The Cultural Industry and educational criticism in Latin America: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study three authors from different academic fields who have contributed to the development of educational knowledge systems in Latin America in the areas of culture, media communication, and education. In order to do so, I will first explore a historical study about the importance of the Cultural Industry in Latin America, based on academic contributions by Andres Bello, who focused intellectually to give cohesion to national unity in the recently-established XIX century Latin American states. Enlightened culture emerges from its written and spoken language, and with support of the media at the time, the “bellista project” would become the first media communication and educational strategy aimed at capturing the new and varied dimensions of a nascent South American Culture. Similarly and in the same vein, I will look into the stance of writers and journalists, José Martí and Rubén Darío, who had to face Modernity as it began to replace the Enlightenment for a Culture for the Masses. Their poems and writings in newspapers back then, established an academic standpoint, for the first time, linked to media analysis and education, such as questioning the cultural industry and media narratives that were operating towards the end of the XIX century, in different media outlets. Finally, I examine how media analysis in Latin America emerged in the face of processes of domination that came not only from the economic but the so called cultural industries that surfaced with so much power in the mid-twentieth century. These media outlets show cultural processes as a marketable product while diluting the true real dimensions of culture.