LEYES DE COMUNICACIÓN EN LOS GOBIERNOS DEL GIRO A LA IZQUIERDA: VENEZUELA, ARGENTINA, BOLIVIA Y ECUADOR

Why were new communication and telecommunications laws enacted in South America in the left-turning governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina in the first two decades of the 21st century? The answer falls within a contextualization of the political, economic, and social moment these countries went through, where the majority of the population simultaneously expressed themselves at the polls in favor of an ideological orientation, turning this circumstance into a new phenomenon in the region. For the purpose at hand, a comparison is drawn between the essential milestones of the process for the approval of such laws in the four cases and the political intentions underlying those regulations, in an interdisciplinary exercise involving communication and political science. Here we pose the conjecture that these laws distorted the purpose of democratizing communication, as they were conceived at the beginning, due to a confrontation with the independent media.