was to be a learning process by generating practical field experiences extreme enough to be later replicated on a larger scale; secondly, it aimed to achieve active participation of all involved, peasants as well as project staff; and thirdly, it was meant to foster coordination between the various institutions involved in rural development at the community level.

The initial rural universe of the pilot experience included 3,500 peasant families on 54,000 hectares of land in three separate project areas. For the second phase these figures were largely increased, which may have had a negative impact on the quality of results.

Training with video as a tool was the main activity conducted at the community level. In the years 1978-84, close to 345 videos were produced, along with supporting printed material. Cameras were available in the project areas, but the editing was centralised at the project headquarters in Cuernavaca. Initially 3/4-inch U-Matic video equipment was utilised for recording and editing, but later in the 1980s new technologies were adopted, including the use of computers for animation.

The economic crisis in Mexico during the 1980s led to structural adjustment programmes that affected government development projects, including PRODERITH which lost up to 70 percent of its qualified field staff. Thus when the second phase started in 1986, it had bigger ambitions but less human resources to deal with the increased problems that the economic crisis had brought to rural areas.

An untimely effort to decentralise and gradually give more power to the peasant organisations followed; five regional communication units were established in San Luis Potosí, Yucatan (two)and Chiapas (two). Under these, new local communication units (LCUs) were created, as well as communication committees made of local people. The LCUs were equipped with a loudspeaker system complete with cassette recorders and amplifiers, plus a covered area for meetings and video screenings.

The rural communication system absorbed 2.2 percent of the total cost of PRODERITH which is in fact not negligible considering that the added investment for the two phases was US$292 million. Out of the US$5 million utilised by the communication system, 1/5 was spent on equipment. The average cost of producing a 15-minute video programme was estimated at between US$3,000 and US$5,500.

BACKGROUND & CONTEXT

Mexico's policy in agricultural development during several decades was dominated by the goal of expanding irrigation in its arid areas. evertheless, during the 1960s the need to increase food production and the high cost of continuing focus on the development of irrigation projects lead to granting more attention to the potential of tropical wetlands and rain-fed areas which make up 75 percent of cultivated land, particularly in the coastal plains.

The first major attempt of switching to the new strategy resulted in a big failure to accomplish the ultimate objectives. The Plan Chontalpa initiative was successful in installing infrastructure in a vast area in the State of Tabasco, providing credit and technical assistance to farmers, but failed to conquer community participation. It was totally a top-down intervention for which there was no prior consultation with the beneficiaries. The peasants never identified with the project and never did use or maintain the infrastructure properly.

Given the importance of the tropical wetlands (23 percent of total area) for the future of Mexican agriculture, the government decided to continue developing the new policy in spite of the Plan Chontalpa failure. This time the strategy would call for a communication process to ensure active participation of the local people, and in doing so would ensure that proposals would be appropriate to the situation and agreed to by the communities.

A period of research took place in 1977, during which a video camera was used to help peasants analyse their situation and problems, to record meetings and use playback throughout the process of discussing future plans. Video proved to be an excellent tool for motivating peasants and bringing them into the planning process. As a result, a specific project was designed, with an important communication component, and specifically, with video as the centrepiece of the communication strategy. That is how PRODERITH came to life in 1978.

ASPECTS OF SOCIAL CHANGE

During the two phases of PRODERITH more than 700 training videos and accompanying printed materials were produced, and no less than 80,000 people participated in the training sessions. These had no doubt great impact on the daily lives of peasants, as the topics covered farming, fishing, livestock, health, nutrition, environment, water, community organisation and every other possible topic related to the needs of rural population. At its peak of productivity in 1981, the communication team was able to produce one hundred videos in one year.

Peasants often show difficulty in articulating their views of their reality, and they seldom share with outsiders their individual perceptions. PRODERITH has contributed to rural development by enabling the articulation of the collective perception within the community, on the local situation, its problems and options for improving it. The video methodology prompted internal debate about history, culture and future perspectives of the communities involved in the communication process.

In a broader perspective, PRODERITH is an example of communication becoming instrumental to move forward a major rural development programme. It shows how communication at its best can be fully integrated if the need has been identified from the inception of the programme. The Rural Communication System developed by PRODERITH was uniquely imaginative and effective, according to FAO assessment.

MEDIA & METHODS

As many rural development reports will assert, improved knowledge and skills in all areas of rural life are the key for better productivity and better standards of living. To meet these needs PRODERITH's Rural Communication System adopted a methodology based on video with supporting printed materials, the whole forming so-called pedagogical packages. A package covers a subject broken down into a series of videos, each one constituting a single lesson of the course.

A printed guide for the technicians who will be using the material provides them with additional information on the subject and how best to use the package.

The methodology was primarily based on field units, small teams of technicians and promotores (development or extension workers) who worked at the community level. They used video to promote discussions on issues relevant to the community, and to facilitate the participatory process of developing a Local Development Plan that would enable PRODERITH to take concrete steps. The video methodology was also used for the training of project staff and to complement reports and evaluations.

CONSTRAINTS

The very high cost of the experience makes it very difficult to serve as an example for replication. The programme could only be sustained with the constant flow of cash borrowed from the World Bank, and could only happen in a large borrower-country such as Mexico.

For the same reason, the decentralisation process and, moreover, prospects of transferring the experience to the community was an unrealistic and untimely move. Furthermore the initial project had based its structure on a highly centralised structure and was very heavy on technical and specialised staff.

During PRODERITH I, which was the first phase, no real attempt was made to transfer control of the communication system to the communities, or at least to decentralise it. During PRODERITH II, the phase of crisis, the decentralisation could only mean an attempt to decentralise the cost and responsibility of the crisis on the shoulders of the communities. It could not work on a large scale. The attempt at decentralisation was too late to be accomplished.

The institutional changes in a country that is so marked every six years by political revamping also affected PRODERITH being a government agency it was not spared at all. The five existing regional communication units that resulted from decentralisation were facing an uncertain future by the end of 1995; their chances of survival without proper funding were, at the least, very bleak.

REFERENCES

This chapter is mostly based on:

"Comunicación para el Desarrollo Rural en México: en los Buenos y en los Malos Tiempos", a case study, FAO, Rome 1996.

Colin Fraser and Sonia Restrepo-Estrada.Communicating for Development: Human Change for Survival. I.B.Tauris, London-New York, 1998.

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