Zamba; a new alternative on TV for Argentinean children

Jésica Torres & Daniela Pugliese

Children spend a great amount of their time in front of the TV screen. A number of TV channels for children offer their program schedules generating a market directed to young consumers. Argentinean children are everyday exposed to consume television from other countries. They watch cartoons and advertisements that show a reality that does not represent our culture, reality and history.

Within this context, an interesting alternative has been created by the Ministry of Education; Channel Paka Paka. This new TV channel, which is not transmitted in some cable servers and therefore, it is not available for all Argentinean children, contains programs which invite young viewers to discover and participate in the children’s world with educational and cultural contents. In this channel we find “Zamba”, a cartoon of four episodes that entertains and educates Argentinean kids within our culture and history. 

One of the principal characteristics of this cartoon, different from those transmitted in Disney Channel or Discovery Kids, is that it is developed in an Argentinean context. For the first time, our children can watch a cartoon in which the main character is a boy from Formosa called José, nicknamed Zamba.  He goes to a state-run school and wears a white overall. At the begging of each episode, he goes into a school trip with his teacher and partners to different parts of Argentina, where he learns about our history. He visits El Museo del Cabildo, Yapeyú, Casa de Tucumán and La casa de Sarmiento.

In fact, the main aim of the cartoon is to show the audience our origins in an entertaining way bringing back national heroes. Zamba travels to the past. He witnesses and takes part of important events of our history such as the May Revolution and the Independence Day. He meets the protagonists and interacts with them. What is more, Zamba’s idol is not one of the “American Heroes” but a national one as San Martin. The boy demonstrates great admiration for him all along the show and at the end of each program, Zamba and San Martin reflect on what they have learned and they clear up doubts, if any. 

Zamba does not only give value to our culture and identity, but also to our national animation and musical production. The characters on the cartoon speak Spanish with an Argentinean accent, the music used is national, like the zamba, chacarera and tango, and they eat autochthonous food, as chipa. The music played on the show is made by Argentinean musicians such as Soledad Pastoruti and Fito Paez. The animation and scripts are also made and written by national illustrators and writers.

Paka Paka and Zamba do not see our children as the targets of consumption marketing; they do not contain advertisements and their major aim is to educate. Children and parents have now another alternative on TV. Even if children spend their time in front of the TV screen, they won’t be consuming foreign product, but educating themselves in the Argentinean culture and history. However, the channel is not available for all Argentinean children yet. Do kids deserve to have a channel in which the producers are breaking the model of stereotypes imposed by foreign cultures? We proudly say they do