Leo Tomaz is the driving force behind Radio Reversão. That's 106.5 on
your FM dial on the outskirts of São Paulo, where the homes of rural
immigrants and their upwardly mobile children sprawl across what is
called the East Zone.

It was 106.5 until April 9 anyway. That morning, federal police arrested
Tomaz for operating a station without a license and confiscated
Reversão's equipment. If convicted, Tomaz faces six months to two years
in prison.

Far from being treated like a criminal, however, Tomaz found himself
something of a hero. Tomaz's lawyer is a former head of the São Paulo
State Justice Department; the city councils of São Paulo and a handful
of smaller municipalities passed supportive resolutions; and local labor
groups - including the São Paulo Journalists Union and the São Paulo
Broadcasters Union - defend Reversão. Mainstream media coverage made
Tomaz's case a mini-cause celebre. And he was elected head of the newly
formed São Paulo State Association of Free Radio Stations (ARLESP), a
hodgepodge of stations - 25 members or so - with a common goal: "Land
reform of the airwaves."

The organizing hasn't relieved the pressure, however. Police shut down
two more East Zone stations in August.

ARLESP's land-reform metaphor is more than poetic. The legacy of
colonial land grants, distributed to the powerful and the connected,
shaped Brazilian society, and the country's modern presidents are
recreating this phenomenon in the distribution of electronic properties
- radio and TV licenses:

* According to the daily Jornal da Tarde, political criteria were a
leading consideration for the country's first post-dictatorship civilian
president, José Sarney, as he distributed 1,203 radio and television
concessions between 1985 to 1990. The legacy: 130 of today's 584 members
of congress own at least one radio or television station.

* The newsweekly Isto É/Senhor reports that the owners of the 95 cable
television concessions awarded by Sarney and current President Fernando
Collor de Mello "are, almost all, friends of the powerful." The magazine
reports that Sarney awarded himself a cable concession three days before
leaving Brasilia.

* By the end of August, the Collor administration was expected to award
concessions for some 1,500 electronic media outlets, predominantly radio
stations. According to the daily Folha de São Paulo, nearly 1,000
applications had been filed by the end of July, "most of them by members
of congress."

With so many plums handed out to so many politicians, leftovers are slim
pickings.

Meanwhile, after a decade of growth, Brazil's alternative, illegal
electronic media have emerged from a student-activist ghetto to
establish themselves as professionally operated - if not profitable -
voices for everything from popular movements to heavy metal headbangers
to evangelical Christians. "We are not pirates," rings their refrain.

Free radio, they say, is distinct from pirate broadcasting because it
seeks to forge and cultivate links in the community it serves, eschews
clandestinity, and maintains a regular broadcast schedule. Most of
ARLESP's member stations are powered in the 10-to-15 watt range (60
watts or less is the membership rule), giving them a broadcasting radius
of five to 10 kilometers.

The free-radio movement began to flower after the iron grip of Brazil's
military dictatorship, imposed in 1964, began to loosen. The first
station with regularly scheduled broadcasts, Radio Xilik, emerged with
civilian rule in 1985, propelled by political activists and students and
faculty at São Paulo's Catholic University. There is no telling how many
free radio stations are broadcasting in the country these days. The most
reliable estimates, by the television network Manchete and an ARLESP
study, put the number in the 150 to 200 range.

Today's radio hotbed is in São Paulo's East Zone and nearby suburbs,
where programming is a lively and diverse as a tag team match: Radio
Esperança keeps a strict evangelical format; Radio Objetiva is one of a
handful of "mixed" stations, juxtaposing popular sertaneja music
(Brazilian country) and community service with evangelical programming;
Reversão likes locally produced rock spiced with poetry readings,
environmental and astronomy shows, and programming for and by women,
blacks, and young people. The common thread is airwave access for the
electronically dispossessed, what Radio Xilik founder Marcelo Masagão
calls "marginalized groups." "This is not a station for bishops," says
Esperança founder Wilson Perez. "We are striving for equality."

The technical requirements of current law regulating radio effectively
require a 300-watt transmitter, an expensive pipe dream for these
self-sustaining nonprofit stations. Is there any alternative to
electronic civil disobedience? Some ARLESP members maintain that it is
best to remain illegal, in order to avoid being swallowed up by big
commercial networks. But most disagree, and ARLESP plans to send Tomaz
to Brasilia to lobby for legalization. Italy could be a model; that
country's parliament recently approved legislation that distinguishes
between commercial and community radio, reserving 25 percent of
frequencies for the latter.

Columbia Journalism Review
January/February 1992