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Guatemala Radio Listener Profile: Diego Mendoza

Diego Mendoza is an Indigenous Tz'utujil-Maya, of a town called Santiago Atitlan, on the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.As a municipal employee, Diego takes pride in his work and his community.  For that reason, he prefers to listen to his local community radio station, which often broadcasts in Tz'utijil, his native language.  The larger, Guatemala City based stations, he explained, just don't have much content that relates to him.  In Santiago, there are 3 radio stations.  One is run by the Catholic church, one by the Evangelical church, and another, which was left as property of the community by a monk almost 15 years ago.  Of the three, he prefers the community station, because it often plays live music from local Marimba groups, and he knows the DJs that run the station.