400 participants gathered in Havana to foster collaboration between leftist media outlets from across the world.

The fourth edition of the ‘Patria’ Colloquium closed in Havana after three days of debates, conferences and workshops on the challenges and future possibilities of digital communication.

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TeleSUR Presents at the 4th Edition of the ‘Patria International Colloquium’

400 participants from 47 countries gathered in the Cuban capital with one objective: to foster increased collaboration and exchange of experiences between leftist media outlets from across the world in a context in which the digital world has become the decisive arena of ideological struggle.

teleSUR, 20 years of popular communication

One of the highlights of this edition of ‘Patria’ was the celebration of teleSUR’s 20th anniversary, honoring the two-decade trajectory of the Latin American and Caribbean multiplatform envisioned by revolutionary leaders Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro as a key instrument for the region’s sovereignty. Its president, Patricia Villegas, shared the importance of the lessons learnt over the years to tackle the challenges ahead.

“There’s a path that brought us here, and a path ahead,” she explains. “The road that led us here allows us to have a number of experiences, things we have learned to better face what needs to be done. teleSUR today is not the same as 20 years ago. This means it has had the capacity to transform itself as the communication world has also evolved. It has been able to resist hard blows from both the political and economic spheres, attacks on the countries that make up the multistate enterprise: Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua. It has shown great capacity of resistance, as the region itself has also resisted.”

Now teleSUR focuses on the years to come. And as a key player in terms of strategic communication for the Global South, it is at the center of the debates regarding the necessary transformations for the news world in the new digital era.

“Our path forward has some key components: first, our human resource, the professionals on which we count to face the challenges upon us, which are huge. The constant training of our people, in all spheres, from a deep understanding of the world in which we live in, and the certainty that in communication lays the possibility of world governance, our possibilities of fighting off fascism. And, secondly, our technical capacity. If something has set us apart from other platforms of alternative journalism is the possibility of reporting from the ground and being able to tell our stories in real time to the whole world, not only through our platform but also through this great network that teleSUR has created in the past two decades.”

#InPictures | Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel visits the teleSUR stand at the IV Patria Colloquium, at the University of Havana. pic.twitter.com/coUkzSoAtR

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) March 19, 2025

The road towards tech sovereignty

Among the main topics brought to the table at this edition of ‘Patria’ has been the need to develop a strategic and sovereign approach to Artificial Intelligence and new technologies. Javier Blanco, renowned academic within the fields of computer sciences, and technical and information philosophy, participated in the event with a clear view on the necessity and possibility for the South to develop its own platforms. “We have a lot of experience developing our own technology.

What we now call artificial intelligence, or machine learning, is a kind of technology that is very easily appropriated by big corporations and that is the main problem. But this really has a short history, 20 years at most, and it probably won’t have a long future, in this way.

For example, the Deep Seek developed by the Chinese already shows that you can develop the same kind of tools with much less money. It is completely possible to produce the tools that we need. I think that for a very short period they will have the initiative, but we can really catch up, develop a real agenda for our countries to have our own networks and our own tools. I’m trying to convince all my comrades here that this is completely possible.”

At the same time, according to the publishing director of the New Left Review Rob Lucas, true sovereignty will not be achieved until alternative infrastructure is built, fostered by leftist powers.

“When things are being run on someone else’s server somewhere, the true “freedom” of free software is questioned. So what we need to be thinking about is how we establish alternative infrastructure. And that is where leftist parties, movements or unions of some scale can take action to reinforce popular sovereignty, national sovereignty in terms of technology, as a basis for other kinds of media.”

The power to tell our own stories

The struggle to counter imperialist narratives across the globe is at the root of the discussions addressed in the event held at the Cuban capital. A key example is the news coverage over the ongoing genocide in Palestine, a mission that news outlets of the Global South have taken upon themselves in the face of the imperialist coverage of big media.

“The most pressing issue now is how we tell our stories to the world, knowing that all of the media is generally controlled by imperialist countries,” explains Yousef Abualrob, Palestinian militant and doctor graduated in Cuba.

“So they tell you the story that they want you to know, not the full story. So one of our main objectives here is to find ways to tell our story to the world. What is going on in Palestine, how is this genocide being comitted. We need to find alternative ways of telling this truth.”

For Kwesi Pratt Jnr, General Secretary of the Socialist Movement of Ghana and Director of Pan African Television, development through collaboration is the only anti-imperialist alternative possible.

“All of us are victims of false narratives. We are told that if we have to develop we have to copy the western countries. But nobody tells us that the western countries developed through our exploitation. The capital accumulated that is responsible for the upper prosperity in the west today came out of the transatlantic slavery. It came out of classical colonialism. The only possibility available to us of self learnt development, in collaboration with other countries like us.”

PATRIA is humanity

According to Patricia Villegas, ‘Patria’ stands out among other similar events for its determination to include technological experts in the discussion of the future of communication.

“The organizers understood from the very first moment that in order to really speak about communication, we can’t just invite communicators anymore. Because to think about communication today, we need to speak to mathematicians, anthropologists, sociologists, economists. Communication today is a science. And taking that leap of inviting all these people and making this a space that seeks to better comprehend this aspect of communication is the key. If we want to move forward, if we want to keep up the fight and have decided not to surrender, Patria is the place to be.”

The participants of ‘Patria’ are confident that the path towards a fairer and more humane world needs more collaborative efforts to echo the voices of the peoples of the world.

“Because despite everything that we have achieved, it would be wrong to think that our mission is accomplished, that our work here is done”, closed Villegas. “Ours is a daily mission, we work on it every second of every day, and it has a very long term goal: it’s the struggle for humanity itself.”

EN ESTA NOTA:

The opinions expressed in this section do not necessarily represent those of teleSUR