These communicative practices are mediated by historical, cultural and territorial conditions leave their impression in its expression, development and possibilities of transformation within the community context. Though they can be analyzed from different dimensions we will circumscribe our analysis to the dimension of the community work.
The communicative practices in the community context mediate and are mediated by the process of building of the community quality that generates the community self-development as the essential way to the cooperation, participation and implication of the different community actors. This makes the transforming processes more viable through the conscious participation of people in the activities that are planned with this purpose.
Different institutional and organizational agents make influence and interact in the community context. For example, Popular Councils with their presidents, the districts with their delegates, communities" doctors, the Cuban Women Federation, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Combatants of the Revolution Association, educational and cultural institutions and so forth.
This entire structure of social relations evidences once again the signification of the social communication and in particular the communicative practices in the community work. On the other hand, if we analyze the complexity of the daily life in the present social development conditions in Cuba that demands unity and cohesion in the actions of all the institutions, organizations and people in general in relation to the multiple social transformations that are taking place and require urgent, efficient and coordinated answers which demand an active participation; the analysis of this problematic acquires a great relevance and constitutes a crucial topic to be analyzed by the decision-makers and professionals of the community work.
As we said before it is very complicated to assume a position on the different approaches in relation to this field, the reductionist positions in relation to communication and its role in the social development in general and in particular in the community development that have prevailed during so many years in Latin America have had an impact on the conceptions and styles of communication in our country.
If at present, the model EMISSOR-MESSAGE-RECEPTOR is being actually so hardly questioned it is not because it is false but just the other way round, because it describes many of the forms that have characterized the communications between different social subjects such as: boss-subordinated, manager-managed one, professor-student, parent-child, media-users and so forth.
The controversy to recover the right sense of the process of communication implies much more than a semantic aspect, it implies a matter of human vindication, and the polemic is characterized by a social and political dimension.
Human beings feel the need and demand the right to participate, to be actors and protagonists in the construction of the authentically democratic society, proclaiming the right to participation and therefore, the right to the free, open and dialogic communication.
People do not want to be mere receptors, they also want to talk and be listened to be interlocutors. So, it is necessary to begin with a base communication, an authentically democratic community communication.
To define the aspired communication means to explain the ideal society to live in, in society similar to ours that sustained on the most absolute democracy, it means to define communication and the communicative practices that are generated in this society as dialogic, horizontal and participative. They must be defined as to serve all of us and build up the community quality.
An analysis of the praxis of the community work evidences that we have not passed the narrow limits of a model of communication that even when it intends to achieve the democratic human participation; it continues reproducing the traditional model where the governor continues to be the communicator or transmitter who transmits messages to the community as receptor. Though participation or "feedback" it propitiated, it still being unidirectional. In this sense, we consider that the model is inversed; the community work professionals in general must the emissors in order to build up the community quality for the development, community must be the true emissor, community must communicate through the social actor and it must play the role of facilitator in the community processes.
In the consolidation of a society like ours that is based on the participative democracy, it is urgent to implement mechanisms of horizontal communication that make possible the access of people to the spaces of opinion and social control of the management of the different social sectors and make visible people"s expression.
It is opportune to indicate that every process of communication for the community development is subscribed to a dynamic and integrating practice. It is possible to offer some considerations about this practice:
To make communication for the community development is to deal and have access to creativity, since creativity challenges and goes beyond with imagination every technologic doses beginning from the most important needs of people.
The communication for the community development is participative because every social actor belongs to it and uses it.
It is closely related to action since it promotes alternative in the search for solutions taking into account a sense of pertinence to the economic and sociopolitical practice.
It is a right because if the citizens are excluded as main agents of the community development, then it can be at risk to be trivial.
Through communication we identify and project a communicative action that gives to the community the reciprocate action of a direct action which promotes de self-development.
All that has been already explained demonstrates the need to open to communication a wider horizon in the social field, consolidating a movement of social development which can articulate social policies. These spaces of communication that open the doors to a participative democracy must be characterized by being plural and expressive so they offer possibilities for the communication to the individual expression in order to achieve the participation for the community development. They must be public since there is the media to offer them to the public knowledge of all who are involved in this process. They must be deliberant and participative because they offer particular visions and interests where senses are negotiated and collective decisions are built for the community development. This can only be possible through the creation of communicative spaces of collective conception in the process of building up of the community quality.
So, once we have analyzed these previous aspects, it is possible to ask to ourselves: what are the basic dimensions of a democratic, community and participative communication?
1. It must serve an educative, emancipating and transforming project. Community must be building up and developing itself from communication. It should assure a communicative process that make possible to community to understand critically its reality and acquire tools to change it.
2. it must be closely related since its conception, development and execution and control to the structures of the People"s Power depending on the level in which the work is developed: Popular Council, districts, community groups and so forth.
3. it must an authentic communication that is to say that the dialog and the intense participation must be the main objectives.
4. It must start from a process of previous alimentation, it means to go to the initial search that must be done in the community as final receptor of our messages for them to represent and reflex these messages.
In this proposal there is an essential statement: to change the traditional model of communication. It is produced an inversion of all the components that form the classic scheme EMISSOR-MESSAGE-RECEPTOR. In this way the final receptor is placed at the beginning and end of this process. It is present at the beginning as active source of information and emission of communicative products and at the end as creative receptor, protagonist of a transforming process. In this way, the content of the communicative events will experiment a basic change because it emerges from the understanding of the reality, interests and needs of the community. This assures that the topics will be related to people"s interests and as a result, their incidence in the transforming process will be real.
To achieve a real process of communication the first step must be not to place the final receptor at the end but at the beginning. We are proposing to assume a model of communication for the community work of the decision-makers and professionals of the community work in general. In their functions associated to the role of communicators for the community, they must start form the understanding of the experiences, needs and aspirations of the community and then from a process of analysis of the information that has been obtained as a previous alimentation for the processes of governability, they must select, order, organize and rank such information to give it back to the final receptors in such a way that they can make it conscious and analyze and meditate about it.
Once it is established the contact t people, it must try to give the information that is obtained back so the community can have a different critical perspective, analyze, give opinions about them. This also makes possible that the community identify the main problems and difficulties it has been facing without knowing the causes of such problems.
All these observations will make possible the process of communication between decision-makers and the community is more and more efficient, democratic and participative where the decision-maker learns how to "get involved" with the community. However, what does "get involved" mean? It means the people feel that they are attended, heard, understood and identified; it means that decision-makers make people to get interested in the process, to mobilize internally the ones who are involved in such process, to analyze the situations as real problems, to generate the dialog and participation and to strengthen the process of acquisition of a critical conscience to face the reality.
The dialog and participation are not achieved either by decree or spontaneously. We have already made reference to the educative process it involves and the necessary subvention of practices that do not propitiate transformative changes. Therefore it is necessary to organize this process with the spontaneity and creative richness of the social practice.
The strategic planning in communication can be a way to achieve dialog and participation, it is about to plan actions that are rationally interrelationed to achieve a specific goal in a medium or long term.
As PhD. Raysa Portal Moreno rightly states, the strategies is the one that allows us to design a scenario of action analyzing the certainties and uncertainties of the situation, the probabilities for success and all the factor that could obstacle and impede it. So, to plan strategically will be "the process that must guide the planned will of the human being with a sense and direction toward the achievement of general goals that make possible to modify the reality that we start from without losing the direction and the essence of these elements. The conception of a strategy must start form the reality, from the daily life experiences of the community actors and to accede to this reality constitutes the main challenge of this process. However, the proposal of a strategy for the community self-development elaborated by a group of researchers of the Central University Martha Abreu de Las Villas" Community Studies Center is a theoretical and methodological option through which it is possible to accede to this purpose.
There is a theoretical coincidence in relation to the importance of the diagnosis to develop the strategy and the need to make this diagnosis the beginning a significant community learning. This aspiration is only possible form a conception of a participative diagnosis that makes possible to accede to the structures of the social relations that are established in the community context from the perspective of the very same protagonists who at the same time will leader the strategy a such.
It is on the base of this initial participative diagnosis that would be created the conditions to determine the nucleus or central idea that will transversalize every single action that is generated. This will facilitate a higher precision in the selection of the topic, the way in which it will be developed, the techniques to be used in order to achieve a higher participation and critical reflection in relation to the problem that is analyzed.
Another important element in the communicative strategy will be the design of the activities that are derived form the central idea. It is necessary to take into account the possibilities and potentialities of the community in odder to be involved creative and actively in this design.
Finally, another important element in the strategy is the evaluation of the very same strategy that will assure its participative character where the analysis and critic will be present as ways for the democratic expression of people.
So it is possible to conclude that communication in the community work plays a crucial role as mediator of the process of building up of the community quality that facilitates or enhances the processes of transformation from the substantive participation of people. In this direction democratically structures communicative process turns into a very important tool for the work of the decision-makers to achieve the construction of the Cuban Revolution project.
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Autor:
PhD. Griselda Sánchez Orbea
PhD. Graciela Urías Arbolaez
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