Summer heat may be upon us, but in certain areas of Mazatlán public life there is a fresh breeze blowing. Over the last year or so there has been a growing dissatisfaction with the quality of communication media for the foreign community. The English-speaking population here has no radio station, no television news, no daily newspaper. A monthly like the Pacific Pearl can only go so far towards making people aware of situation and events: the main method in which expatriates can know what is going on around them is through cyberforums, and electronic bulletin boards on the Internet. The existence of these forums has proved very valuable in many foreign communities in Mexico, but in Mazatlán there is the perception that two main Yahoo! forums, MazInfo and MazAmigos, are tightly controlled by a tiny clique of people who distort “coverage” by rejecting or accepting posts according to their own friendships and business interests. As a result many people no longer use the forums or complain to no effect. This is an extremely important issue. Without a “free press” people are less aware of the environment they live in, rumors and feuds can foment, residents can be bilked, confusion is enhanced. In many cases it is exactly the sort of issue that the Yahoo! groups censor—such as the existence of crime or predatory business practices—that are of the most importance to residents. It is a well-known democratic principle that people need free and open communications media. That will probably change over the summer. A new forum has been created that promises to serve the entire community fairly, and to give local residents preference over the concerns of tourists and businesses. A new organization called ECHOES (Expatriates Committee to Help Open Expression Survive) has been formed for the purpose of creating and promoting an open, independent Internet forum to be called Radio Free Mazatlán. Committee members claim they almost called themselves FAGAN (Foreigners All Gabbing About Nothing) but changed their minds at the last minute. At the moment, in the rush to inform the public of the newly-formed forum, Radio Free Mazatlan (RFM) has not publicized their membership, although the volunteers include prominent members of the foreign, Mexican, and cyber communities. Those I spoke to said that identities are less important at this point than delivering free expression and they would prefer to present those matters on the forum itself. In setting up the forum,

RFM considered, but rejected, the Yahoo! Groups format because the separation of threads is annoying and the requirement for complex registering with Yahoo! seems like an unnecessary burden for people only interested in Mazatlan. This immediately brought up the question of identities, which isn’t felt to be that important. Their idea is: if people use their own names, everyone will know their identity is valid. If they use fake names or handles that are unrecognizable, nobody will take them seriously. If anyone wants to post under multiple identities, there is nothing to stop them, but why would they bother? It is possible to register multiple identities on Yahoo! anyway—and is frequently done. An interesting feature of the RFM site is an auxiliary forum called “Take It Outside”, a concept that’s worked well for a contentious expatriate forum in Isla Mujeres. The idea is simple: if people want to argue and scrap, they move their discussion to the “Outside” forum and have at it. This seems to work better than just deleting argumentative posts and give readers the option of scanning those posts or not. Some people love a good scrap, other don’t want the ruckus spoiling their day—this way both can have it the way they want. “Take It Outside” also offers a solution to maintaining proper control of a forum dedicated to free expression—a basic problem of democracy itself—by providing an area in which even controversial posts are allowed. There will also be a sort of referendum to ensure that posts are only deleted if they are sure to be offensive to the entire community, not just those in charge. If a poster feels he is being unfairly censored and gets people to contact RFM on his or her behalf, the post would be restored. Obviously this does not apply to obscenity, racial slurs, sexual solicitation, child pornography, and other obvious examples of things sure to offend everybody. This also includes “Spam”, or widespread “junk mail” advertising. Unlike the Yahoo! groups, RFM will not censor posts for “making Mazatlán look bad to visitors”—which can also, or course, be a backhanded way of favoring certain enterprises or interests. If you live in Mazatlán, the idea is, this forum is for you, not outsiders or “insiders”. The Radio Free Mazatlan webmaster is a post that will rotate among committee members, and can be contacted directly. Anybody wanting to look at this new forum can find the site on the Internet: http://radiofree.mazatlan.com Maybe you will feel that breath of fresh air.