A key technology of and during the era of the Cold War, radio provided information and entertainment, disseminated propaganda, and was harnessed to surveillance projects. In so doing, it both blurred and consolidated boundaries, physical, linguistic and otherwise. While historical literature on radio and Cold War has been dominated by the medium’s important history in the European context, scholars have more recently begun to document radio’s role in the Cold War Global South. This panel features new scholarship on radio in the Caribbean, South America, and South Asia. Focusing on ways radio has shaped nationalisms and identities, radio as a tool of resistance to authoritarian rule, and radio’s traversing/transgressing of borders, this panel will present new scholarship that underscores the importance of radio scholars talking to each other across regional boundaries. More specifically, these papers will explore the ways broadcasters in Puerto Rico, India/Pakistan, Haiti, and Uruguay used radio to traverse borders of nation and/or identity; navigate the censorship and repression of authoritarian regimes; and reimagine radio’s role via innovative programming.

The papers will be organized into two thematic pairs, which highlight the thematic commonalities of these radio histories across place and time. Rachel Chery and Christine Ehrick’s papers engage more directly with radio and communities of resistance under authoritarian regimes during the latter decades of the Cold War. Chery’s paper traces the regionally crucial history of Radio Haiti, including the importance of its international broadcasts in Haitian Creole and French and its role as a voice of opposition to the Duvalier family dictatorship in this era. Similarly, Ehrick’s paper traces the careful radio resistance of Uruguay’s CX30 “La Radio”, a Communist-Party affiliated broadcaster, during the years of military rule in that country. Alejandra Bronfman and Isabel Huacuja Alonso’s presentations on radio in Puerto Rico and South Asia, respectively, focus on the way broadcasters imagined new ways to make the most of radio’s liveness and portability to engage directly and viscerally with audiences. Bronfman’s paper will look at some of the ways Puerto Rican radio brought the political struggles of the nationalist movement and corresponding repression of the late 1940s and early 1950s directly to listening audiences. Alonso’s study of an innovative BBC Urdu travelogue in the 1980s highlights radio’s role in mapping linguistic and religious boundaries and identities in South Asia. Taken together, these four papers will showcase new scholarship in the history of radio in the Global South and highlight common themes and methods to bring these regional and national histories into dialogue with each other.