At the end of September 2025, the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM) launched the call for entries for the First Pan-Amazonian Popular Communication Contest: “Stories that defend life, rights, and diversity in the Amazon”, an initiative carried out in collaboration with the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA), the Latin American Confederation of Religious (CLAR), and the Amazon University Program (PUAM).
The contest was created with the purpose of promoting communication as a fundamental tool to accompany struggles, make realities visible, and strengthen processes of social transformation in the Pan-Amazon region, recognizing the right of peoples to tell their own stories from their territories, languages, and worldviews. The call for entries was aimed at popular communicators, journalists, educators, collectives, and inhabitants of the Pan-Amazon region, who participated through audio, text, and video products.
Themes that reflect the urgent needs of the territory
The proposals submitted addressed various issues and hopes for the Amazon, organized into the following thematic areas:
- Human rights and the rights of nature, extractivism, climate, and health
- Peoples: indigenous, quilombolas, riverine, Afro-descendants, peasants, and urban communities
- Citizen participation
- Education: integral ecology, ancestral knowledge, spirituality, and languages
- Cross-cutting themes: youth and women
The call for proposals, which was open between October and November 2025, attracted the participation of nearly 60 people from six Pan-Amazonian countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. The most frequently addressed topics were related to rights, extractivism, climate, and health, highlighting one of the main priorities and concerns of the Amazonian peoples. Likewise, the audiovisual format was the most widely used, reaffirming the power of video as a language for narrating, denouncing, and making visible the realities of the territory.
Voices that narrate from life and the territory
This initiative has had a profound meaning for the participating communities. From Brazil, Élite Maria da Silva highlighted that the contest “is one of the most sensational spaces that exists today… it opens a path for the people of the indigenous, riverine, quilombola, and marginalized youth communities to tell our story with our own voice.”
For her part, Vanessa Alejo from Bolivia pointed out that “these types of calls for entries are important because they create spaces for encounter and dialogue based on active listening, respect, and the promotion of the Amazon as a common home that we must protect and preserve.”
An ecclesial effort to make popular communication visible
For Sister María Inés Castellaro, secretary general of CLAR, the contest has been especially valuable because it has made popular communication in the Amazon visible, noting that “through these narratives and experiences linked to the defense of life, human rights, and integral ecology, it has been possible to learn about work that is often simple, silent, and hidden.”
CEAMA emphasized that “this contest not only promotes creative communication, but also affirms the right of the Amazonian peoples to tell their own story, to defend life, human rights, the rights of nature, and cultural diversity through their own voices, languages, and worldviews.”
In turn, the PUAM communications department highlighted that “communication processes aimed at community empowerment are called upon to generate change, to make us uncomfortable, to provoke us, and to take us out of our comfort zones, inviting us to collectively build processes of social transformation based on truth and the constant search for justice.”
Winners of the First Pan-Amazonian Popular Communication Contest
In this first edition, the winning entries by category were:
Audio Category
- Winner: Rodolfo Huallpa Condori (Bolivia)
- Title: “The imprisonment of Julio Lero: is there justice when the system ignores culture?”
Writing Category
- Winner: Jorlenys Calé (Ecuador)
- Title: “From the bush to the kalliana: the weaving between seeds and sustainable production from initiatives by Amazonian Kichwa women in Pastaza”
Video Category
- Winner: José Francisco Olivo Perales (Venezuela)
- Title: “The Woutjuja in copoazú: the exotic fruit that can save the Venezuelan Amazon”
REPAM also gave special recognition to:
Audio Category:
- Second place: Álvaro Rommel Quito Ticona (Peru)
- Third place: Linhs Salinas Usquiano (Bolivia)
Written Category:
- Second place: Vanessa Monteiro da Silva (Brazil)
- Third place: Carlos Alfredo Ponce Calderón (Colombia)
Video Category:
- Second place (shared): John Cardozo Moreno (Colombia) and Hellen Lirtêz (Brazil)
- Third place: Dozemy Soledad Rivas Cutipa (Peru)
CEAMA, together with REPAM, CLAR, and PUAM, would like to express our deep gratitude to all those who participated in this contest and encourage them to continue strengthening communication committed to life, justice, the dignity of peoples, and care for our Common Home in the Pan-Amazon region.