In the face of a shifting political climate in Latin America, movements for
indigenous rights and autonomy are leveraging community media in new ways
transcending the state-market binary. Through ethnographic research with Zapotec media
producers in Oaxaca and the supportive organizations forming points of connection
between radios and activists, I argue that the strength of the indigenous community media
movement in Oaxaca, and its potential to build a movement to resist destructive state and
market forces, is best explained by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of the
rhizome, which portrays Oaxacan indigenous media as a map of heterogeneous
interconnections defying structural hierarchies and binaries. With this picture of a
rhizomatic media movement, I demonstrate how radios have paved the way for
innovations, revealing creative ways that indigenous groups are connecting with each
other and the outside world, while asserting agency in their interactions with the market
and the state.