Narrativas audiovisuales colectivas como vehículo de resignificación identitaria: implementando el vídeo participativo con jóvenes guatemaltecos/as

Abstract

Framed within the Participatory Research approach, this paper reflects the experience of the implementation of the Participatory Video technique within a fifty-five young students from the a group of fifty-five young students from the primary school ‘Colegio San Pedro’, in the town of San Pedro Yepocapa (Guatemala). The research takes as its main problem to address how the dominant modes of representation projected through the media, influence and hinder the task of young Guatemalans to generate, take over and build their own. Thus, from an audiovisual perspective (VP technique) as a tool for social change and community transformation, we sought to train these young people about the intricacies of audiovisual production, addressing with them topics such as audiovisual language or the phases of production or storyboarding. The main goal being to learn how to express in images all those ideas that they had previously put down on paper. By providing them with these tools the participants were able to search for and build their own forms of self-representation with which they could feel connected and identified. Thus, breaking with the monopoly of the mass media as the only institution with mechanisms for producing and disseminating modes of representation. The results showed how participants made a total appropriation of the audiovisual language and devices; creating videos with actual meaningful and symbolic narratives. Indeed, the very act of self-representation through audiovisual devices proved to be a successful way of creation / re-negotiation of the participant's identities (both personal and cultural). The audiovisual narration of their own realities led to a strengthening of both the perception and the sense of belonging to their community.