- Global Voices - https://globalvoices.org -

Argentina: high school students use online video to report their issues.

Categories: Latin America, Argentina, Breaking News, Citizen Media, Education, Film, Governance, Law, Protest, Youth

Screenshot from video by Inem 112
For a… decent school
By uploading a video on YouTube, argentinean high school students managed to get mass media's attention [1][es] to their plight: the need for a building where they can receive classes. Currently the Ipem 112 “César Iñíguez Montenegro”, in Sebastián Elcano, a village to the north of the Cordoba capital in Argentina are receiving lessons at an elementary school. However, because the elementary school has double shifts, the high school students are forced to receive evening classes, as if it were a night school.

The parents of these students took over the building at the end of March, and they decided they will not move until they see machinery and the start of construction for their promised building, or at least get a formal start date. Earlier this year, it had been promised that by March they would have the school. The INEM students receive classes in social sciences and communications and they shoot newscasts for a local tv channel, and all this content they upload on the web to reach a wider audience. As a matter of fact, it was through their YouTube channel [2] that this news managed to spread throughout Argentina.

On the following video in Spanish, the parents speak about how they've been waiting 20 years for the government to build the IPEM 112 school, discuss how the principal of the Carpani Costa Elementary School, where the high school students have been receiving classes, agrees to the peaceful occupation, and how they will take over the school completely and undefinitely, until they see construction begin on the promised building.