Communication studies in Paraguay: academic invisibility and political context

Abstract

The article records a survey on the state of the art of research in Media Communication in Paraguay. In the first section, there is a historical research of the Paraguayan educational context, followed by a reflection on two Paraguayan researchers and the approaches from which they consider Communication. The third section presents an investigation conducted in four Paraguayan scientific journals with online access. It is possible to verify that there is scarce bibliography, besides having few references to Paraguay in scientific journals and other national bibliographical works published there. The political context is pointed out as a probable origin on the academic invisibility of Communication studies.

Keywords
Communication research; Paraguay; Media

Resumo

O artigo registra um levantamento sobre o estado da arte de pesquisas na área de Comunicação Midiática no Paraguai. No primeiro bloco, faz-se um levantamento histórico do contexto educacional paraguaio, seguido de uma reflexão sobre dois pesquisadores paraguaios e as abordagens desde as quais pensam a Comunicação. No terceiro bloco apresenta-se um levantamento realizado em quatro revistas científicas paraguaias com acesso online. Constata-se haver escassa bibliografia, ademais de poucas referências ao Paraguai em periódicos científicos e outras obras bibliográficas publicadas naquele país. Aponta-se o contexto político como provável origem da invisibilidade acadêmica dos estudos de Comunicação.

Palavras-chave
Pesquisa em Comunicação; Paraguai; Mídia

Resumen

El artículo registra un levantamiento sobre el estado del arte de investigaciones en el área de Comunicación Mediática en Paraguay. En el primer bloque, se realiza un levantamiento histórico del contexto educativo paraguayo, seguido de una reflexión sobre dos investigadores paraguayos y los enfoques desde los cuales se piensa la Comunicación. El tercer bloque presenta un levantamiento realizado en cuatro revistas científicas paraguayas con acceso online. Hay poca bibliografía, además de algunas referencias al Paraguay en periódicos científicos y otras obras bibliográficas nacionales. El contexto político se señala como un origen probable de la invisibilidad académica de los estudios de Comunicación.

Palabras clave
Investigación en Comunicación; Paraguay; Medios

Introduction

This text is the result of concerns that appeared from the reading of studies about Communication and Culture in Latin America. There is a lack of studies about Paraguay, its society and its processes and means of communication. Therefore, initially, with the purpose of pointing out the lack of works that approach communicational aspects of Paraguay, a mapping has been made in three spaces that aggregate works of Communication in the Latin-American context. Among these, the following can be mentioned: the Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias de la Comunicación (the Latin-American Magazine of Communication Sciences), published by Associação Latino-Americana de Investigadores de Comunicação (ALAIC) (Latin-American Association of Communication Investigators) and the works coordinated by Sunkel (2006), Chilean, and Jacks (2011), who are Brazilian.

It was noted that in 26 editions of the ALAIC magazine, between 2004 and 2019, when people search for the keywords “Paraguai” and “Paraguay”, there are only four articles related to the theme. One of them was written by the Brazilian researcher Brandalise (2010), and two of them were written by the Paraguayan researcher Bordenave (2012, 2015), in posthumous editions, and the other one is precisely about him (AGUIRRE ALVIS, 2014).

Likewise, in Sunkel’s work (2006), there are no mentions to an approach of the theoretical-methodological lines of studies in Communication and the consumption of means of communication. An identical situation occurs in the work of Jacks (2011), who gathers studies in Communication from several countries in Latin America, with no vestiges of the state of art in Communication in Paraguay.

After noticing the lack of mentions to works that approach the communicational context in Paraguay, this article seeks the objective of reporting results found in studies about (Mediatic) Communication developed in/about/of Paraguay by national researchers or published in Paraguay. The online catalogues or repositories are the main documental source for this survey, which is a practice that has been named as “state of art”. How can this be done?

Is it possible to map a certain “state of art” by reading abstracts only? If we are thinking of using it as an object of studies – the abstracts – in the works entitled “state of art” or “state of knowledge”, if we understand that the abstracts that are in the catalogues provide what is necessary to other functions and needs; if we accept the heterogeneity of linguistic and typographic marks in abstracts, can we consider that it is possible to build a speech that analyzes, asks, and explain conveniently each group of works produced in a certain area of knowledge by reading only the abstracts and ignoring the reading of the full research? (FERREIRA, 2002, p. 264-265, our translation).

It should be noted that there are studies from Brazilian, North American, and European universities that have not been registered in the current phase. To make the study of the state of art effective, the mapping has been made with public Paraguayan universities only, since it is necessary to know the internal reality and the national publications and authors from there. It is recognized that Paraguayan authors publish their works abroad and that foreigners research about Paraguay by publishing internationally. However, this article seeks to point out the specific reality of the academic environment in the Communication field.

It has also been observed that the work could not be restricted to the state of art of studies in Communication in Paraguay. It would be necessary to have an educative and scientific panorama of the country to have a better comprehension about the reasons that led the researchers who study Latin-American Communication to only glance at Paraguay. Thus, the first moment is a brief look at the historic educational context of Paraguay in two parts, stating that educational institutions have already been implemented in the colonial times through standardization works of Guarani made by the Jesuits in the 17th century. Then, there is a brief contextualization about the volume of undergraduate and graduate courses in Social Sciences and Communication in public universities.

In the second part, there is a brief survey about Paraguayan researchers who developed works in the Communication field in Paraguay from a Latin-American perspective.

In the third part, a search in four scientific journals was carried out to verify the publication of articles in the Communication field. For that, the keywords “comunicación” (communication), “periodismo” (journalism), and, in Portuguese, “comunicação” and “jornalismo” have been used. In the scientific journals that did not permit the use of keywords, the table of contents and the references were used as a parameter to search for articles that approach the subject. The next step was based on the following results: reading the information obtained to list the production found and verify its possible tendencies, emphases, and methodological options. The production of this list permitted results that enable the recognition of the precedence of a deceased writer and another active writer, people who marked the studies of Communication in Paraguay. However, to comprehend their options and challenges, a brief course over the educational panorama is suggested, in order to understand the academic environment of the country.

A brief course over the educational panorama in Paraguay

The beginning of the institutionalization of education in Paraguay happened in the Jesuit times. Zajicová (1994) supports the idea that these missionaries were chosen among several candidates and were prepared in the fields of Religion, Medicine, Agriculture, Craftwork, Painting, Music, Engineering, and Teaching. Vestiges of these enterprises can be found in several reports. In that way, the insertion of the writing in indigenous communities should also be noted. Although it is not the objective of this article, it is considered relevant to mention the work done by priests in the language standardization, as well as the use of this variety in several areas of written communication in the Reductions (THUN; CERNO; OBERMEIER, 2015)¹. Therefore, in the search for a formalized education, in 1715, Cabildo de Assunção suggested the creation of a Paraguayan university, which happened in 1716 with the beginning of a college with a professorship of Grammar, Philosophy, Theology, and Morals; which was, at the time, “[...] the Carolino college, the maximum institution of cultural formation in the Province” (OIA, 1994, p.3, our translation)².

In the government of Carlos Antonio López, the education was highlighted, and, in 1850, to promote college education, the Escuela de Derecho Civil y Político (SILVERO; GALEANO; RIVAROLA, 2010) was created. In 1889, the first university in the country was inaugurated, the Universidad Nacional de Asunción (UNA). The first private university was only enabled in 1960, the Universidad Católica Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, and, from 1989 on, other private universities were created around the country. It should be noted that, in this course, there were already 54 universities in Paraguay in 2013, in which 8 are public and 46 are private, with 288 colleges, that offer 1633 courses (RECALDE; LUSARDI; ACOSTA, 2013).

The Paraguayan investigators Ortíz and Galeano (2015) affirm that, after the fall of the Stroessner dictatorship, in 1989, although there was some sort of self-censorship, it was not a reason to stop critical thinking from growing over the period of the dictatorship. For these authors, the little scientific advance did not allow national and international debates to happen to develop the scientific field in the country, which would expose local matters in the regional and worldwide space.

Even after the fall of the Stroessner dictatorship, the effects to the studies in the area of Humanities – especially the studies of Communication – persist. It is possible to observe that in the lack of post-Graduate courses in Social Sciences. Between the years of 1996 and 2006, 139 students from Paraguay had graduated in that field (GENTIL; SAFORCADA, 2010). Besides that, the lack and the low quality of post-Graduate courses and the lack of professors with exclusive dedication to teaching and researching are added to this panorama (ORTIZ; GALEANO, 2015).

It should be noted that, in public universities, the master’s degree in Social Studies was created in the Universidad Nacional de Asunción only in 2007 (ABC, Color, 2007). Since 2009, the Universidad Nacional del Este (UNE) offers a master’s degree in Social Sciences. In 2014, although the first PhD in Social Sciences was announced (UNE, 2014), the project was not continued, since it is still not part of the websites, neither on UNA’s³ nor on UNE’s⁴.

Hence, in the academic perspective, the Social Sciences field was not immune to the Stroessner dictatorship. Critical thinking was not valued, and it was even discouraged, as the ending of the Sociology course from Universidad Católica de Asunción proves. The discussions and the seek for critical thinking would happen outside the academic institutions (ORUÉ POZZO, 1999). Galeano et al. (2014) defend that, research was included in the restrictions to university activities, so the activities in the universities were restricted to teaching. The creation of new universities since the return of democracy was made with no rigor nor regulating norms.

In 1997, the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) was created. However, only in 2011 the Paraguay Government Budget started to provide resources for research through the Programa Nacional de Incentivo de los Investigadores (PRONII), which was responsible for evaluating the scientific production of the researchers (GALEANO et al., 2014). Besides that, as Recalde, Lusardi and Acosta (2013, p. 41) point out that, in the region, Paraguay is the country that invests the least in research, according to the survey developed by CONACYT itself. They only dedicate 0,4% of the PIB, which causes the universities to have lack of financial resources, qualified researchers, and research instruments. In addition, according to Solis et al. (2018), the low level of indexation of the Paraguayan scientific journals contributes to the lack of visibility of scientific production in the international scenari. According to the same authors, the most productive area is Health Sciences, followed by Agricole Sciences and Engineering, and the least productive one is Social Sciences.

Concerning academic studies in Communication, Segovia (2010b, p. 111) points out that que “The study of the means of communication in Paraguay shows very little development” (SEGOVIA, 2010, p.111, our translation)⁵. The academic production is almost exclusively under the responsibility of undergraduate students, and its projection is restricted to the debates in the scientific community. For that reason, it was chosen to recognize what effectively is published in the research in Communication.

To make the study of the state of art effective, it was chosen to restrict the mapping to the public universities of the country, since the creation of new universities was made, several times “[...] in very open spaces, with a lack of ruling norms, tending to orient the kind of institutions, its functions, and its objectives [...]” (GALEANO et al., 2014, p. 421, our translation)⁶. With the existence of a fragile structure for the Social Sciences area, Serafini pointed out, in 2006, the inexistence of post-Graduate courses in Communication and even the lack of interest in the critical studies of Communication, since the use of analysis of contect would have brought limitation to the studies developed:

The emphasized field of investigation was and still is the analysis of content, specifically of mediatic texts from the written press. It did not happen, then, in the scope of academic investigation of our country (which always circumscribes us to the production in the UC Communication), the “enormous spin in the orientation of a communication research, that Martín Barbero refers to when he speaks of “Reception: use of means and cultural consumption” but that is still in the orientation of the investigation that infers “the social effects from the analysis of contents or of the language of the means”

(SERAFINI, 2006, p. 83, our translation)⁷.

To face this problematic reality and to deal with theoretical-investigative needs, the Secretaria de Información y Comunicación para el Desarrollo (SICOM) emerged in 2008 with the emergency of a new government. A paradigmatic change was proposed in the political-educational Paraguayan scenario, according to Centurión’s analysis (2009). This aspect leads to the analysis of national thought in Communication.

Paraguayan researchers in the Communication field

Amongst Paraguayan scholars, deference is paid to Juan Enrique Díaz Bordenave (1926-2012), previously mentioned, who contributed significantly to the Latin-American communicational thinking, although his production was developed abroad (AGUIRRE ALVIS, 2014). Born in Encarnación, on the border with Argentina and 200 kilometers away from the Brazilian border, he had all of his college education abroad: he took Agronomy undergraduate courses in Argentina and Chile, his master’s degree in Agricole Journalism in the University of Wisconsin (1955), and his PhD in the University of Michigan (1966), both in the United States of America. He was an international consultant in Communication and Education at UNESCO (BORDENAVE, 2015). In most of his works, he reflects about Communication from a communitarian point of view, although he is not attached to the specificities of the communicational processes in Paraguay. He was the author of works that place Communication as an important process to social transformation: “It is desired to put the power of communication at the service of the construction of a society in which the transforming participation and dialogue be possible” (BORDENAVE, 1986, p. 101, our translation)⁸

He wrote several works of international repercussion, and most of them were published in Brazil, except for a book published by UNESCO and two other publications in Paraguay (BORDENAVE, 2008; 2011), as well as other texts in international publications. His books that stand out the most are his classics from the collection “Primeiros Passos do Brasil” (literally meaning “First Steps of Brazil”), “O que é comunicação” (1983a) (literally meaning “What communication is”), “O que é Comunicação Rural” (1983b) (literally meaning “What Rural Communication is”), and “O que é Participação” (1989) (literally meaning “What Participation is”), with several editions. The three works would get posthuman editions in Castellano, published in Paraguay (BORDENAVE, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c).

Besides the works mentioned, the book “Planejamento e Comunicação” (“Planning and Communication”), written with Martins de Carvalho (1978), was a reference in Brazilian Communication courses in the 1980s. Bordenave would still write several other articles and books dedicated to themes in the educational field.

After living in several countries, Bordenave stayed in Brazil, where he lived for decades. With Fernando Lugo as a president, he returned to Paraguay as a Communication press officer and, along with Anibal Orué Pozzo, he was responsible for coordinating the only edition of the master’s degree in Comunicación para el Desarrollo da Universidad Nacional del Este, on the border with Brazil. In his eighties, Bordenave deceased about six months after the dismissal of President Fernando Lugo, in 2012⁹.

The Bolivian researcher Aguirre Alvis would analyze Bordenave’s contribution as:

His theoretical proximity, his similar passion for the basic meaning of human communication as a way to build senses in equal responsibility of the intervenient actors, besides his reality-transforming commitment starting from his ways of planning, investigating and ethical responsibility towards others [...] The pioneering role of Juan Díaz Bordenave is also highlighted in the establishment of a communication built from a democratic relationship – a participative, horizontal and dialogical communication – among actors, which is supported by a publication of his in 1962 and precedes every other theorist in the field of Latin-American Communication, which retrieves his fundamental role to the comprehension of communication since this continent”

(AGUIRRE ALVIS, 2014, p. 145, our translation)¹⁰.

Just as Bordenave, Anibal Orué Pozzo (1958-) has also had his college education abroad; his undergraduate course in Electric Engineering was taken in Brazil, in the Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica do Paraná (Federal Center of Technological Education of Paraná), his master’s degree in Media Studies in New School for Social Research, New York University, United States. He has a PhD in Administration – Communicational Processes in the Universtidad Autónoma de Asunción, in Paraguay. After that, he studied Communication and Border Social Studies in the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, in Argentina. In Paraguay, he was a CONACYT researcher, and he is currently a professor at Universidad da Integração Latino-Americana (Unila), in the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu. He wrote the prologue of “Comunicación” (BORDENAVE, 2016a), in which he analyzes the contribution to the criticism of the Eurocentric way of thinking.

The characteristics of Aníbal Orué Pozzo’s investigation make it possible to recognize that not only does he do a historical course of the printed journalism in Paraguay and its media structure through the perspective of studies in Communication, but he also interprets the discursive representations, analyzes the constructions of social imaginaries through journalistic representations, and studies the Paraguayan communicational way of thinking. His works run through different periods of Paraguayan journalism’s history until the end of the 20^th century. From his academic production, in the Communication field there are several texts published in Paraguay (ORUÉ POZZO, 1995; 2002; 2003; 2007; 2008; 2012; 2013; 2019) and abroad, especially in Brazil and in the United States. A productive writer who still contributes to the articulations between Communication, coloniality, and cultural translation in Paraguay and in Latin America.

Science communication in the Paraguayan research scenario

In this panorama of incipient studies in Social Sciences and, consequently, in Communication, the difficulty to publish scientific works is added. The lack of standardized, refereed, or indexed journals, the inexistence of post-Graduate courses in the field, the little motivation to research, the fragmentation of the publishment of studies in Communication produced by non-governmental organizations, besides the professionalizing tendency of the course s offered by Paraguayan universities (ORTIZ; GALEANO, 2015) motivate the little international visibility of Paraguayan research:

Some imminent publications that were relevant in the 60s, 70s, and 80s started to lose space towards the institutional debilitation of their publishing centers. This aspect strongly limits the welcoming of international contributions that allow social sciences in Paraguay to make themselves an echo of the discussions and advances in a regional Latin-American and worldwide level

(ORTIZ; GALEANO, 2015, p. 8, our translation)¹¹.

According to Caballero e Duarte-Masi (2014), one of the reasons why it is not possible to be precise about the number of scientific journals in Paraguay is the lack of a national track of serial publications. In 2013, the authors developed a survey in eight online multidisciplinary scientific journals to verify the number of Paraguayan magazines available.

In the moment of the search, the Latindex Information System showed 43 titles of Paraguayan journals in the directory, 19 journals in the catalog, and 15 with electronic links. SciELO Paraguay showed 8 titles of journals, 5 in the Health field, 1 in Social Science, 1 in Agrarian Sciences, and 1 in the Natural Sciences. Dialnet presented 2 journals, both in the Health field. On CLACSO, 1 journal in the Social Sciences field was found, and on LILACS 9 journals in the Health field were found

(CABALLERO; MASI, 2014, p. 6, our translation)¹².

Table 1 shows the four scientific journals available online in the Social Sciences field according to the survey developed by Caballero and Masi (2014).

Table 1
Scientific journals of Social Sciences edited in Paraguay, cronology, online address, and periodicity.

Title of the journal	Catálogos de Estudios Paraguayos	Rev. Estudios Polít. Contemp. (Novapolis)	Investigaciones y Estudios de la UNA	Revista Internacional en Investigaciones Sociales
Publishing institution	Universidad Católica Nuestra Señora de la Asunción	Germinal - Centro de Estúdios y Ed. Popular	Universidad Nacional de Asunción	Universidad Autónoma de Asunción
First edition	1975	2002	2006	2005
Last edition	2021	2021	2021	2021
Online address	https://epy.dreamhosters.com/index.php/RESPY	http://novapolis.pyglobal.com/	https://revistascientificas.una.py/index.php/rdgic/	http://revistacientifica.uaa.edu.py/index.php/riics/index
Frequency	Every 6 months	Every 6 months	Every 6 months	Every 6 months since 2006

• Source: elaborated by the authors, according to Caballero e Masi (2014).

The scientific journals Novapolis, Revista Internacional en Investigaciones Sociales, Estudios Paraguayos, and Investigaciones y Estudios de la UNA are registered with regular updated publication. However, it should be noted that a Communication-specialized online-access journal was not found, which makes research in this theme look for spaces in broader areas.

Table 2 presents a list of articles about the problematization and the comprehension of communicational phenomena in the journals shown in Table 1. It is observed that Investigaciones y Estudios de la Universidad Nacional de Asunción, which has publications until 2021, does not register articles in Communication. Estudios Paraguayos, da Universidad Católica Nuestra Señora de Asunción, between 1975 and 2021, does not present more than ten articles that somehow approach themes of the Communication field, although the existent ones do it very broadly. Novapolis, with editions between 2002 and 2021, contains only four articles about Communication and discursive constructions analysis, and one of them was written by Orué Pozzo (2013). By analyzing the eleven numbers of Investigaciones y Estudios de la UNA, da Universidad Nacional de Asunción, produced between 2006 and 2021, it is possible to notice that there is a lack of work related to Communication.

A Revista Internacional de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales, da Universidad Autónoma de Asunción, with online access editions between 2005 e 2021, showed thirteen works about Communication. Four of them are from Brazilian authors who analyze the Brazilian social reality and means of communication. Eight articles that study the Paraguayan communicational reality, whose highlighted authors are Bordenave and Centurión.

Table 2
Author, title of the article, and year of publication per journal.

Journal	Author	Title of the article	Year
Estúdios Paraguayos de la Universidad Católica Nuestra Seiiora de la Asunción	Alfredo M. Seiferheld	Las comunicaciones postales y telegráficas en el Paraguay del postguerra 1870 - 1900	1980
	Beatriz González de Bosio	Emergencia del periodismo en el Paraguay	1990
	José L. Simón	La prensa como poder fáctico en Paraguay post 1989	2006
	Hérib Caballero Campos	El periodismo de guerra en el Paraguay 1864 - 1870	2008 - 2009
	Roque Acosta	Calidad de la información periodística: responsabilidad social de la prensa	2010
	Isabel Rodríguez	Primavera estudiantil en los medios de comunicación	2015
	Magdalena López	La presencia de la “Guerra contra la Triple Alianza” en las narrativas en torno al Juicio Político a Fernando Lugo Méndez en Paraguay	2016
	Eduardo Tamayo Belda	lCuándo se callará la una? Comunicación y poder en #UNANOTECALLES.	2017
	Ebelio Espínola Benítez	La guerra de la triple alianza: repercusiones en la prensa venezolana	2017
	Aníbal Orué Pozzo	Francisco Solano López, estratega del periodismo paraguayo	2019
Novapolis	Aníbal Orué Pozzo	Sobre discursos y construcciones narrativas	2013
	Roberto Amigo	La alegoria republicana en las trincheras Una introducción a Cabichuí	2016
	Sonia Winer	Representaciones e imágenes sobre el conflicto agrario en Paraguay	2017
	Mónica Nikolajczuk	Elites econômicas, poder político y médios de comunicación en Paraguay	2018
Revista Internacional de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Autónoma de Asunción	Denis Porto Renó	O homem do campo na mídia	2005
	William Penna Crispim	Interatividade como ferramenta para o jornalismo on-line	2006
	Denis Porto Renó	Ciberdocumentalismo: Ia producción audiovisual con interactividad en la red	2006
	Thiago Perez B. de Moraes and Romer Mottinha S.	Os Protestos no Brasil. Um estudo sobre as pesquisas na web, e o caso da Primavera Brasileira	2013
	Juan Díaz Bordenave	Aterrizar en la realidad desde las nubes: la validación social de un producto radiofónico educativo	2008
	Diosnel Centrurión	El periodismo en la encrucijada paradigmática de su rol: la visión del desarrollo	2007
	Diosnel Centrurión	De la opinión a la sociedad de la información y del conocimiento: un abordaje epistemológico	2008
	Diosnel Centrurión	La comunicación y el desarrollo: perspectivas de consenso	2009
	Diosnel Centrurión	La comunicación para el desarrollo: perspectivas en la formación de actores para el cambio y participación ciudadana	2009
	Amelia F. Aguirre	Las mujeres en las noticias del Paraguay	2016
	Silverio Samudio Barrios	Periodismo científico: perspectivas y desafios en Paraguay	2016
	Rossana E. Barria Domínguez	Periodismo ciudadano en Paraguay: ¿Una nueva forma de poder?	2016
	Diego Benjamín Molinas-Delvalle	Influencia de la televisión en la percepción de inseguridad y miedo al delito de la población paraguaya	2021

• Source: elaborated by the authors.

In the scientific journals, besides Orué Pozzo’s articles, that encompasses journalism in a diachronic perspective, as well as in a synchronic one, approaching speeches and narratives in the Paraguayan mediatic communication, other works that analyze representations or discursive aspects in the local means, as well as consumption and reception of these means, were not found. This is in line with what Serafini (2006), who mentions that the works published are insufficient, since they only analyze dynamics and production conditions in the national communicational scope.

While observing the theoretical-methodological approach in the articles, it is highlighted that there is almost no reference to Paraguayan authors, neither to authors who work from a Latin-American perspective of Communication. Therefore, there is a preference to European or North American authors.

Final consideration

Questioning the invisibility of Communication studies in Paraguay makes it possible to harbor the hypothesis that the first National State of Americas to have an indigenous language as co-official lacks the acknowledgment in the communicational field, which is a paradox. The indigenous origin and, consequently, everything that derives from it – language, culture, knowledge, territoriality – is no longer acknowledged, therefore its legacy is taken as non-scientific, non-civil, non-human (OLIVEIRA; PINTO, 2010). The subaltern insertion of Paraguay in the Latin-American context sustains stigmas and attitudes that somehow make Quijano’s critical perspective stronger (2005, p. 126): “The intellectual elaboration of the modernity process has produced a perspective of knowledge and way of producing knowledge that demonstrate the character of the worldwide standard of power: colonial/modern, capitalistic and Eurocentric” (QUIJANO, 2005, p. 126, our translation)¹³. Is it the critical studies in Communcation’s role to question this standard? From the survey that was developed, it is possible to conjecture some answers to that questioning.

It should be noted that the impact of Bordenave’s work, which is influent in the Popular and Alternative Communication approaches, became consecrated in the fields of Education, Agrarian Sciences and Health, in Latin America and in regions in which the developmental approach is requested. Bordenave and Orué Pozzo’s data, as well as the publications in Paraguay endorse that there is little editorial concern about Communication studies in and from Paraguay.

Communication researchers seem to reiterate the colonized approach of science in several manners. It is possible to state that Communication studies in Paraguay are recent and still have no unity of approach. The scarce analyses in this work are aimed at mediatic speeches, which still reflect a gap, such as studies of consumption and reception, amongst several others. Independent studies are done by professionals that, as a rule, are legatees of foreign theorists, and the moment in which a genuine Paraguayan school of Communication thinking seems to be far away. Furthermore, the educational debilities of the country, the difficulty of access, and the problematic diffusion of knowledge produced in the academies do not permit a clear vision of this research field nowadays. In the quest of responding to the concerns that guided the research proposal reported here, some ways were found, and they made it possible to observe reasons why Paraguay still appears shyly in Communication research activities.

By trying to comprehend the outline of the state of art, it is important to point out the limitations of this research, since, due to the lack of online availability of other science communication spaces, there was no access to researches about the theme that might be in development. Therefore, it is not a conclusive study, but it seeks the contribution to expand the actions and the knowledge of scientific production in the region, in a proposal that is aimed at the opposition to hegemonic centers policy.

Verifying the contribution of studies in Language Teaching, History and Sociology is still something to be done. It should also be pointed out that there was no access to post-Graduate dissertations about Communication from public universities, since these institutions do not have an online space to publicize their research. It is still to be questioned if the investigations in development study aspects that concern the communicational activity in Paraguay, as well as the approaches observed and the means of scientific communication that are used.

Returning to the original issue of possible answers to the debility of Paraguayan references in Communication, there are historical factors from a dictatorship that lasted for over half a century and only ended in 1989. The sequels in the academic environment of the repressive environment made the investigative activity be little motivated in the universities, considering that several reflections were developed outside educational institutions. That also led to the reduced motivation of creating post-Graduate courses in Social Sciences, especially in Communication, which is reflected nowadays through the lack of scientific production in this field (SOLIS et al., 2018).

Although the historical factors previously mentioned should be considered, it is also necessary to highlight the excess of bureaucratic obstacles from the Paraguayan institutions and universities, such as to the lack of transparency and scientific communication. As it was stated before, the Universidad Nacional del Este itself did not make the list of egresses from the first master’s degree in Comunicación para el Desarrollo with their respective dissertation titles until February of 2022. If that does not exempt the researcher from seeking to understand the reality in Paraguay, at least it helps to understand the lack of Paraguayan references in studies that approach its context. Even though almost 30 years have gone by since the end of the dictatorship, the institutions are still managed by little transparent paradigms, which increases the cost of the motivation and scientific communication in the country directly.

If the democratic system has certain prestige from a political point of view, the economic panorama demonstrates precedence in the Paraguayan reality, dedicated especially to foreign needs, either as a Chinese warehouse to distribute electronics and other products, or as an agricultural exploitation territory. The post-Graduate in Communication initiative that was interrupted with the deposition of the president in 2012 showed the fragility of the academic efforts. It raises the question of whether the globalizing vortex that determined its leading researchers to study and work abroad prevents subsequent generations from developing a relevant theoretical-conceptual discussion on Paraguayan soil and institutions.

• 1
  Despite the restrictions to the colonization enterprises and domination of the Companhia de Jesus at the service of the Spanish Crown, the value of these works preserved in documents provides a historical panorama of the colonial Paraguay, its language, and the beginnings of the educational institutionalization. Several linguistic strategies were used to shape the language according to the indigenous catechization objectives. They recurred to semantic changes and implemented neologisms that were sufficient to the religious and social universe that was implemented in the indigenous culture.
• 2
  “[...]el colégio Carolino, la máxima institución de formación cultural en la Província” (OIA, 1994, p. 3).
• 3
  UNA. Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales, 2020. Available at: <http://www.der.una.py/index.php/postgrado/doctorados>. Access on: Feb. 18, 2022.
• 4
  UNE. Carrera de Posgrado: doctorados, Ciudad del Este, 2019. Available at: <http://www.une.edu.py/web/index.php/unidades-academicas/carreras-de-posgrado/doctorados>. Access on: Feb. 18, 2022.
• 5
  “el estudio de los medios de comunicación en Paraguay está muy poco desarrollado” (SEGOVIA, 2010, p.111)
• 6
  )“[...]en procesos muy abiertos, faltos de normativas reguladoras, tendientes a orientar el tipo de instituciones, sus funciones y objetivos [...]” (GALEANO et al., 2014, p. 421).
• 7
  “El campo de investigación de énfasis ha sido y sigue siendo el análisis de contenido, específicamente de los textos mediáticos de la prensa escrita. No se ha dado, pues, en el ámbito de la investigación académica en nuestro país (circunscribiéndonos siempre a la producción en Comunicación de la UC) el ‘enorme giro en la orientación de una ‘communication research’’ al que alude Martín Barbero cuando habla de ‘Recepción: Uso de medios y consumo cultural’ sino que se continúa en la orientación de la investigación que infiere ‘los efectos sociales a partir del análisis de los contenidos o del lenguaje de los medios’” (SERAFINI, 2006, p. 83).
• 8
  “Deseja-se colocar o poder da comunicação a serviço da construção de uma sociedade onde a participação e o diálogo transformantes sejam possíveis” (BORDENAVE, 1986, p. 101).
• 9
  The Master’s course Comunicación para el Desarrollo (“Communication for Development”, translated freely) from the Universidad Nacional del Este had only one group of students, in 2012. From this group, there is record of only four dissertations written (ALMEIDA, 2016; JARA, 2015; FLECHA, 2016, BRÍTEZ, 2017). The data was extracted from the Lattes of Anibal Orué Pozzo (LATTES, 2022), once there is an absence of information in the university’s website.
• 10
  “Su proximidad teórica, su similar apasionamiento por el sentido básico de una comunicación humana como forma de construcción de sentidos en corresponsabilidad igualitaria de los actores intervinientes más su compromiso transformador de la realidad desde formas de planificación, investigación y responsabilidad ética ante los otros. [...] Se pone además en evidencia el papel pionero de Juan Díaz Bordenave en el establecimiento de una comunicación que se construye desde la relación democrática –comunicación participativa, horizontal y dialógica- entre los actores, elemento que se respalda con el hallazgo histórico de una publicación suya del año 1962 y que antecede a todos los demás teóricos del campo de la Comunicación de Latinoamérica recuperándose así su papel de constructor fundamental en la comprensión de la comunicación desde este continente” (AGUIRRE ALVIS, 2014, p. 145).
• 11
  “Algunas eminentes publicaciones que tuvieron un gran peso en los años 60, 70 y 80 fueron perdiendo terreno ante el debilitamiento institucional de sus centros editores. Este aspecto limita fuertemente la acogida de contribuciones internacionales que permita al campo de las ciencias sociales de Paraguay hacerse eco de las discusiones y avances a nivel regional latinoamericano y mundial” (ORTIZ; GALEANO, 2015, p. 8).
• 12
  “En el momento de la consulta, el Sistema de Información de Latindex presentó un total de 43 títulos de revistas de Paraguay en el directorio, 19 revistas en el catálogo y 15 con enlace electrónico. SciELO Paraguay presentó en total 8 títulos de revistas, 5 del área de la salud, 1 de ciencias sociales, 1 de ciencias agrarias y 1 de ciencias naturales. Dialnet 2 revistas, 1 del área de la salud y 1 de ciencias sociales y DOAJ también 2 revistas, ambas del área de la salud. En la base de datos de CLACSO se encontró 1 revista en el área de las ciencias sociales y en LILACS 9 revistas del área de la salud” (CABALLERO; MASI, 2014, p.6).
• 13
  “A elaboração intelectual do processo de modernidade produziu uma perspectiva de conhecimento e um modo de produzir conhecimento que demonstram o caráter do padrão mundial de poder: colonial/moderno, capitalista e eurocentrado” (QUIJANO, 2005, p. 126).

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Edited by

Editor: Maria Ataide Malcher

Editorial assistant: Weverton Raiol

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  23 May 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  10 Jan 2020
• Accepted
  13 Feb 2022