Muy buenas noches: Mexico, Television, and the Cold War

2 The Invention of Tele-Traditions

31 CHAPTER 2 The Invention of Tele-Traditions On January 6, 1954, the Día de los Reyes Magos (Day of the Three Wise Men), thousands of Mexico City’s poor children received presents from María Dolores Izaguirre de Ruiz Cortines, the wife of President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. The children and their mothers had spent the previous night at Marte field and waited in long lines for a chance to receive a gift from the First Lady. An anchor for Noticiero General Motors commented that María Dolores was accompanied by the wives of the president’s cabinet, as the happy and humble children accepted their presents on this much-anticipated holiday. A camera operator for xhtv, Channel 4, filmed the event, and it was reported that night on Noticiero General Motors, the nation’s first television news program of record.¹ The story about the First Lady’s distribution of gifts, which aired as the fourth report in the newscast, after a report about a memorial service for deceased actor Jorge Negrete, brought to 32 The Invention of Tele-Traditions the fore several themes that run throughout this book. First, the annual distribution of gifts on the Día de los Reyes reinforced and reproduced an already existing tradition—that of presenting gifts to the children on January 6. The decision by early news producers to report on this day helped to establish a new tele-tradition (tv tradition) of incorporating popular religious holidays into television news coverage. Second, the report on the event highlighted several tensions within society: the conflict between the modern and the traditional, the government and private sector, and popular and elite groups, as well as the limitations of women’s participation on the national political stage and the struggle between the construction of national identity and U.S. financial and cultural influences during the Cold War. As this chapter demonstrates, producers and writers created numerous tele-traditions during the first five years of the industry. Another important tele-tradition included coverage of national holidays such as Día de la Independencia (Independence Day) and Día de la Revolución (Day of the Revolution). Government officials played a prominent role in the coverage of national and religious holidays, primarily as the subjects of news. Although these types of stories grew out of the older media traditions established by print and radio journalists, the ability to include images along with sound made them distinct and more powerful. To explain the version of mexicanidad and tele-traditions that aired on television, this chapter analyzes some of the first programs and pioneering producers and then examines news coverage of Día de la Independencia celebrations. Over time, these types of news reports helped members of the pri’s authoritarian regime reaffirm aspects of national identity that they deemed important. The national identity broadcast on television reflected an elite view of mexicanidad, one that emphasized an official perspective of the nation. Television represented the medium through which media executives and government officials worked together to promote an elite national vision. Viewers did not always accept that vision, The Invention of Tele-Traditions 33 however; there were limits to cultural hegemony in this formative era of Mexican television. When the Three Wisemen story aired in 1954, television news was still in its infancy. As a television director, Gabino Carrandi Ortíz helped construct some tele-traditions. The former radio producer spent much of his forty-year career working in television as both a producer and director.² He contends that until 1969 television did not play an important role in the information business and that “television news programs barely occupied a corner in the screen and in the studio.” At that time television news was controlled by newspapers and merely provided a carbon copy of capital city newspaper coverage. This appears to be the standard line of many former television executives.³ Yet most television executives made decisions about content independently of newspaper editors. Furthermore , while newspapers influenced the content of television news, broadcast news was very distinct from print. Television news reports were much shorter, and, more important, tv newscasts included audio and moving images. Azcárraga Milmo understood the strength of television and argued that people think in images, noting that while the word is limiting, the image is complete.4 For these reasons, it is imperative to examine the origins of television news. The space that...