Voceadores: Humble Masters of Communication
In today’s The Mechanical Shakespeare workshop, we developed our writing from the image above that shows a “Peña de Voceadores” poster. As the periodicity of the news disappears and journalists continue to be reduced to messengers, bloggers and mercenaries, I am willing to share part of the workshop with you.
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Rambling the streets of Spain in the early morning, you will find out that there are still many people who work as newspaper deliverers. Some of those will stand near the boca del metro (the entrance of metro stations) and others will go to different restoration facilities such as cafes and bars. While we have at present vendedores de periódicos (newspaper vendors), the tradition of voceadores (people who speak out the news) perdures in LATAM and it is being exercised as a new kind of talk show in Spain.
Voceadores of Spain: workers or hobbyists
In Spain, for some time now, the shouting has been virtual and amplified by the Internet: voceadores no longer shout in the streets, they work in silence in kioskos de prensa (press kiosks) or public bookstores. Of course, there are modern voceadores like Ángel Martín Gómez (daily newscast) and Cristóbal Gázquez (BOE correspondent), but they rather practice the spreading of news as a “talk show” or “hobby.”
Informativo matinal Ángel Martín
BOE y Noticias con BGD Abogados
Voceadores of LATAM: owners of the mornings
Over the ocean, devout and humble people begin to work from a very young age as newsmen or voceadores, vocedores, papeleritos, or chivas. Beyond an existential need, it is a hereditary profession and, in addition to learning from the more experienced members, there are dedicated schools in charge of literacy and communication (sometimes this is the only education they will get). There, it is not enough to practice reciting the headlines: they also practice reading and summarizing texts in the most attractive way to sell them and giving voice to the news in a slow, prolonged, strident, spicy, and alarmist tone.
Voceadores of the World: masters of communication
Heirs to the town crier’s office, the voceadores create communities since they are the meeting point between the press and society and end up meeting a lot of people. Although most societies have evolved to democracy, freedom of expression and the people who make it possible remain targeted and persecuted around the world. Amid adversity, the voceadores of Spain and LATAM formed gremios or uniones (guilds, unions) and peñas to organize for their defense and mutual aid. While the gremios and unions look more after the legal side, peñas designate the group of individuals and by extension, the place where the meetings are held.
Some will say that with the Internet, the risk on the streets and the terrible persecution by repression and censorship has multiplied a thousandfold, forcing voceadores to use nicknames. Truth is that once on the streets, the reguliarity with which the profession is exercised have always required and will require the use and adherance to nicknames.
The “streets of action” combined with the much less protection they receive compared to journalists, demand common sense and articulate conflict management skills the same way soldiers are required to apply theirs once on the terrain. As a consequence, voceadores develop not only salesmanship skills but their communication skills come to surpass those of their cathedratic counterparts when it comes to “hitting the ground running.”
How about you? What do you know about voceadores? How those are called in your country of origin? Would you be OK if a kid of yours becomes one?
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Read more: “La prensa, en la calle: los voceadores y la distribución de periódicos y revistas en México” by Gabriela Aguilar and Ana Cecilia Terrazas (1996) — the first journalistic investigation on street journalism, especially on the voceadores of Mexico.
