Chiapas Media Project

The Chiapas Media Project (CMP)/Promedios is an award winning, bi-national partnership that provides video equipment, computers and training enabling marginalized indigenous communities in Southern Mexico to create their own media.

Since1998, CMP/Promedios instructors have worked in close collaboration with autonomous Zapatista communities. Indigenous youth with little formal education, and often working without reliable electricity, have produced videos on agricultural collectives, fair trade coffee, women’s collectives, autonomous education, traditional healing and the history of their struggle for land.

Regional Coordinators from the communities in Chiapas now run the introductory camera, editing and internet workshops for their own regions. Indigenous and non indigenous instructors from outside Chiapas provide advanced training in our Media Center in San Cristobal de las Casas and in the Regional Media Centers located in four of the Caracoles in Zapatista territory.

Why video and internet in the middle of Mexico’s southern jungles? The Zapatistas are the most documented indigenous movement in the history of the world, with hundreds of videos, films, books and websites created by people looking in from the outside. Until recently, these temporary visitors have controlled the medium and the message. With the introduction of video cameras and professional training, the communities can now tell their own stories from their own perspectives. The impact has been profound.