By Alejo Restrepo
The lack of a regional channel in Chocó has not allowed the country to know the true potential that this Colombian region has for private and international investment.
Regional channels have been alternatives for the creation of local culture and the integration of all the regions that make up a Department. Through these channels we learn to know our region, which allows us to get away from the capital’s television, which has always been centralized and which has always left us aside and which only dedicates itself to commenting on the bad and tragic things that usually happen in our region, sometimes stigmatizing us throughout the country for the high rates of poverty and abandonment in which we live immersed or other times when they visit us because of a guerrilla massacre, a displacement, a flood and never to highlight, promote the good and positive things that this rich Colombian region has.
Regional channels such as: Teleantioquia Telepacifico, Telecaribe, Telecafé, among others, were a dream of the community, businessmen, and the political and economic diligence of these departments. In the beginning they were small companies, without large capital or very sophisticated technical equipment and little human resources, until what they are today: true companies worthy of the regions that have this type of channels, a product of the tenacity and dynamism that their local authorities and the community in general, who believed that this was the most direct vehicle to rescue their own identity, without waiting for it to come from outside.
If this idea were to resonate in our department, this regional channel would allow us to rescue our cultural and ethnic identity, show our ecological heritage, express our cultural, social, economic and political values. It would allow us to know how we see ourselves as Chocó people from the inside out, we could broadcast live all the cultural events that take place throughout our territory, we could present to the national and international community our great comparative advantages that we have for the investment of private and state capital in this Department, in infrastructure works such as the highway to the sea, the port of Tribugá, an oil pipeline to transport gas through the Pacific, and biotechnology. In addition, it would show our artisanal products to the country and the world.
In our region, television schools would be opened, sources of employment would be generated, our children would have more access to our own culture, we would form more active, participatory citizens with a greater sense of belonging and awareness in order to move this region forward from backwardness in that is, without expecting that others will not do so, carrying out institutional campaigns that show the reality to Colombia about the serious unsatisfied basic needs that the majority of its population here suffers from, which has no comparison with other national regions.
Given the above scenario, decisive support is required from the entire Chocó community and the National government, including the ruling class, journalists, students, associations, academics, businessmen, politicians, etc. For the creation of this channel, I suggest that an associative entity of national public law be created as an industrial and commercial company of the state with its legal status and administrative autonomy and independent capital, linked to the Ministry of Communications, called TeleChocó, with all of our partners as partners. municipalities, the department, the Diego Luis Córdoba Technological University, the National Government, resources from the international community, in addition, the support of our leadership in Congress is required to carry out the management before the central government and together to bring this idea to a successful conclusion. impossible, as a necessary right that all regions like Chocó have to highlight their legitimate values and reflect their identity by showing themselves to the Colombian community.
