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In Latin America, Jesús Martín-Barbero is a pop star and a beloved scholar with thousands of followers captured by his original way of thinking, imagining, and researching the relations between communication, culture, and politics. This essay explains five characteristics of Martín-Barbero's style: (i) his reflections about expressions of popular and mass culture such as music, telenovelas, fairs, and celebrations; (ii) his gaze at and from local territories, identities; (iii) his innovative way of thinking from the Global South while in conversation with Western philosophy; (iv) his proposal for a theory of mediations as a way to understand cultural interactions and the production of social meaning; and (v) an intellectual passion that led him to engage daringly in political issues in society. As one of his students and colleagues, the essay ends with my own notions of what a communication researcher should do/be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]