Indigenous Radio Stations (México)

The Negotiation of Rule

México constitutes an unusual case in the history of alternative communication and grassroots organizations. Throughout most of the 20th century, an authoritarian party managed to control the three branches of government and the media, and attempted to co-opt social movements too. The hegemonic hand of the one-party system, led by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI; Institutional Revolutionary Party), was everywhere, in unions, farmers' organizations, and Indigenous movements.

Occasionally, the state relied on the use of force to repress dissident movements. In the late 1950s, for instance, the police jailed thousands of railroad unionists who had challenged the official union. Ten years later, in 1968, a student rally in Tlatelolco was crushed in a massacre that left several hundred demonstrators dead. Meanwhile, the mainstream media reported a kinder, happier, pro-PRI reality. Broadcasting in México was almost exclusively private but not independent. On one occasion, Emilio Azcárraga, then owner of the TV monopoly Televisa and one of the wealthiest businessmen in México, defined himself as a “PRI soldier.” The press, also private, was controlled through bribery, direct censorship, and state control over newsprint supply.

In spite of all this, however, a more complex reality hid beneath daily Mexican society. Everyday life showed that power and rule were not always in the hands of the state, the government, or the PRI. Rather, governance was attained through a complex negotiation. Thus, when the state created Indigenous-language radio stations, what was meant as a preemptive strike against independent Indigenous community media became a space of resistance, a school for social and media activists, and a role model for future, alternative media.

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