Wikimedia Argentina congratulates RTA, Radio y Televisión Argentina
Original in Spanish
Translation by Enrique Chaparro
Wikimedia Argentina congratulates RTA, Radio y Televisión Argentina, the public broadcasting system of Argentina, for their initiative of enhancing, digitizing and making available to the public at large the archives of Channel 7 TV and Radio Nacional under a free, Wikimedia compatible licence. The RTA’s project is an example to follow in democratization of the public media, as good as a big step forward in regaining Argentina’s historical and cultural assets.
Thanks to the work of digitization and wide spreading of the archives, those of us who make and support collaborative knowledge-building projects as Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons can get invaluable materials to enhance key articles of Argentine culture and history in Wikipedia and other sister projects.
The first milestone of RTA’s project is the ”Colección del Bicentenario” (Bicentennial Collection), celebrating 200 years of Argentina’s self-rule. That 14-DVD set contains videos from the Bicentennial celebrations, programs from the ”Canal Encuentro” – the TV channel of the Ministry of Education – as ”Presidents of Latin America”, and historical recordings of public radio and television. A treasure of unique materials for the Wikimedia projects.
Wikipedia articles as the bios of Presidents Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955 / 1973-74), Raúl Alfonsín (1983-89), Carlos Menem (1989-99), Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001) y Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (incumbent) now have video excerpts of their public addresses. There are also key addresses of the then Ministers of Finance José Martínez de Hoz and Domingo Cavallo which are key pieces to illustrate critical turns of the Argentine economical policies of the last 40 years. Among other unique materials, Wikipedia articles can now be enhanced with the voices of essential characters as Eva Perón or the former President Arturo Frondizi (1958-62), as good as videos from the trial to the military Juntas in 1985.
RTA’s videos recently uploaded to Wikimedia Commons illustrate a number of articles about Argentina in Wikipedia in Spanish (and hopefully, soon in many other languages). Inter alia,
* An excerpt of the address of incumbent President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: to the Congress in the opening of 2010 sessions,
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Fern%C3%A1ndez_de_Kirchner#Presidencia_de_Argentina
* Former President Fernando de la Rúa declaring the federal state of emergency (“state of siege”) the nigh of December 19, 2001.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_de_la_R%C3%BAa#Estallido_social
* Ricardo López Murphy, during his brief tenure of office as Minister of Finance, announcing the adjustment policies applied in 2001
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_L%C3%B3pez_Murphy#Trayectoria_pol.C3.ADtica
* Former Minister of Finance Domingo Cavallo explaining the “convertibility” plan of 1991
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domingo_Cavallo#Su_gesti.C3.B3n_en_la_presidencia_de_Carlos_Sa.C3.BAl_Menem
* Former President Carlos Menem announcing the transfer of education services to the provinces and asking support to privatize the state oil company and the social security system in 1992.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Menem#Plano_pol.C3.ADtico
* Former Minister of Finance José Martínez de Hoz speaking about his actions between 1976-81 as Minister of Finance of the military dictatorship.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Alfredo_Mart%C3%ADnez_de_Hoz#Ministro_de_Econom.C3.ADa_.281976.E2.80.931981.29
More audio and video documents will be uploaded soon, once edited, compressed and converted into suitable formats for Commons. The value that those documents may add to Wikipedia is extraordinary. Thanks to the initiative of the Argentine public media authorities, and their strong belief in the democratization of culture, we are able to make available to the public at large those materials in the most visited contents site in the web, massively used by students of all levels and collaboratively built by its own users.
Wikimedia Argentina congratulates RTA and thanks their contribution to the construction of the free encyclopedia, an initiative that shares the project goals of democratic access to the culture and promotion
of citizens partcipation.
More information on the project is available at RTA site,
http://www.rta-se.com.ar .
