Our History

Radio Victoria, one of the first six Radio stations of El Salvador, emerged with the initiative of the Association of Economic and Social Deveopment (ADES) in 1992; (This year marked the commencement of a series of steps that would eventually lead to the formation of the Radio as we know it today)... during this year the series of 

Corresponsal de Radio Victoria redactando notas recogidas en las comunidades

 steps for the formation   of Radio Victoria began - (The first events occured in the nearby community of Santa Marta, the site of the center for the coordination of ADES)...the first events in the community of Santa Marta, because that is where the center is for the coordination of ADES - for the creation of this project ...with the support of the WACC, an acronym for an organization that offers support to communitites about everything concerning communication.

The same year was the creation and design for ...Radio Victoria, which initated with a team of youth from the community and the unconditional support of Cristina Starr, our North American partner, with her enthusiam for the project, and since then the actuality emerged supporting Radio Victoria unselfishly.

After several weeks of trial transmission for the radio proved successful and the popularity was growing, more youth were integrated into the project. They approved of the idea of carrying on with the Radio until they could be in their current redsidence, a villa in the City of Victoria.   Time passed and on July 15, 1993 transmissions began airing from Villa Victoria.

Initially, the transmissions only aired on Fridays and Saturdays from 3:00 - 6:00 in the afternoon (pm).  Afterwards, new youth from Victoria and other communities were integrated and the schedule was extended.   The moment soon arrived when the Radio Victoria transmission began at 8:00 in the morning and ended at 6:00 in the evening. This began the long journey for a group of youth that could only dedicate hours to the radio around their studies and families and work in their homes, but the enthusiasm of the youth was boundless and they quickly began to organize to a certain degree the areas of work Radio Victoria had, and created a definite transmission schedule without ineterruption from 5:00 in the morning until 8:00 in the evening.

The transfer of Radio Victoria from Santa Marta to Victoria siginified many changes. One was that the sign was lost for the community of Santa Marta, that the priority was to arrive for the communtiy that saw the birth of the project, then began a new struggle. It was to take the signal to a higher place and attempts were made in two very tall hills but without good results, and at the end they placed it on Caracol Hill, three kilometers form Victoria above the highway to Sensutepeque, here it had good results and the procedure began to obtain permission and money to make and run a large project but that would completely change the life of Radio Victoria this was the dream that was far from being realized.

There were other problems to attend to, for example the legality of the Radio and the authorization of a legal frequency although they had made the requests to the ANTEL institution that in this (at that point, before they were bought) was the administration functioning for ..., without seizure/embargos ANTEL never gave...frequency, on the contrary they signaled that the radio communities were pirates, clandestine, and guerillas, from where did they get these terms? We don't know because clandestality meaning to us depends on something that hides and doesn't allow you to see it, but Radio Victoria was at the border of the principle street in the center of Victoria .
These were all the things that we worried about and that we stopped worrying about in the expansion of our coverage, but the struggle was long and justified many events, marches of protest in the streets of San Salvador, and many other activities. Those moments were difficult but they achieved many changes. One of these changes that was very important was the commitment to give frequencies to radios without embargo.  This succeeded after the sale of ANTEL, so ANTEL disappeared and didn’t do anything. What they got was crossed by SIGET, which is an entity created with the new law of electrocommunications that would be the instant that would regulate the functioning aspect of electric radios ......

With the creation of the new law for telecommunications it resolved some form of the problem, but equal continues for the radio station communities like radio victoria. All this gave to the future the creation of an association that unified the radio station community in a group named the Association of Radios and Participants in Programs of El Salvador (ARPAS). ARPAS was then and continues to be the only association of its nature of which Radio Victoria is a founding member, and accompanies the process of each radio member. This is a way to resove the problem with the Radios towhich SIGET would not give frequencies was buying an ARPAS transmission. The resources to buy a estuary 92, that is a frequency of national coverage that had been segmented for power to be used for various radio stations. Radio Victoria is one of these.

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