Alfonso Gumucio Dagron
Encyclopedia
Alfonso Gumucio Dagron is a writer, filmmaker, journalist
, photographer and development communication
specialist. His father was Alfonso Gumucio Reyes
, a leader of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), Minister of Economy during the Government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro
, and Ambassador to Uruguay and Spain. He is the author of several books on film and [communication for social change, as well as documentary films, photographic exhibits and hundreds of articles in journals. He has worked in five continents on social development projects, as a communication for development specialist.
Because of his involvement as progressive journalist he has twice been forced to live in exile
, first living in Paris from 1972 to 1978, and later in Mexico from 1980 to 1984.
He studied filmmaking at the Institut des hautes études cinématographique (IDHEC) and the University of Vincennes, in Paris. Back in Bolivia in 1978 he directed a number of documentaries on cultural and social issues, as he worked at the Centro de Investigacion y Promocion del Campesinado (CIPCA), a Bolivian NGO, and published as a journalist in various daily newspapers and weekly journals.
Since the mid 1980s his work in development communication programs has taken him to Africa, Asia, the South Pacific, Latin America and The Caribbean, serving for various international organizations. He worked with UNICEF in Nigeria and Haiti, and as an international consultant for FAO
, UNDP, UNESCO
, The Rockefeller Foundation
, AusAID and Conservation International
. He is the Managing Director for Programmes at the Communication for Social Change Consortium and familiar with issues of child rights, environment, indigenous populations, arts and culture, human rights
, community organization
, health and sustainable development
.
, narrative
and studies on literature, film and communication: Provocaciones, his first book (1977) is a collection of in-depth interviews with 14 important Bolivian writers, among them: Jesus Lara, Augusto Cespedes, Oscar Cerruto
, Jaime Saenz
, Pedro Shimose
, Renato Prada Oropeza
and Raul Teixido. His studies on Bolivian and Latin American cinema trace the evolution of this art form in his region and home country: Historia del Cine Boliviano (Mexico, 1982); Cine, Censura y Exilio en América Latina (1979); Les Cinémas d’Amerique Latine (Paris, 1981) written in French, in collaboration with French film critic Guy Hennebelle; El Cine de los Trabajadores (Managua, 1981), and Luis Espinal y el Cine (1986).
Issues of communication, participation and development are at the core of other of his books: Las Radios Mineras de Bolivia (1989) written in collaboration with Bolivian journalist Lupe Cajías; Comunicación Alternativa y Cambio Social (1990); Conservacion, Desarrollo y Comunicacion (1990); NGO Puzzle (Nigeria
, 1993) in collaboration with G.K. Ngeri Nwagha; Popular Theatre (Nigeria, 1994); Making Waves: Participatory communication for social change (New York, 2001), a research project for The Rockefeller Foundation, published in Spanish, English and French; and Communication for Social Change Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (New York, 2006), edited in collaboration with Thomas Tufte, launched at the World Congress of Communication for Development (WCCD) in Rome, October 2006.
Bolivie (Paris, 1981, published by Editions Le Seuil), is an essay on his home country, covering history, politics, culture and other issues. La Máscara del Gorila (Mexico, 1982), is his account on the Bolivian military coup of 1981 and was awarded with the National Literature Award of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes of Mexico (INBA).
His poetry books include: Antología del asco (1979), Razones técnicas (1980), Sobras completas (1984), Sentímetros (1990) and Memoria de Caracoles (2000).
His short stories, poems and essays have been selected in about 30 anthologies and collections, among them those edited by John Downing, Julianne Burton, Manuel Vargas, Raquel Montenegro, Cecilia Pisos, Víctor Montoya, Rosario Santos, Jan Servaes, Bruce Girard, Paulo Antonio Paranagua, Ángel Flores, Tim Barnard, Sandra Reyes, and Alan O'Connor.
, and as a scriptwriter for Antonio Eguino. His first film as director, Señores Generales, Señores Coroneles (1976) is a documentary portraying the role of the Bolivian army and the CIA in the 1971 military coup that interrupted the democratic process in Bolivia; it includes interviews with Philip Agee
, former CIA agent, and Régis Debray
. During the late 1970s and early 1980s he directed short documentary films on social and cultural issues, such as Tupaj Katari, 15 de noviembre (1978), El Ejército en Villa Anta (1979), Comunidades de Trabajo (1979), Cooperativa Sandino (Nicaragua, 1980), Domitila: la mujer y la organización (1980), Primo Castrillo, poeta (1984). In 1983 he co-directed with Eduardo Barrios, a documentary for UNESCO
on the miners community radio stations: The voice of the mines. His documentary film Bolivia: Union Rights (1988), part of the People Matter series produced by AVISE, was aired by the Dutch television. He later directed Oloruntoba (Nigeria, 1994) a portrait of the Nigeria
n artist; Sous Lavi (Haiti
, 1997); La Primerisima (2003) and Voices from the Magdalena: Communication for Peace (Colombia, 2006) a report on community radio stations working in a war-torn region of Colombia
.
He has been active as a film critic during the 1980s and 1990s, publishing his columns in journals of Latin America, Europe, North America and Africa.
Books such as: Realizando el Futuro published by the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF), Ciudad de La Paz, Luz, Magia y Tradición published by the Municipality of La Paz, included his photographs, as well as Imágenes del Trabajo awarded at the 4th International Art Contest organized by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1986. His photographic work has been used in book covers, calendars, magazines and journals of Latin America.
In 1983 he wrote the first historical perspective on Bolivian photography, which was published in the monthly journal Bolivia 2000 with the title Primera Aproximación a la Fotografía en Bolivia. Later, in 1986 Cóndor, a quarterly review published in Switzerland printed his article Breve Vistazo a la Fotografía Boliviana. He is a founding member of the Bolivian Society of Photography (Sociedad Boliviana de Fotografía) and served as Secretary for Media Relations for the 1986-1988 period. He was elected President of the Bolivian Circle of Professional Photographers (Círculo de Boliviano de Fotografía) for 1995-96.
He has been editor, board member, chief editor, cultural editor or correspondent of Vinculo, Revista Nacional de Cultura, El Nacional, Facetas, El Mundo, Zeta, Aquí, and Vanguardia in Bolivia, as well as Excelsior (Mexico), Desquicio (France), Brecha (Uruguay), and The Journal of Development Communication (Malaysia).
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, photographer and development communication
Development communication
Development Communication, has been alternatively defined as a type of marketing and public opinion research that is used specifically to develop effective communication or as the use of communication to promote social development...
specialist. His father was Alfonso Gumucio Reyes
Alfonso Gumucio Reyes
Alfonso Gumucio Reyes was a political leader of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario and one of its founding members in 1940. After the triumph of the Revolution of April 9, 1952, Gumucio Reyes became the President of the Corporación Boliviana de Fomento , the State institution in charge of...
, a leader of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), Minister of Economy during the Government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro
Víctor Paz Estenssoro
Ángel Víctor Paz Estenssoro was a politician and president of Bolivia. He ran for president 8 times , winning in 1951, 1960, 1964, and 1985....
, and Ambassador to Uruguay and Spain. He is the author of several books on film and [communication for social change, as well as documentary films, photographic exhibits and hundreds of articles in journals. He has worked in five continents on social development projects, as a communication for development specialist.
Because of his involvement as progressive journalist he has twice been forced to live in exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
, first living in Paris from 1972 to 1978, and later in Mexico from 1980 to 1984.
He studied filmmaking at the Institut des hautes études cinématographique (IDHEC) and the University of Vincennes, in Paris. Back in Bolivia in 1978 he directed a number of documentaries on cultural and social issues, as he worked at the Centro de Investigacion y Promocion del Campesinado (CIPCA), a Bolivian NGO, and published as a journalist in various daily newspapers and weekly journals.
Since the mid 1980s his work in development communication programs has taken him to Africa, Asia, the South Pacific, Latin America and The Caribbean, serving for various international organizations. He worked with UNICEF in Nigeria and Haiti, and as an international consultant for FAO
Fão
Fão is a town in Esposende Municipality in Portugal....
, UNDP, UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
, The Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
, AusAID and Conservation International
Conservation International
Conservation International is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, which seeks to ensure the health of humanity by protecting Earth's ecosystems and biodiversity. CI’s work focuses on six key initiatives that affect human well-being: climate, food security, freshwater...
. He is the Managing Director for Programmes at the Communication for Social Change Consortium and familiar with issues of child rights, environment, indigenous populations, arts and culture, human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
, community organization
Community organization
Community organizations are civil society non-profits that operate within a single local community. They are essentially a subset of the wider group of nonprofits. Like other nonprofits they are often run on a voluntary basis and are self funded...
, health and sustainable development
Sustainable development
Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use, that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come...
.
Books
Gumucio Dagron has published over twenty books, including poetryPoetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
and studies on literature, film and communication: Provocaciones, his first book (1977) is a collection of in-depth interviews with 14 important Bolivian writers, among them: Jesus Lara, Augusto Cespedes, Oscar Cerruto
Óscar Cerruto
Óscar Cerruto was a Bolivian poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist and diplomat. Born in the city of La Paz in 1912, he died there in 1981....
, Jaime Saenz
Jaime Saenz
Jaime Sáenz Guzmán was a Bolivian poet, novelist, and short story writer. Born in the city of La Paz, he lived virtually his entire life in that city, and its dark atmosphere had a powerful effect on much of his work...
, Pedro Shimose
Pedro Shimose
Pedro Shimose is a poet, professor and essayist from Bolivia.- Biography :Born in Riberalta in 1940 to Japanese parents and based in Madrid since 1971, Shimose is best known for his politically-inspired poetry which touches on the themes of national identity and social...
, Renato Prada Oropeza
Renato Prada Oropeza
Renato Prada Oropeza was a Bolivian and Mexican scientist-literary researcher and writer, author of novels, short stories and poetry books, hermeneutics, semiotics and literary theory. Many of his literary works have been translated into several languages...
and Raul Teixido. His studies on Bolivian and Latin American cinema trace the evolution of this art form in his region and home country: Historia del Cine Boliviano (Mexico, 1982); Cine, Censura y Exilio en América Latina (1979); Les Cinémas d’Amerique Latine (Paris, 1981) written in French, in collaboration with French film critic Guy Hennebelle; El Cine de los Trabajadores (Managua, 1981), and Luis Espinal y el Cine (1986).
Issues of communication, participation and development are at the core of other of his books: Las Radios Mineras de Bolivia (1989) written in collaboration with Bolivian journalist Lupe Cajías; Comunicación Alternativa y Cambio Social (1990); Conservacion, Desarrollo y Comunicacion (1990); NGO Puzzle (Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, 1993) in collaboration with G.K. Ngeri Nwagha; Popular Theatre (Nigeria, 1994); Making Waves: Participatory communication for social change (New York, 2001), a research project for The Rockefeller Foundation, published in Spanish, English and French; and Communication for Social Change Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (New York, 2006), edited in collaboration with Thomas Tufte, launched at the World Congress of Communication for Development (WCCD) in Rome, October 2006.
Bolivie (Paris, 1981, published by Editions Le Seuil), is an essay on his home country, covering history, politics, culture and other issues. La Máscara del Gorila (Mexico, 1982), is his account on the Bolivian military coup of 1981 and was awarded with the National Literature Award of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes of Mexico (INBA).
His poetry books include: Antología del asco (1979), Razones técnicas (1980), Sobras completas (1984), Sentímetros (1990) and Memoria de Caracoles (2000).
His short stories, poems and essays have been selected in about 30 anthologies and collections, among them those edited by John Downing, Julianne Burton, Manuel Vargas, Raquel Montenegro, Cecilia Pisos, Víctor Montoya, Rosario Santos, Jan Servaes, Bruce Girard, Paulo Antonio Paranagua, Ángel Flores, Tim Barnard, Sandra Reyes, and Alan O'Connor.
Films
Gumucio Dagron studied film in France and worked as assistant director to Alan Labrousse and Jorge SanjinesJorge Sanjinés
Jorge Sanjinés is a Bolivian film director and screenwriter. He founded the production group Groupo Ukamau. He won the ALBA Prize for Arts in 2009.-Film career:...
, and as a scriptwriter for Antonio Eguino. His first film as director, Señores Generales, Señores Coroneles (1976) is a documentary portraying the role of the Bolivian army and the CIA in the 1971 military coup that interrupted the democratic process in Bolivia; it includes interviews with Philip Agee
Philip Agee
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador,...
, former CIA agent, and Régis Debray
Régis Debray
Jules Régis Debray is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in...
. During the late 1970s and early 1980s he directed short documentary films on social and cultural issues, such as Tupaj Katari, 15 de noviembre (1978), El Ejército en Villa Anta (1979), Comunidades de Trabajo (1979), Cooperativa Sandino (Nicaragua, 1980), Domitila: la mujer y la organización (1980), Primo Castrillo, poeta (1984). In 1983 he co-directed with Eduardo Barrios, a documentary for UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
on the miners community radio stations: The voice of the mines. His documentary film Bolivia: Union Rights (1988), part of the People Matter series produced by AVISE, was aired by the Dutch television. He later directed Oloruntoba (Nigeria, 1994) a portrait of the Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
n artist; Sous Lavi (Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
, 1997); La Primerisima (2003) and Voices from the Magdalena: Communication for Peace (Colombia, 2006) a report on community radio stations working in a war-torn region of Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
.
He has been active as a film critic during the 1980s and 1990s, publishing his columns in journals of Latin America, Europe, North America and Africa.
Photography
Over the years, his photographic work has been shown in personal and collective exhibits on Bolivian landscapes and people (Altiplano, 1989) and portraits of artists from Latin America (Retrato Hablado, 1990). After four years working in Nigeria, he presented his series on children (Age of Innocence, Nigeria 1994 and (Bagaje Africano, Bolivia 1995). In Haiti he exhibited people and landscapes (Trois-sur-Haiti, 1997). Other photography shows include: Imágenes de Bolivia (París, 1973), Reflejos y Transparencias (La Paz, 1988), Nueve Fotógrafos (La Paz, 1990), Paisaje y Medio Ambiente (La Paz, 1995). Some of his photographs have been distributed by Gamma agency, and through the German news agency DPA, along with his articles on Latin American culture.Books such as: Realizando el Futuro published by the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF), Ciudad de La Paz, Luz, Magia y Tradición published by the Municipality of La Paz, included his photographs, as well as Imágenes del Trabajo awarded at the 4th International Art Contest organized by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1986. His photographic work has been used in book covers, calendars, magazines and journals of Latin America.
In 1983 he wrote the first historical perspective on Bolivian photography, which was published in the monthly journal Bolivia 2000 with the title Primera Aproximación a la Fotografía en Bolivia. Later, in 1986 Cóndor, a quarterly review published in Switzerland printed his article Breve Vistazo a la Fotografía Boliviana. He is a founding member of the Bolivian Society of Photography (Sociedad Boliviana de Fotografía) and served as Secretary for Media Relations for the 1986-1988 period. He was elected President of the Bolivian Circle of Professional Photographers (Círculo de Boliviano de Fotografía) for 1995-96.
Journalism
Alfonso Gumucio Dagron has published over a thousand articles and short essays in approximately one hundred newspapers, journals and magazines of Latin America, Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.He has been editor, board member, chief editor, cultural editor or correspondent of Vinculo, Revista Nacional de Cultura, El Nacional, Facetas, El Mundo, Zeta, Aquí, and Vanguardia in Bolivia, as well as Excelsior (Mexico), Desquicio (France), Brecha (Uruguay), and The Journal of Development Communication (Malaysia).
External links
- Articles published in Bolpress.com
- Personal blog of Alfonso Gumucio Dagron
- Making Waves, full text at The Communication Initiative website
- Film review of Chuquiago, in Jump/Cut
- A Latin American Perspective on Cultural Diversity in Media Development 2006/1
- From the Summit to the People article on the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS), in i4d
- Entrevista realizada por Hugo Aguirre - Sala de Prensa
- Take Five: A handful of essentials for ICTs in development
- YouTube Channel for Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron
- Video documentaries by Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron in Vimeo
- Interview with Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron in Waves of Change