November 2006
 Bertha
Rodríguez Santos (Chatino) is a filmmaker and
freelance reporter for U.S. and Mexican news organizations. From
2002 - 2005, she was the media coordinator of the indigenous communications
program of the Uníon de Comunidades Indígenas de
la Zona Norte del Istmo (UCIZONI), an advocacy group for Native
communities in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, Mexico.
At UCIZONI, she and Violeta Chavez co-directed four documentaries,
including La Tierra Es Nuestra Esperanza, winner of the
1st Place Award for the Defense of Indigenous Rights at the 2004
Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas
in Santiago, Chile. As UCIZONI media coordinator, Rodríguez
helped found the community radio station in San Juan Guichicovi,
which broadcasts in Mixe and Spanish. She also has reported for
media groups in southern California, Mexico City, and Oaxaca.
Rodríguez received her BA in journalism and collective
communication from the Escuela Nacional de Estudios Profesionales,
Aragón- UNAM, in Nezahualcóyotl, Mexico. She grew
up in Mexico in Palomares, Oaxaca, and lives in Los Angeles, California.
"We want media that inspires creativity, that goes to the
root of what it means to be human, that questions, that includes
the participation of everyone, that incites us to abandon our
comfortable role as spectators. We want media that gives voice
to those at the bottom, the community, or better yet, that the
people be the ones to take over the television channels, use the
radio stations, make their own videos, transform the walls, make
their own presses, invade the theaters, appropriate the Internet,
occupy the pages of the newspapers to say the truth, as they are
now doing in all the country, even on the other side, and that
more than anything, that they teach us, like our colleagues in
Oaxaca."
Screened by NMAI
Image credit:
Bertha Rodríguez Santos - courtesy of the filmmaker
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