The years of silence: Radio in Venezuela from 1928 to 1930

Abstract

The author, based on the post-positivist approach of the Historia a Debate group, carries out a historical, exploratory and predominantly hemerographic investigation, with the objective of determining if regular and stable radio transmissions were carried out in Venezuela in the period between May 1928 and December 1930. It determined that in the period in question two home radio stations operated in Caracas. It provides unpublished information about a sound amplifier patented by a Venezuelan, and the announcement in 1930 of the inauguration of two stations in Caracas: a national and international station by the Philips company, and a shortwave station. In his analysis, he reconfigures the beginning of the Venezuelan radio process by developing a new periodization that starts from a first phase that contemplates intangible psychological elements, setting reasonably a new start date and including a new protagonist; identifies three functions fulfilled by home broadcasters; highlights home radios and the invention of the radio amplifier as examples of history made by common men, and values historically the importance of such experiences; and qualifies the Venezuelan radio process as atypical in Latin America for presenting three elements, which he explains. Among its conclusions, it ratifies the radio silence of the period, given the nature of the stations mentioned, and points out that the production of a history of radio in Venezuela is still a pending task.