Radio Nation: Communication, Popular Culture, and Nationalism in Mexico, 1920-1950 (review)

Radio Nation: Communication, Popular Culture, and Nationalism in Mexico, 1920-1950. By Joy Elizabeth Hayes. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000. Pp. xx+154. $35.

In this sophisticated study, Joy Elizabeth Hayes analyzes the links between state power, Mexican nationalism, and the history of radio. Radio Nation compliments recent works on contemporary Mexican popular culture, exploring the tenuous relationship between modernity, power, and mexicanidad, but is concerned primarily with how technology intersects with nation formation. Hayes takes on recent debates regarding culture and "the nation" and situates Mexican popular culture as an arena of political and cultural struggle.

The first two chapters map her theoretical approach. Hayes contemplates how recent revisionist approaches to Mexican history have influenced her conceptualization of radio and nation. Radio, she argues, is a medium that reflects both nation and foreign power, but it is also subject to local interpretation. Moreover, broadcast communication is a social process, not a finished product. In chapter 2, Hayes positions Mexican radio within the theoretical debates surrounding modernity: "I use the term anti-modern to describe an ambivalent perspective toward modernity as a concept of forward moving social change. More specifically, in the case of nation, I use the term to characterize modern movements of national unity and disintegration that draw directly on pre-modern ideals of allegiance and authority" (p. 14).

So, how was Mexican radio used to promote the nation while embracing premodern ideals of power? At the apex of the Mexican Revolution, in the 1930s, radio became a tool to spread the ideals of the revolution from Mexico City to the far reaches of the provinces. Through the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), the state employed radio to disseminate socialist ideas to the masses in order to construct nationality and undermine clerical education in the cities and countryside. SEP programs also distributed radios to rural and urban working-class families.

In an attempt to build a modern nation using premodern ideals, Mexican presidents used radio as a "mass sedative" to ensure order and stability. Lázaro Cárdenas used radio to placate fears and engender nationalistic support when his regime nationalized the oil fields in 1938. Cárdenas also used the radio for gritos (calls) of nationalism. Although he was not the first president to exploit radio, he understood its capacity to reach the people of Mexico, and Hayes argues that he used radio to extend the presidential voice with the aim of developing a sense of public commitment to the nation and its ideals. Unfortunately, Cardenas's successors could not invoke the same sentiments and revolutionary zeal.

Alongside the socialist educational radio programs and the political expressions of power and nation, Mexican radio showcased Mexican culture. Certain forms of traditional Mexican music—corridos, huapangos, jarades, and danzas—were repackaged to "standardize and institutionalize" them for national use (p. 50). The "vernacular" was to be celebrated, but only after it had been sanitized by an SEP bureaucrat. Hayes explores this fascinating tension between high and vernacular music, the attempts of bureaucrats to address the tension, and the ways in which the Mexican radio audience responded.

Radio Nation fits well into recent literature on modernity and popular culture in Mexico, but I wanted to learn more than Hayes presents. For example, she discusses the National Hour, a program that all radio stations were required to transmit. Yet 80 to 85 percent of the programming was music, drama, and history. If the National Hour was indeed a vehicle for state propaganda and nation building, I would have liked to know more about the programming. What was the focus of the history? What were the dramas about, and who performed the readings and taught the lessons? Further exploration of who else in the government had access to airtime would have revealed the subtleties of power within the state apparatus and the subtleties of control over popular culture.

Hayes's compelling work offers insight...