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« on: July 23, 2025, 0133 UTC »
"Historia de la Radio en el Perú: Memorias de Onda Corta" by Dione Blas, self-published (in the US, it seems), popped up as an Amazon suggestion so I paid my eight bucks and I'm glad I did. Every Latin American country has one or more "history of radio" books but this one has a shortwave focus and the author was a DXer...alas, like me and so many others, she notes that it's years since she has owned a working SW radio. (She has a now-inoperative Grundig she won in a Radio Deutsche Welle contest!) It is, as you might expect, depressing after you get past 2000, and even her list at the end of current (2025) SW stations is more than what we know of even via the Lima SDR: She still lists R. Quillabamba 5025 and Radio Huanta 2000 on 4755, and La Voz de la Selva 4825, which seem to be long-gone and haven't answered my emails about their status; she likewise lists a few stations that seem to be vaporware, R. San Antonio 4940 (Catholic station in Ucayali, so not the Protestant Colombian/Venezuelan station with no certain name; R. Red Integridad 5980 (no idea what that's about); and Radio Sur Andina 4930, which is supposedly newly-licensed and testing but I've never heard it. (She lists Tarma, Logos, and Senda Cristiana, but not Amauta although she mentions in her by-decade history--by the way, it's stuck to the same frequency, 4955, since its creation in 1960!). Anyway, the history is quite interesting with predictable stories of official corruption, shady business practices, and rampant illegality. At 128 pages including bibliography (including correspondence with Don Moore and Tetsuya Hirahara!) it's an easy one-evening read if your Spanish is adequate. By the way, I was happy to see a mention of Radio Municipal de Calca as an example of a station that started unlicensed but later obtained one--when I reported it November 1983 I think that was the first report outside of Peru (where Juan Carlos Codina heard it), even though I got the name wrong at the time (Musical instead of Municipal). I was in Colombia at the time so not the world's greatest DX, and over the next several years many people heard it from the US and elsewhere. (By the way, I see that the author, Dione Blas was known as Mery Blas, a name I recognize from DX bulletins back in the day.)
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