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By
Don Moore
Huancabamba,
Mendoza, Rioja, Juanjui, Santa Cruz, Cutervo, Chota, Bambamarca,
Huamachuco . . . the radio towns of northern Peru number
three or four dozen. For the most part, these towns are
provincial (county) capitals with 5,000 to 15,000 inhabitants.
They are commercial centers for the surrounding villages
and farms, although a few like Huamachuco depend on mining.
There is little unique about any of them.
Celendín, a typical northern Peruvian town, lies
about a hundred kilometers east of the city of Cajamarca,
five hours by dirt road on the local bus. One sixth of the
province's 70,000 inhabitants live here. The Catholic church
towers over the central Plaza de Armas. As in many Peruvian
towns, gardeners trim the plaza's shrubbery into animals
and geometric shapes. Celendín's dirt streets are
flanked by one and two story buildings of adobe or cement
block, roofed with moss-covered clay tiles. The scattered
business district is comprised of several general stores,
a few basic and somewhat rundown hotels, the bus company
office, and a couple restaurants and bars.
At
8,500 feet above sea level, the surrounding Andean valley
is one of the garden spots of northern Peru. Although some
small scale gold, silver, and copper mining is done in the
nearby mountains, it is agriculture that keeps Celendín
prosperous. The climate is perfect for growing potatoes
and barley, and for raising dairy cattle and sheep. Celendín
is known throughout the region as the best producer of manjar
blanco, a rich soft caramel made by slowly boiling milk
and sugar. The sweet is spread on bread and used to fill
pastries. Manjar blanco and other produce is trucked to
the coastal city of Trujillo.
Peruvian
towns often have a special handicraft, and Celendín
is no exception. When a campesina (peasant woman) isn't
cooking or cleaning, her hands may be busily weaving a purse,
a hat, or a small basket out of thin straw called paja.
The plant is cultivated because the handicrafts bring extra
income to the peasant households. Some paja products are
sold to stores in Celendín, but most are sold in
Cajamarca tourist shops.
Celendín is the staging point for journeys from Cajamarca
to Peru's northern interior. Buses don't make the trip,
but for a small fee it's easy to hitch a ride to Chachapoyas
on one of the frequent cattle trucks. The two day journey
involves extremes of temperture and road conditions: either
clouds of dust or rivers of mud, depending on the season.
But, if one endures the ride, it's easy to continue on from
Chachapoyas to Rioja, Moyobamba, and Tarapoto.
Shortwave
in Celedín
Since
June 1982, when Radio Moderna,
4300 khz came on the air, Celendín has been a DX
target. Though the history of radio here has been rocky,
Celendín has, in fact, been more active on shortwave
than most of the other towns of the region. The town has
one of the strongest municipal generators in Cajamarca department.
Unlike many other places where the municipal generators
can't power radio stations, potential stations in Celendín
don't have the added expense of buying their own generator.
This has, however, restricted their broadcasting hours.
Since the generator is only on from 6 pm to midnight (2300-0500
UTC), all of Celendín's stations follow that limited
schedule.
Not long after Radio Moderna came on the air, Radio
Celendín appeared on 7054 khz. Celendín's
third station, Radio Gran Pajatén,
got its start in mid-1983, on a highly variable frequency
of around 4180 khz. Radio Nuevo
Eden broadcast briefly on 6815 khz from April
to June 1984. In January 1985, Radio
Frecuencia Siete, 7010 khz, added yet another
voice to the town's radio scene.
With so many shortwave stations, Celendín was high
on my list of places to visit when I traveled to Cajamarca
department in mid-March, 1985. A look at the stations of
Celendín would be a look at small town Peruvian radio.
Indeed, broadcasting in Celendín has been a microcosm
of broadcasting in Northern Peru.
Radio Frecuencia
7
Radio
Frecuencia 7 was the newest kid on the block when I visited
Celendín. Striking postal workers in the Plaza de
Armas pointed me in the direction of San Martin street.
Two blocks away, above the door of a typical one story adobe
row house, the words Frecuencia 7 were painted in very small
black stenciled letters. The roof top antenna was simply
a twenty foot wire sloping down from a ten foot pole to
the roof.
The main business here was not broadcasting, but rather
owner Gregorio Sanchez Aruajo's electrical repair shop,
located in the front room of his house. Radios, turntables,
and tape recorders were scattered about in various stages
of disammebly. Old calenders and posters added color to
the white adobe walls. The floor was unpainted cement.
The
radio station occupied a corner in the back of the shop.
The entire station was setting on two rough, handmade wooden
tables. The fify watt transmitter, about twice the size
of a shoebox, had been made locally by a self-taught electrical
engineer. Gregorio hoped he could make it more powerful.
Beside the transmitter was a cheap turntable, similar to
those found in U.S. discount store toy departments. The
station's record library consisted of about 100 forty-fives
stacked on a shelf. There were no LPs.
A microphone and a "console" rounded out the equipment.
The console, a little wooden box with three knobs and a
couple of wires coming out of the back, looked just like
a homemade antenna tuner. There was not even a cassette
deck or cassette recorder in the studio corner, making it
the first and only station I've seen without cassette capability.
Of course, Gregorio could always borrow one of those in
his repair shop. Provided he fixed it first.
A
quiet man in his late 30s, Gregorio pointed out that
the station had begun transmitting on January 20, exactly
two months before. He and his teenage son were the sole
announcers. So far the station was only making a little
money, through the sale of communicados (personal messages)
and record dedications. What little commerical advertising
there was in Celendín went to the more established
stations. But Gregorio still had his hopes for the future.
-- Yes, we are very small. I started out by working as an
announcer at Radio Celendín and later Radio Moderna.
I learned how to run a small station, and I feel I know
enough about the business to make mine the best in Celendín.
I hope to raise power little by little, buy new equipment
when we can. Eventually I would like to have 1,500 watts
and our own generator so we could transmit all day long.
That would be a first for Celendín. It will take
time, but we will do it.
Gregorio
was constantly thinking of the alternative: failure.
The year before, a friend of his had operated Radio Nuevo
Eden, or "New Eden" (this is what Celendínos like
to call their green valley). This Celendín station
was reported by DXer Juan Carlos Codina in Lima, but never
heard outside Peru. Gregorio said it had operated with only
fifteen watts, but couldn't make it financially and finally
had to close down.
Radio Moderna
On
a side street, about seven blocks from the plaza, was a
two story while adobe building with a wooden Radio Moderna
sign over the door. Inside, the dirt-floored room had a
table and chair in the center and a steep wooden stair case
on one end. This was the station's reception room, where
a staff member took down the communicados (personal messages)
that listeners paid to have read on the air. Up the staircase,
on the second floor, was the station.
I had dropped by this station in the morning, before going
to Radio Frecuencia 7, but the door was locked and bolted.
Since it only broadcasts in the evening, there was no need
for anyone to be there. However, when I dropped by after
lunch, teenage announcer Pompeyo Silva Pereya and two friends
were waiting for me. They had heard from Gregorio that a
visiting gringo was interested in seeing their station.
Pompeyo
explained that the station was owned by Herbert Palaez
Chacon, a businessman who lived in Cajamarca but rarely
came to Celendín. Senor Palaez also owned an AM-only
Radio Moderna in San Marcos, south of Cajamarca. The station
manager, a local businessman, was out of town for a few
days. Pompeyo didn't know anything about the station's plans
or its brief history. His job was to spin discs and make
announcements, but he could give a friendly tour.
Upstairs, the eight by fifteen feet room had a roughly hewn
wooden floor and little furniture: a table with a manual
typewrite and a chair. Posters of Spanish singers adorned
the walls. Along the back wall, a window provided a glimpse
of the cramped studio. It was as small and stuffed as the
other room was empty. A large console, two turntables, and
a cassette deck filled a little desk. Records, both LPs
and 45s, lined the walls overhead. The DJ barely had enough
room to sit down.
Through
another doorway, the "guides" led me to a third small
room, housing the station gem: a 250 watt transmitter. A
heavy coaxial cable led the signal under the eaves and to
the rooftop dipole. Two beds were the only other furniture
in the room. These, Pompeyo explained, were for the announcers.
Because the station didn't go off the air until late at
night after the power went off, the announcers on duty slept
at the station instead of walking home in the pitch black
streets. He then smiled and said they were occasionally
used for other purposes, too.
Radio Celendín
Radio
Celendín wasn't as easy to find as the other stations.
But finally, with the help of a storekeeper, I located it
on Dos de Mayo street, about five blocks from the plaza.
There was no sign over the old wooden double doors. The
doors were locked throughout the afternoon, and I realized
I would have to drop by in the evening when the station
was on the air.
When my wife and I arrived about 7:30 pm, the double doors
were propped open. A bench and posters making a half-hearted
attempt to cover bare studs furnished the entryway. Over
the inner door leading to the studio was a beautiful painted
wooden sign proclaiming the station to be "a wave of love,
peace, and culture".
Owner Jose Camacho Villar was spinning discs. The studio
was a very cramped little room, about 6x8 feet. Inside,
two tables arranged in an "L" were topped with two turntables,
cassette player, console, and tabletop transmitter. There
was just enough room to squeeze by the table and into the
room.
Not
long after our arrival, an announcer came and took over,
freeing Senor Camacho to talk to us, and to sign and stamp
the prepared QSLs I had brought along with several reports.
He thanked us for our compliments on his beautiful station
sign, and pointed out that the station had another motto
on its official rubber seal, "transmitting from blue skies
of Eden." Influenced by that slogan, one of his announcers
started the ill-fated Radio Nuevo Eden.
A friendly, easy-going man in his late forties, Senor Camacho
noted that his station was actually the oldest in Celendín.
He had been broadcasting on and off for more than twenty-five
years, whenever he had working equipment and the time. In
1982, after Radio Moderna came on the air, he bought a homemade
Peruvian two-hundred watt tabletop transmitter. Before that
he used very low powered equipment, and had never been heard
(or heard of) outide Celendín. With other more profitable
business interests, he still plan to put much effort into
the station.
Radio Gran
Pajatén
For
the first year and a half of this station's existence, it
was only heard irregularly by a few South American DXers.
Then, in December 1984, it changed frequency to 4485 and
apparently added a newer, more powerful transmitter. Suddenly
it was well-heard in North America. Three months later,
it disappeared just as quickly. The DX world learned why
when a DXer received a verification letter mentioning that
some parts in the transmitter had burned out on February
fifth. In the beginning of March it was heard again once,
but weakly.
When I arrived in Celendín in mid-March, Radio Gran
Pajatén was no longer on the air. Walking around
town, I discovered the station just around the corner from
Radio Moderna in another two story white adobe building.
A wooden station sign hung over the locked door. From a
neighbor, I learned that owner Milciades Echeverria Puitiza
had gone to Lima for replacement transmitter parts.
Epilogue
Since
that visit, radio in Celendín has continued to develop
and change. Gregorio Sanchez's Radio Frecuencia 7 was occasionally
heard by DXers throughout 1985, and verified several reception
reports. It was last heard in March, 1986. In early 1988
a DXer received a verification letter from Radio Moderna,
signed by announcer Gregorio Sanchez. Apparently Gregorio's
dream of making Radio Frecuencia 7 the best station in Celendín
didn't succeed.
At
Radio Celendín, Senor Camacho apparently
decided that his other businesses needed more of his energies.
His station hasn't been reported since December, 1985, when
it changed frequency to 5085. In June, 1985, a new station
Radio Norandina, signed on higher powered transmitter on
4460 khz. Though not common, Radio Norandina is logged regularly
in North America. This new competition probably helped do
Radio Frecuencia 7 and Radio Celendín in.
Radio
Moderna is still there, however, and continues
to broadcast on 4300 khz, where it is usually covered by
a radioteletype station in North America.
As
for Radio Gran Pajatén,
nothing has been heard from it since that weak broadcast
in early March 1985. Apparently replacement parts were more
expensive than the owner imagined. Since the fall of 1988,
a new station named La Voz de Celendín has been logged
on Radio Gran Pajatén's old frequency of 4485. Although
well-heard by DXers in South America, it has only been weakly
heard in North America. In all probability this is Radio
Gran Pajatén's old transmitter. Possibly, the owner
finally had it fixed, and put the station on the air under
the new name. But name changes at Latin American stations
are rare, and my bet is that, in need of cash, he sold the
useless transmitter at a bargain price to someone else who
had the money to fix it. The real answer won't be known
until someone at the station takes the time to answer a
DX report, and explains the station history.
So, of seven shortwave stations in Celendín, only
three are still around today. Radio Moderna and Radio Norandina
are probably around to stay, but La Voz de Celendín
is so new that I wouldn't place any bets on its survivial.
Celendín's stations are not easy to hear. But, if
Latin American conditions seem to be good, and its between
2300-0500, try for the active ones on 4300, 4460, and 4485
khz. Besides that, there are still Radio Celendín's
200 watt transmitter and Radio Frecuencia 7's 50 watt transmitters
unaccounted for. They could pop up on the air anytime. Celendínos
like to start radio stations.
1996
Addendum: Since this article was originally published,
the broadcasting scene in Celendín has continued
to change. The most consistent and best heard stations for
several years have been Radio Norandina
on 4460 and La Voz de Celendín
on 4485. Like so many other broadcasters in remote parts
of Peru, neither of these stations are officially licensed
by the Peruvian government. They are, in effect, common
law stations - licensed in the eyes of their community.
While La Voz de Celendín has stayed on the air despite
my predictions in the above paragraph, Radio
Moderna has been gone from shortwave for several
years. Perhaps the most significant develop in Celendín
radio is that in 1995 the town was connected to the national
power grid, allowing the stations to broadcast all day long.
So, these stations can now be logged during their morning
sign-on period as well as during the evening.
A slightly edited version of this article was originally published
in the September, 1989 issue of Monitoring Times magazine.
This article is copyright 1989 by Don Moore. It may not be
printed in any publication without written permission. Permission
is granted for all interested readers to share and pass on
the ASCII text file of this article or to print it out for
personal use. |
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