Nuclear weapons are the most devastating human invention, and their destructive capacity has increased in recent times; together with investments in the war industry, they pose the greatest existential threat facing humanity today. Is nuclear disarmament possible? How can we save humanity?
This unsettling message, with its challenging questions, resonated at the forums held in Quito by the Pressenza International News Agency for Peace and Nonviolence, titled “Nuclear Weapons, Existential Threats, and Journalism from and toward the Future.” Pressenza shared the analyses and predictions of three international experts invited for the Third Festival de la Juntanza, a gathering of multiple alternative media networks from the continent that brought together more than 300 participants.
“We are living through the most complex nuclear crisis in history,” noted Norbert Suchanek, a German journalist and documentary filmmaker, during the first forum held at the Esquel Foundation on Thursday, March 18; “politicians and the mainstream media have failed,” he added. But the true crisis of the nuclear age is the destruction of the human spirit, emphasized David Andersson, editor of Pressenza and a humanist based in New York: “They are taking away our future; the human spirit is being destroyed,” he warned the large audience attending the second forum on Friday, March 19, at the International Center for Higher Studies in Communication (CIESPAL), the festival’s headquarters.
The civilization to come must go further, out of necessity. To do so, we need many voices—all voices—to save humanity.” We need the narrative of another future, as shown in Pressenza’s documentary “The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons,” which highlights efforts to enshrine a nuclear weapons ban treaty in international law and the role of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
What can we do as communicators from the Global South? How far can we extend our influence? These are some of the questions raised forcefully by the young communicators in attendance. We are witnesses to a civilization in decline, but above all, we are builders of a new, humanized civilization that is emerging.