Sistema Nacional de Radios de los Pueblos Originarios (RPO)

The Sistema Nacional de Radios de los Pueblos Originarios (RPO) is Bolivia’s state-funded network of Indigenous-community radio stations, broadcasting in Spanish and Indigenous languages across the country’s nine departments. It was developed as a state project from the mid-2000s to extend broadcasting into rural and Indigenous communities, and later operated within a regulatory framework strengthened by the 2011 General Telecommunications Law, which reserved up to 17% of FM and analogue-TV frequencies for Indigenous-originario, intercultural and Afro-Bolivian communities, alongside a separate share for social-community broadcasters, a regulatory category, rather than the legal act that created RPO itself.

Media assets

Radio: the RPO network — a nationwide system of Indigenous-peoples community radio stations broadcasting in Spanish and Indigenous languages, together with an online presence at rpo.bo. The number of active stations should be treated as reported rather than independently verified, and the figures vary by source: official and government-linked reporting has described the network as falling from around 105 stations before 2019 to about 18 by 2020, and later being rebuilt to more than 50, with UNESCO policy material reporting 58 stations; SMM’s earlier profile cited 51, and the current online directory lists fewer entries than either figure.

Ownership and governance

RPO is a state network. It has historically been developed and supported through the state communication apparatus, including the Ministry of the Presidency and the Viceministerio de Comunicación (UNESCO’s policy record describes the network as having been built by the Ministry of the Presidency through the Vice-Ministry of Communication) and since 2026 it has been formally administered through the new state-communications unit. Individual stations are located in Indigenous communities and run with a degree of local, community self-management, the feature that has underpinned the ISFM classification, but the network as a whole has always depended on the central state for its infrastructure, financing and existence.

Following the 2025 general election, in which Rodrigo Paz won the October run-off and ended the long period of dominance by the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) that began in 2006, interrupted by the 2019-2020 interim government, the state media were restructured. By Supreme Decree 5566 of 2 March 2026, RPO was placed within the newly constituted Unidad de Comunicación Estratégica del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, a decentralised public institution under the Ministry of the Presidency, with no board and an executive director general appointed by the president, whose functions include government communication strategy, the supervision of official channels, digital communication, and the administration and strengthening of state media.

Reporting on the decree identifies the RPO system among the state media the unit administers, together with Radio Illimani – Red Patria Nueva, the state newspaper Ahora El Pueblo and the Agencia Boliviana de Información. This places the network’s central administration formally within an executive-controlled communications body, a governance fact that pulls toward the state-controlled side of the matrix and is discussed under classification below.

Source of funding and budget

Available public evidence points to RPO’s structural dependence on state and project funding. SMM previously reported a state allocation of around BOB 2.3m (about US$ 340,000) in 2018, based on local-journalist information, while government and state-media reporting in 2023 announced a BOB 25m (about US$ 3.5m) programme to strengthen and re-equip the network’s stations nationwide, including a first phase of some BOB 6m for ten stations, after years in which many stations had been left without resources. The 2026 decree that created the state-communications unit provides that the unit and the media it administers may be financed from the Treasury and other public resources, consistent with RPO’s dependence on public funding. That dependence on the state, which has strengthened or withdrawn the network’s financing across administrations, is itself a structural tie to the government of the day.

Editorial independence

RPO’s editorial character is mixed, and the distinction at the heart of its classification is between central administration and station-level content. RPO’s central administration and institutional strategy are clearly embedded in the state communication apparatus: the central body and website sit inside the state system, and the network’s history shows the central state exercising decisive control over the network’s very existence: stations were dismantled and shut down under the 2019-2020 interim government, then rebuilt, re-equipped and re-staffed as an explicit state policy under the subsequent MAS government. The basis for the ISFM classification is narrower than network-wide independence: the available evidence still points to a dispersed network of community-based stations with some local self-management (UNESCO describes the stations as community-based, located in the communities themselves, broadcasting in native languages and involving local listeners, and the network’s mission statement frames it around plural, educational and cultural community content) and SMM found no consistent documented record of central day-to-day editorial control over each station.

No domestic law or independent oversight mechanism guarantees the editorial autonomy of the RPO stations. The absence of any such safeguard, combined with the network’s dependence on the state and its placement, reaffirmed by the March 2026 decree, under central administration by an executive-controlled communications unit, is why RPO sits close to the boundary between the independent and state-controlled categories.

AI and digital policy

SMM found no comprehensive AI law in force in Bolivia as of mid-2026, though AI-related legislation has been under consideration, with the Senate having approved an AI-related bill in October 2025 for further consideration, and SMM found no published editorial AI-governance policy for the RPO network. RPO’s digital footprint is limited relative to the national state outlets: its stations are primarily local broadcast radio, with a central website (rpo.bo) providing news and a station directory, and its development priorities have centred on physical broadcasting infrastructure in rural areas rather than digital platforms.

Classification rationale

RPO is classified Independent State-Funded and State-Managed (ISFM) because, although it is wholly state-funded and structurally part of the state’s media system, it operates as a dispersed network of locally-run Indigenous-community stations rather than a single centrally-programmed government outlet, without a consistent record of direct central editorial control over individual stations’ content. That is what distinguishes it, in the matrix, from the State-Controlled outlets that share its funding source and its place under the Ministry of the Presidency.

This classification, however, sits closer to the State-Controlled boundary than any other case in the Bolivian batch, and the evidence for state management is now very strong. Supreme Decree 5566 places the RPO system, by name, under the same executive-controlled Unidad de Comunicación Estratégica that administers ABI, Ahora El Pueblo and Radio Illimani. What prevents an automatic State-Controlled classification is the remaining evidence of station-level community self-management and the absence, so far, of documented central direction of individual station content. The ISFM classification therefore rests specifically on that station-level operating reality, not on the central RPO structure, which is now clearly inside an executive-controlled communications apparatus.

June 2026