MTV's Latin Beat

The recent launching of MTV's Latin American network, MTV Latino, marks a new era in communications characterized by the concentration of control over the world's media outlets into the hands of fewer and fewer people. Viacom International's MTV is rapidly becoming a powerful force on this global communications scene, especially among young people. MTV Latino joins MTV Asia, MTV Japan, MTV Brazil, and MTV Europe (soon to be followed by MTV Africa) - a network that reaches 247 million homes in 88 countries.

MTV holds true to the first half of their appropriated motto, "think globally - act locally," while showing less concern for the second. According to a National Public Radio report, about three-quarters of the music on Spanish-language MTV Latino will come from "so-called Anglo musicians," and the network has on principle decided not to include the salsa, merengue, or cumbia rhythms or "any other more native Latin beat" that are traditionally heard and produced in the region. "It's not really a concern," says MTV president of business operations Sara Levinson. "We play rock and pop - that's what MTV is, it's a rock-n-roll music channel."

The Western powers (including Japan) control 90 percent of the world's information production and distribution services and have a virtual monopoly over products of mass culture. With the advent of mega-media "synergies," such as the recent Bell Atlantic-TCI merger, the number and scope of the cultural choices available to us are becoming increasingly limited - and more and more under the influence of the marketing and advertising concerns that bankroll these media giants.

The corporate beat can be felt through the new network. MTV Latino host and supermodel Daisy Fuentes is a worldwide spokesperson for the cosmetics firm Revlon, and Coca-Cola is sponsoring MTV Latino programming with its contextualized campaign, Siempre Coca-Cola ("Always Coca-Cola"). "Coca-Cola and MTV are both on the cutting edge of reaching young people around the world, and we look forward to having a long-term relationship with [them]," said Damaris Valero, vice president of advertising sales for MTV Latino.

Along with the dangers of importing a consumer appetite that for many youth in Latin America is impossible to satisfy, there is a question of the quality of programming that the network is beaming to the estimated two million viewers in Latin America. While in decades past the United States has dumped poisons such as DDT and radioactive waste, and other dangerous refuse, into inconspicuous corners of the Third World, the "new information order" exports cultural toxins through its programming of dubious quality and values - as represented by MTV's hit Beavis and Butt-head as well as by the high content of sex and violence that the network has been noted for in the past.

MTV LATINO'S opening festivities featured pop stars such as Phil Collins and Jon Secada and included the Mexican rock band Maldita Vencidad - a group journalist Rubén Martínez said "lashes out at the Americanization of the Mexican middle class." Rock has the power to surge against the establishment so taken for granted by adults, as well as against conventionality that can so easily numb our souls.

Yet, what happens when rock becomes the system and the medium of rebels is used to subdue and conquer the rebels themselves? Maldita has been accused of selling out. Is MTV ready for truly revolutionary rock and roll from south of the border? It's doubtful.

What's called for isn't necessarily the censorship of the cultural products the United States exports around the globe. Rather, what's needed is unwavering scrutiny of that element of the mass media that attempts to shape consumer tastes in the United States and internationally - according to its own values, usually not for reasons of art but for profit, often to the detriment of local musical and cultural traditions.

A communications revolution is sweeping the world and there aren't many places untouched by it. However, our minds and tastes need not be swept away by the corporate powers attempting to control it. If local consumers could have significant input into programming, then perhaps "a brand new way of communicating" with the youth of Latin America really could come into being - and local cultural expressions, now threatened by the advent of international media giants, could instead be stimulated.

Some small recording companies not yet consumed by their larger cousins are working to do this now. Organizations such as Flying Fish, Redwood Records, Shanachie, and other record companies work to bring folk music from a myriad of cultural traditions to people blinded by the imposed cultural homogeneity of the United States and other Western nations. At the same time, these small companies work to sustain local cultural ecologies.

The new international youth standard promoted by MTV shouldn't be the only way North Americans contribute to and benefit from global culture. If we really want to foster the dignity and beauty of all, we must begin by recognizing the value and integrity of cultural products born worlds away from Madison Avenue or Wall Street.