The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940–1976: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street by Benjamin T. Smith (review)

For most of the twentieth century, social scientists dismissed the influence of the Mexican press on politics, arguing that the print media’s de jure freedoms either remained unused or were so limited by the authoritarian PRI regime as to be rendered irrelevant. Despite recent revisions, the image of a government-controlled press writing for a small elite public has remained pervasive.

Benjamin Smith counters these findings, arguing that despite the development of elaborate methods to both persuade and coerce the press, state control was not inescapable, especially in the provinces. By looking beyond the big Mexico City dailies to the tabloid and regional press, Smith demonstrates that even at the peak of the PRI’s influence Mexican newspapers did not always walk in lockstep with the government—there was room for dissent, for parody, and for popular grievances. Sometimes the content and form of the print news was shaped more by civil society than by business leaders and their government cronies. Smith takes great care, however, not to overstate his claims. The press was not entirely free, of course, and the limits of its freedom were determined by the state.

The central argument of the book is built on the recognition that between 1940 and 1976 Mexico developed a reading public. Refuting the traditional argument that high prices, elitist subject matter, and impenetrable language alienated average citizens from Mexican newspapers, driving down sales (and sales revenue) and forcing the print media into a dependent relationship with the state, Smith shows that access to cheap paper, the rise of consumer culture (and advertising revenues), and new printing technologies allowed for the proliferation of affordable publications. Between 1931 and 1958, the number of print publications in Mexico increased sevenfold, their growing print runs stimulated by rapid urbanization and skyrocketing literacy rates. “By the late 1950s literate urban Mexicans” not only “read the papers on a regular basis” (14), but, Smith convincingly argues, they also saw politics through the prism of the press, and “officials now viewed the press as the best way to influence the country’s citizens” (1).

Without resorting to regulatory censorship, the authoritarian state did exercise considerable influence over the press. Smith points to the shared socioeconomic interests of the government and pressmen (a masculine subculture cemented in boozy revelry), the manipulation of myriad financial incentives, and the development of government publicity machines as the primary factors in influencing what was and was not fit to print. Smith’s analysis of these “spin machines,” which used modern public relations and advertising techniques to build active support for the government, is especially interesting. Yet, without formal censorship the PRI’s control of printed media remained soft and diffuse, and dissidence remained possible.

Using four chapter-long case studies, Smith expertly mines the gaps in the state’s control of the press and explores opportunities for the emergence of a real critical press. Ranging temporally from the 1940s to the 1970s and geographically from Mexico City to the provinces (Oaxaca and Chihuahua, specifically), these case studies provide a window into evolving strategies and practices of press control and the loosening of the relationship between newsmen and the PRI regime. Smith’s explorations of the rise of the satirical press in 1948 and the radical left-wing tabloid Por qué? are insightful, illuminating, and utterly convincing; his attempts to establish the relationship between the local press and civil society in the provinces are only slightly less so. All of Smith’s case studies are, in themselves, achievements in research and writing: cleverly conceived and organized, perceptively written, and completely captivating.

Smith’s straightforward and farsighted analysis is not only a major contribution to recent studies of dictablanda, probing the softer aspects of Mexico’s one-party system, but also one of the best books on twentieth-century Mexico...