Texas Republic

In the decade that Texas struggled to survive as a republic, Mexico refused to recognize its independence. At first, the Mexicans rejected outright the idea of Texan separation as well as the upstart government's claim that its border ran from the mouth to the headwaters of the Rio Grande and from there to the Adams-Onís Treaty line. Mexican forces on a number of occasions made raids into the southern fringes of the republic, the most serious of which being General Adrian Woll's occupation of San Antonio for one week in September 1842. For their part, Texans made a number of raids across the Rio Grande and launched a disastrous expedition in 1841 to gain control of New Mexico and divert at least some of the Santa Fe Trail commerce to Texas. The Texans also supported rebels in northern Mexico and the insurgency in Yucatán during this time. Texas gained recognition from the United States in 1837, although its efforts at annexation were rejected by the U.S. Congress. Recognition by France and Britain's promise of support for negotiations with Mexico led President Mirabeau B. Lamar to abandon any effort at annexation to the United States as a gesture toward Mexico. On reassuming the Texas presidency, Houston renewed annexation negotiations with the United States, which ultimately led Mexico to make a belated offer of recognition. In 1845 the Congress of the United States passed a resolution of annexation, the Texas government held a constitutional convention to draft a state constitution, and on December 29 Texas was admitted as one of the United States. The event precipitated war between Mexico and the United States.

In hindsight the futility of Mexico's effort to retain its Texas territory, indeed the whole of what ultimately became the Southwestern United States, is clear. Struggling to forge a national state out of the social and political fragmentation that marked the colonial period, Mexico lacked the economic and human resources to develop the region or to mount an adequate military defense of it. In desperation, Mexican officialdom listened to the siren song of Anglo-American frontiersmen who promised to become good Mexican citizens in return for the opportunity to settle the land and make it productive. Too late, the Mexican government discovered that they had turned Texas over to foreigners who intended to recreate the social, economic, and political system they had left behind in the United States, even at the cost of abandoning their oaths of loyalty to their adoptive nation. The ultimate beneficiary of the situation was the United States, which, taking advantage of Mexican turmoil and the groundwork laid by its advancing frontier folk, acquired dominion of the Mexican north.

Texas Iindependence

The military successes prompted Santa Anna personally to lead a force of 6,000 men against the revolt. At San Antonio in late February, he laid siege to the former Mission San Antonio de Valero, which by that point was only a makeshift fort known as the Alamo. Rather than bypass the small (approximately 200 men) isolated garrison and attack the main insurgent army under Sam Houston, Santa Anna brought his entire force to bear on the fort, which fell on the morning of March 6 with heavy casualties. The execution on Santa Anna's order of over 300 prisoners taken following the surrender of a Texan force under James Fannin at Goliad later than month stiffened resistance among the Texans.

Unbeknown to either side at the Alamo, a convention meeting on March 2 to the northeast at the village of Washington on the Brazos had declared independence. According to the delegates, Mexico had broken its compact with Texas on a number of grounds. The Mexican government had acted tyrannically in abrogating the Constitution of 1824, denying the settlers those republican institutions to which they were accustomed in their home country, and rejecting the petition for separate statehood. It had allowed army officers to act arbitrarily, subordinating civil to military authority, and incited the Indians against the settlers. The government also had failed to establish adequate systems of education and trial by jury and denied settlers liberty of conscience. Most of the charges were contrived, considering that they did not represent anything other than differences in Anglo-American and Mexican cultures or a singling out of immigrants for special treatment. To the contrary, the Mexican government had granted considerable latitude to the settlers in how they conducted their affairs.

Texas independence was won at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. Santa Anna, having outdistanced the bulk of his army, set up camp in a low-lying and exposed field near the northwestern end of Galveston Bay. His 1,400 men, some of whom had arrived just hours before, were at rest and had failed to post adequate guards when Sam Houston led his entire force of 910 men in an assault that took the Mexicans by surprise. The battle lasted just 18 minutes and, according to Houston's figures, resulted in 630 Mexicans dead and 730 captured. Santa Anna, who had fled, was captured the following day. In subsequent negotiations, Santa Anna signed two treaties, one public and one secret, at the Texas port of Velasco by which he ordered the retreat of the Mexican army, promised not to take up arms against Texas, and agreed to work toward recognition of Texas by the Mexican Congress in return for his freedom. Except for the withdrawal of Mexican forces from Texas, neither pact was honored. The Mexican Congress considered Santa Anna's negotiation of these treaties scandalous and nullified them both. Nevertheless, Texan independence was a fait accompli.

Texan Opinion

Texan opinion was divided but open to being interpreted as largely disloyal. The major camps consisted of war and peace parties and the Tejano federalists. There is little doubt that a vocal and active minority headed mostly by more recent arrivals made up a war party intent on separating Texas from Mexico. The peace party, which included much of the longer-established Anglo-American population, actively sought to promote separation from Coahuila but wished to remain part of Mexico under the terms of the federalist Constitution of 1824, which Santa Anna had annulled. Most of the Tejano elite, which was centered largely at San Antonio, had become involved in the political struggle between federalists and centralists and had chosen to oppose Santa Anna's centralizing measures. From Mexico City's perspective, therefore, Texas was a hotbed of resistance to the national government.

For Mexican authorities, proof of Texan disloyalty came in the summer of 1835. At the end of June, war party members attacked the Galveston Bay garrison at Anahuac and forced its surrender. Texas officials refused to turn over the leaders of the assault along with other individuals accused by the national government of being troublemakers. Soon after, Austin returned from Mexico to proclaim that Texas should separate from Mexico if the federal military invaded the province. Resistance finally became violent on October 2, when colonists at Gonzales fired on a detachment sent by the federal military commander at San Antonio to collect a small cannon on loan to the settlement.

During the fall and winter of 1835-36, the hostilities in Texas were, at least on the surface, resistance against Santa Anna's suppression of the federal system. For instance, the provisional government organized in November issued a declaration in favor of the Constitution of 1824. At the same time, while the insurgents sought assistance from the United States, they shied away from an alliance with Mexican federalists. Many Tejanos who initially joined the revolt against Santa Anna would later abandon the field after Texas declared its independence, but José Antonio Navarro and Francisco Ruiz signed the document, and Juan N. Seguín led a Tejano cavalry company through the end of the war. A significant minority of Mexican Texans, particularly in the Goliad area, and a small group of Anglo-Americans in eastern Texas sided with the central government. The evidence makes clear, however, that the overwhelming majority of the Texan leadership favored complete separation from Mexico. Early successes by the insurgents, combined with a hardening of the Mexican government's position, propelled the secessionists' drive for a formal declaration of independence from Mexico. In December 1835 General Martín Perfecto Cos surrendered San Antonio to one rebel army while another rebel force captured the garrison at Goliad, leaving Texas entirely in the hands of the insurgents. A group of rebels at the latter place went so far as to issue a declaration of independence, which the provincial authorities rejected as premature.

Texas Struggle

Texans, both Anglo-American and Mexican, protested the measures, sometimes in terms that deepened the suspicions of the government. Armed encounters between colonists and Mexican military units, refusals to pay customs duties, the meeting of two extralegal conventions in 1832 and 1833, and memorials by the San Antonio and Goliad town councils all addressed similar grievances: the continued prohibition of legal immigration; the insecurity of slave property in Texas; the absence of an adequate judicial system; the perception that the tariff system was counter productive; and, above all, the continued union with Coahuila, which had nine times the population of Texas, and thus dominated it in the state legislature. As representative of the Anglo-American Texas colonies, Stephen E Austin traveled to Mexico City in the spring of 1833 with a list of grievances and a copy of a new state constitution to present for action to the national government.

In 1833 and 1834 Texas also became embroiled in the federalist-centralist struggle taking place in the rest of the nation. As supporters of local control, Mexican Texans generally sided with the federalists. The Anglo-American settlers also tended to look not to the political factions involved but to the inviolability of the federalist Constitution of 1824. Federalists managed to wrest control of the state government away from the centralist faction in the state legislature and transferred the capital from Saltillo to Monclova (in presentday Coahuila). The legislature then undertook a series of reforms aimed at undermining the colonists' grounds for seeking separate statehood. Among the reforms were establishment of a circuit court for Texas and trial by jury, the creation of new administrative districts in Texas, and an increase in the number of Texas representatives to the state legislature. Despite the pro-Texas moves, however, they failed to gain the confidence of the Anglo-American settlers because of their reliance on large-scale sale of public lands to finance the government, which the Texans interpreted as corrupt land speculation.

After removing his Liberal vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías, and reversing a series of anticlerical and antimilitary reforms, President Antonio López de Santa Anna attempted to come to terms with the Texans. Gómez Farfas had rescinded the prohibition on U.S. immigration to Texas but had arrested Austin on charges of treason. Santa Anna freed Austin and tried to reassure the Texans that he had no quarrel with them. At the same time his government made a number of moves that increased tensions in Texas, most notably an order to disband state militias, the decision to crush the federalist governor and state militia at Zacatecas, and the arrest of Coahuila's federalist governor. Also, reports arrived in Texas that Santa Anna was preparing to send a large military force there.

Situation in Texas

Despite requirements that immigrants take an oath of loyalty to the Mexican nation and accept Roman Catholicism, circumstances prevented the integration of the new settlers into the Mexican population. For the most part the Anglo and Mexican populations were geographically segregated. Except for an isolated group at Nacogdoches, the Mexican population was concentrated along the San Antonio River valley from San Antonio to Goliad, and in the vicinity of Victoria. By the early 1830s there were approximately 20,000 Anglo-Americans and only about 4,500 Mexican-Texans. English continued to be the common language among the foreign settlers, who continued to use their own legal forms in the general absence of Mexican officials. Economic activity within the Anglo-American areas gravitated toward New Orleans. American-style slavery quickly took hold in the 1820s and proved impossible to eliminate. In the absence of an effective Catholic Church presence outside San Antonio and Goliad, Protestantism remained at least the formal religion of many settlers.

Official response to the situation in Texas wavered between efforts to stop the immigration flow and enacting reforms to keep the settler population satisfied. Among the authorities who recognized the threat posed by uncontrolled immigration from the United States to Mexican Texas was General Manuel Mier y Téran. As head of the Mexican commission that marked the Texas-Louisiana border in 1828, and later as commandant general of the northeastern region of the country, he witnessed the Americanizing process at work in eastern Texas and warned Mexico City that Texas would soon be lost if governmental authority was not established quickly and effectively. Under the direction of the Conservative Anastasio Bustamante and his secretary of state, Lucas Alamán, the national government finally responded with the Law of April 6, 1830, which attempted to strike at the heart of the problem. The legislation outlawed any further introduction of slaves and canceled all impresario contracts not in execution, curtailing legal immigration. The law also called for the establishment of seven military posts, ostensibly for frontier defense, and a program of settlement based on Mexican nationals. At the same time the national government made itself responsible for approval of settlement along the coastal and border strip and established customs posts following expiration of a seven-year tax exemption granted to Texas. In 1832 the Coahuila y Texas State Legislature increased tensions by limiting to 10 years all indentured service contracts (a ploy through which slaves from the United States continued to be introduced into Texas after the state's official closure of the slave trade in 1827).

Texan Secession

When Mexico achieved independence in 1821, Texas was one of the country's least-populated regions. The Mexican population in Texas was confined to three major settlements: San Antonio, the provincial capital; La Bahfa (modern-day Goliad), near the coast; and Nacogdoches, in the eastern pine forests. The approximately 3,000 Tejanos (Mexican Texans) who lived there shared the region with a large number of Indian peoples from plains hunter Comanches to woodland agriculturalist Caddoes. Economic activities consisted almost entirely of subsistence farming, open-range ranching, and military service. Development of the province had been a perennial problem for colonial authorities. Geographically isolated from the mining and commercial centers of the Mexican interior and lacking mineral resources or sophisticated native cultures to exploit, Texas's small military population was the nucleus of settlement. After the Louisiana Purchase, royal authorities attempted to establish a string of settlements to hold the province against U.S. encroachments. Hostilities during the Mexican War of Independence, however, retarded Texas's development as Tejano insurrectionaries were killed or fled to Louisiana, and recently established settlements were abandoned. The U.S. claims to Mexican territory south to the Rio Grande ceased only with agreement to the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819. By this time the United States had occupied Texas territory to the Sabine River, prime proof to the government in Mexico that the United States coveted the region.

Recognizing the vulnerability of sparsely settled territory, Mexican authorities turned to immigration as the solution to holding Texas against the United States. Early in 1821 they accepted a proposal for settlement of 300 families made by Moses Austin, who died shortly after, leaving his son Stephen to carry out the plan. Aggressively pursuing approval from the newly independent Mexican government, Stephen F. Austin became the first and most successful of the land impresarios to operate in Mexican Texas. He established the pattern for Mexico's policies concerning land grants both at the national and state levels. The federalist Constitution of 1824 gave the states control over land granting matters; Texas was combined with Coahuila to the south in a single state. By 1831 Austin had more than 5,500 Anglo-Americans and their slaves living in his colonies, a number that exceeded the total Mexican population of Texas.

The impresario system, under which men of means contracted to settle a specific number of families in return for large government land grants and the right to collect fees from colonists, proved only partially successful. Aside from Austin, who fulfilled nearly all his contracts, and Martín de León, the only active Mexican impresario, few contractors came even close to fulfilling their obligations. For instance, efforts to recruit European Catholic immigrants, particularly from Ireland, met with very limited success. In East Texas Anglo-American families mostly filtered into the region individually or came at the prompting of the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company, a New York corporation holding title to three impresario contracts.

Mexican Television Programs

Surprisingly, Mexican television programming for children represents another weakness, with its lack of playful creativity and a heavy reliance on imported programming, especially from the United States. Moreover, Mexican television has seemingly steered away from factually based dramas or controversial issues, except for the occasional and usually patriotic historical epic. Although advertisements for contraceptive devices have appeared on Mexican television (consistent with the government's efforts to lower Mexico's historically high birthrate) in general the medium has carefully avoided controversial issues. And to its credit, Televisa has experimented with socially beneficial programs, such as the encouragement of adult education through a soap opera series. Yet, such efforts have been surrounded with skepticism over their didactic, relatively safe character and criticism for their contrast with the crassness of Televisa's more commercial offerings. Irreverent situation comedies (or sitcoms) of the American sort, or humor in the British style of "Monty Python," for example, rarely make their way onto the television screens of Mexico.

Furthermore, the pattern in programming established by Televisa has extended beyond Mexico. Since the 1960s, the Azcarraga empire had entered the United States in the form of the Spanish International Network (SIN), providing shows produced by Televisa to reach the large and expanding Spanish-language population in cities such as Miami, San Antonio, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. The extent of Azcarraga's control over SIN eventually was found in violation of U.S. government regulations regarding foreign ownership of television stations, forcing Azcarraga Milmo to divest himself from SIN in late 1987. In an ironic twist, Televisa reentered the U.S. market through Univision, a company based on the original SIN, although without a controlling interest in keeping with U.S. federal communications law.

Televisa's foray into the United States paralleled its penetration into Latin America (where it has interests in stations in Chile and Venezuela, for instance); its reach has incorporated the Spanish-speaking populations of the Pacific, such as Guam and the Philippines, and Europe, where its telenovelas have been seen from Madrid to Moscow (in the latter case via translation). In this sense, Mexican television and its characteristic features have become truly global.

It is apparent that the television market in Mexico will continue to move away from its narrowly conceived, conservative origins. This process of change, however, likely will be gradual, as producers will be slow to act boldly in the face of the tenacious influence of the past. If access to alternative programming remains tied to income, mainstream Mexican television will tend toward reworking old formulas and taking few innovative directions. This conservative character of television is, of course, not unique to Mexico, as indicated by the derivative character of much of television in the United States, for instance. As in most countries, the federal government in Mexico will continue to possess wide authority over television, but how it will exercise that authority in the future is unclear.

Basic Changes in Television

Basic changes in television fare have been relatively recent and few in number, aside from the introduction of programming available on expensive cable services that have been beyond the modest incomes of most Mexicans. In the 1970s, Televisa's four channels began increasingly to address specific segments of its audience, based in part on the original mix of programming that targeted particular groups, such as older, primarily female viewers. Hence, one channel would focus on older, primarily female viewers, while another channel would tend to attract a younger, more affluent audience. In the 1990s, talk shows modeled on their U.S. counterparts debuted, as well as televised call-in sales programs. Moreover, variety shows for a new generation of viewers seemed to become less formal, if not more crude, than had been the case in the past, as reflected in the program Sabado gigante. Programming from the United States remains strongly evident, but productions from other Spanish-language countries also have appeared regularly on Mexican television with great success. This inclusion of foreign programming nevertheless has been selective and generally consistent with the entrenched conservative character of Mexican television. Thus, the pattern of the traditional mix persists, such as the ubiquitous importance of the locutor, or emcee (e.g., Raul Velasco, on the popular, music-laden variety show Siempre en domingo); slapstick, Cantinflas-inspired comedic routines; and corny, antic-filled game shows.

The weaknesses of the past have also persisted, none more obvious than the impoverished state of television news reporting. The combination of the Mexican state's capacity for censorship and Televisa's pro-government posture has made for a practice of innocuous news programming on domestic issues, although reporting on world events has improved notably in recent years. Beginning in 1970, the program 24 Horas and its head, Jacobo Zabludovsky, have dominated television news. Still, despite a periodic expose, usually of localized corruption or government ineptness, substantive investigative television journalism rarely appears in Mexico, particularly of a political nature. An incident during the 1994 presidential campaign illustrated the anemic character of Mexican television journalism. When the upstart station of Salinas Pliego broadcast an interview with the leftist opposition presidential candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the event caused a stir in Mexico for days, compelling Televisa's notorious Zabludovsky subsequently to conduct a similar interview. The hyperbole from the press and political observers over the interview incident served to demonstrate the highly conservative approach of Televisa to news reporting and the general absence of serious television journalism in Mexico.

Azcarraga and Mexican Television

As Mexico faces the twenty-first century, it appears that the house of Azcarraga will continue to exercise an inordinate influence. Political pressures likely will persist for the government to take action to lessen the preponderant place of Televisa in Mexico, and specifically over televised news coverage. Ironically, the public support for privatization policies may work to diminish the state's hand to dismember such a powerful corporation, as was the case in the United States when NBC was forced to sell one of its networks by the federal government, leading to the creation of ABC (the American Broadcasting Company).

Regardless of the future of Televisa's corporate power, its programming has left an indelible imprint on the shape and content of Mexican television with widespread cultural implications. Televisa (and its predecessor, TSM) has been the primary source of television programming for the vast majority of Mexicans. Mexico has lacked a viable alternative to the way that Televisa has presented television to Mexican audiences. Government-subsidized programming has met with meager public reception, failing to alter the tastes of most Mexicans for television fare. The formula for Mexican television developed by the Azcarraga empire has enjoyed a long period of dominance, making any substantial change difficult to achieve in the viewing habits and expectations of Mexican audiences.

For his initial formula, Azcarraga borrowed from the staples of his radio programming. In the pioneering days of the medium, popular music shows, sports events (bullfights, soccer, boxing), comedy, and radio soap operas were essentially transferred to television, and in some cases these early shows were transmitted simultaneously for both radio and television. In this sense, the popularity of the established "mix" of programming from radio laid the foundations for television, as Azcarraga parlayed his powerful position in Mexican entertainment to attract major stars to his programs. Indeed, with Mexican cinema still enjoying the aura of its golden age, early television shows often featured wellknown actors, singers, and musical groups drawn from the Mexican motion picture industry. Although Azcarraga produced the occasional serious drama or classical music concert, most of his programming reflected the formula popularized by radio, including adaptations from the United States. In this regard, perhaps the most enduring format was that of the telenovela, or television drama series (i.e., television soap operas). Taking plot lines made familiar by Mexican cinematic melodramas and radionovelas, this type of show became immensely popular with television audiences.

Television and Political Pressures

The presidential elections of 1988 and 1994 were hotly contested, fueled by a resurgent Partido de Acción Nacional ( PAN, or National Action Party) and a surprisingly strong showing by the reformist, left-leaning Partido Revolucionario Democrático ( PRD, or Democratic Revolutionary Party). Both elections revealed the evident pro-government bias of television news reporting; such pro-government coverage became the target of much criticism. With its hold over Mexico's television audience, Televisa was at the center of this political storm. (The rebellion in Chiapas in January 1994 greatly intensified the heated debate over Televisa's prejudicial reporting.) In this tense political context, the sale of one of the government's television facilities in 1993 became a major political issue, rather than simply another example of the privatization policy of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari ( 1988-94). For many critics of Mexican television, the government's decision on the bids held the potential of weakening the monopolistic position of Televisa, and more importantly, of leading to an alternative perspective in television journalism specifically, and programming in general.

The successful bid came from the Salinas Pliego interests (not related to President Salinas), whose fortune derived primarily from his family's chain of consumer electronic stores and other commercial interests. The decision surprised many experts, as some of the competing bids appeared better capitalized and proposed by business groups with much more experience or assets in broadcasting. Time will tell whether this privatized network (channel 13), in conjunction with the opening of the Mexican media market, will in fact break the dominant position of Televisa.

Dominance over Mexican Television

In 1968, a group of businessmen tied primarily to the ALFA corporation of Monterrey, Nuevo León, mounted a challenge to the dominance of TSM over Mexican television. Using videotape technology and imported American shows for much of its early programming, the upstart network, called Television Independiente de Mexico ( TIM, channel 8), made significant headway. Financial problems, however, pushed TIM to agree to a merger with Azcarraga's TSM in December 1972, leading to a new corporation whose logo became Televisa (encompassing channels 2, 4, 5, and 8). In the midst of the conclusion of this momentous deal, Emilio Azcarraga Vidaurreta died, leaving his son, Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, to head Televisa.

In the ensuing years, the younger Azcarraga aggressively exploited Televisa's dominant position, as the company spread further into ancillary areas, such as satellite transmission, expansion into international markets, cable television, sports programming, video distribution, syndication, mediarelated publications, and movie production for television, among other activities. Protected by governmental policies that impeded foreign competition in the Mexican media market, Televisa established its contemporary dominance of Mexican mass communications in the decade following the death of the elder Azcarraga.

The retreat of the Mexican government from state-led development policies after 1982 offered the possibility of a weakening of Televisa's monopolistic position. Initially, the federal government moved slowly to open mass communications to foreign investors. Finally, the appearance in the early 1990s of U.S.-based video and record distributors, rival cable television networks, and foreign-generated television news services eroded Televisa's previous dominance of the Mexican media. On the other hand, much of the competition for Televisa at that time targeted the country's small though growing middle and upper classes, leaving the bulk of Mexico's television audience still dependent on Televisa's programming. The most serious challenge to Televisa in the 1990s came increasingly from political pressures, rather than from its economic competitors.

Commercial Television Station in Mexico

In 1949 Rómulo O'Farril received the first license to operate a commercial television station in Mexico (Channel 4), and he began broadcasts in July 1950. O'Farril had made his fortune primarily in the automobile business, but his quick entry into mass communications revealed the hand of Miguel Alemán Valdés. Supporters of Alemán's presidential aspirations gained control of the newspaper Novedades in 1946, and Jorge Pasquel, an intimate associate of Alemán, assumed editorial control. Once in office, Alemán persuaded O'Farril to take over Novedades. Subsequently, O'Farril was also granted the concession to operate radio station XEX, giving the auto tycoon (aided importantly by his son, Rómulo Jr.) the opportunity to learn the broadcasting business and to develop the technical capacity to move into television broadcasting. Given the association with Alemán, O'Farril's successful bid for a television broadcasting license was no coincidence.

Azcarraga finally acquired the second license granted by the Mexican government for a commercial television broadcasting station (Channel 2), beginning transmissions in May 1951. Other licenses were also approved, including one to Gonzilez Camarena (Channel 5). It was clear from the beginning that the major contestants in this formative period of Mexican television would be O'Farril and Azcarraga, although the auto magnate held the backing of the former president and an operational advantage of nearly a year over his adversary. Nonetheless, after a bitter and extremely costly period of competition, O'Farril approached Azcarraga with a merger offer in early 1955. Financially wounded by the savage contest, Azcarraga accepted the overture, but he was careful to maintain control over the new corporation, named Telesistema Mexicano (TSM). Shortly thereafter González Camarena threw his lot in with the new company and rejoined his former employer, giving TSM an additional technical and engineering asset. By March 1955, TSM essentially controlled Mexican television, as the holding company possessed three stations (channels 2, 4, and 5). The combination of Azcarraga's hold over entertainment talent, his clout among large advertisers, the profitability of his radio holdings, and the political privileges afforded discreetly by Alemán gave TSM an unassailable advantage over the competition for nearly 15 years. Utilizing his radio connections, Azcarraga quickly developed a web of TSM affiliates in the major urban markets that initially overwhelmed potential rivals.

Mexican Television and Alemán

As president, Alemán shunned any public, obvious indication of his intention to invest personally in the new medium. Instead, he searched for a means to delay the commercial development of television, until he could devise a plan to insinuate himself into the television business. Allegedly at the suggestion of the director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, the composer Carlos Chávez, in 1947 Alemán commissioned a two-man team to explore options for the development of television in Mexico. The team consisted of the writer Salvador Novo and the brilliant engineer, Guillermo González Camarena, who was the technical chief of the Azcarraga radio empire (he patented the first color television camera). Submitted in 1948, the resultant report essentially proposed two alternatives, one patterned on the commercial, privately owned model of the United States, and the other a government-run, noncommercial model similar to that of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in Great Britain.

The Mexican government after the Revolution of 1910 generally had maintained a benign stance toward the private media, relying on censorship when necessary to keep radio, for instance, in line with governmental policies. Even during the populist presidency of Lizaro Cirdenas, the federal government had refused to take a heavy-handed posture toward a radio industry that was basically unsympathetic to the administration. In legal terms, the state clearly possessed the authority to regulate the industry and to produce programming, as legislation before and since the advent of television repeatedly sustained the potent role of the federal government in mass communications. In fact, early on government radio stations broadcast programming of various types, but they abstained from direct, genuine competition with private ownership; government-run radio stations were notably dull and predictably unpopular. Thus, in practice no precedent existed for the BBC model in Mexico. The federal government under Alemán moved to intervene in the film industry in 1952, but it did so to halt the precipitous decline of Mexican cinematic production, to eliminate the monopolistic control over film distribution by the American expatriate, William Jenkins, and to safeguard the monetary interests of a small circle of wellconnected movie impresarios. Yet, the government avoided the actual making of movies, again relying on censorship to curb critical political expression on the part of filmmakers.

Alemán was also manifestly pro-business. He had served as the secretario de gobernación (secretary of the interior) in the Avila Camacho administration, where he consistently used his political influence to support private enterprise and to distance himself from the populism of the previous president, Lázaro Cárdenas. Furthermore, the Alemán administration was infamously corrupt, marked by the frequent abuse of presidential privilege to promote the private interests of Alemán and his cabal of friends and business associates. In short, the history of media-state relations in Mexico, or Alemán's political career, offered little evidence to suggest that he would seriously consider a policy of government control over television. Rather, it appears that Novo and Gonzilez Camarena were used by Alemán in a scheme for him to become financially involved in the nascent television industry.

The development of television in Mexico

The development of television in Mexico raises two fundamental questions. The first issue stems from the monopolistic character of Mexican television, whereby one corporation has dominated commercial broadcasting since its inception in 1955. This company, currently named Televisa, has held its grasp of Mexico's television audience for over 40 years, as estimates in 1995 put Televisa's average audience share at approximately 80 percent. Second, in light of Televisa's powerful position, television in Mexico generates several thorny issues regarding its cultural impacts and political influence. Although the federal government directly supported broadcasting stations and programming, the state never has seriously challenged the commercial television industry.

To a large extent, this pattern in the development of Mexican television reflects the relationship between the state and the private broadcasting industry. The origins of this relationship derive from commercial radio. By the early 1940s, Mexican radio was virtually controlled by Emilio Azcarraga Vidaurreta. At that time, Azcarraga's network encompassed about 60 percent of Mexico's radio stations, and it dominated all of the country's major radio markets. His grip of Mexican radio allowed Azcarraga to spin off into other enterprises, such as recordings, entertainment promotion, film distribution, and eventually motion picture production. Azcarraga's ascendancy in radio was facilitated by his ability to attract Mexico's leading singers, actors, musicians, and comedians to appear in his radio shows. In brief, Azcarraga's hugely profitable radio empire provided him a powerful place in Mexican society, and his hand in the formation of the country's popular culture was similarly important.

Azcarraga's dominance over radio was facilitated by his ties to the two major broadcasting companies in the United States at that time, NBC (the National Broadcasting Company, owned by the Radio Corporation of America, or RCA) and CBS (the Columbia Broadcasting System). Because of his close association with these American broadcasting companies, notably RCA, Azcarraga was well-aware of the new medium called television even before 1940. World War II had delayed television's commercial applications, but the end of the war led immediately to its commercial development in the United States. Azcarraga followed suit; he petitioned President Manuel Avila Camacho ( 1940-46) at the close of his administration for a commercial television broadcasting license (others also petitioned for licenses in this period). Despite the obvious capacity of Azcarraga to move into television broadcasting, the Avila Camacho administration rejected the petition, largely it seems, owing to the influence of the president-elect, Miguel Alemán Valdés. The evidence clearly suggests that Alemán intended to thwart Azcarraga's bid to extend his media empire through the new medium. The evidence also suggests, however, that Alemán desired to profit from the commercialization of Mexican television.

Origins and Development of Telenovelas in Mexico

When television was born in Mexico in the 1950s, both the cinema and the historieta industries were flourishing. It was a decade of political and economical stability, and the progress and modernity promised by the Revolution seemed finally to be coming true for a vast majority. The radio industry was strong and far-reaching, and radionovelas were among its most appreciated programs. It naturally followed that television would experiment with the genre and create telenovelas. The first drama program produced with a serial format was called Ángeles de la calle, and was aired weekly in 1951. The second was Senda prohibida, produced in 1957 by Fernanda Villeli (adapted from its previous radio version). The series aired five times a week.

At the time, television programs were produced either by advertising agencies or by their clients (such as ColgatePalmolive). This accounts for the market-driven orientation of Mexican television, which somehow managed to coexist with the medium's convenient subjection to the Revolutionary ruling party. This phenomenon led to the formation of Televisa, the gigantic communications conglomerate, nearly 20 years later. Televisa, a near monopoly, became the main Mexican telenovela producer, and the most prolific television producer in the world. Thus, Mexican television's (and with it, the telenovelas) content and format have been shaped by three coexisting forces: a conservative nation, a liberalRevolutionary government, and a nearly capitalist economy.

Primitive telenovelas were much shorter than today's, but offered greater variety in content. On the other hand, modern works are produced with greater technological and financial resources. In between, the golden years of telenovelas ( 1982 to 1986) brought (along with notable failures such as Eclipse and La Pasidn de Isabela) great successes, such as Chispita, Gabriely Gabriela, Bodas de odio, La Fiera, El Maleficio, La Traicidn, Vivir un poco, De Pura sangre, Tú o nadie, and Cuna de lobos. Most of these drew audience ratings as high as 70 points, with averages between 40 and 51 points (where 1 point equals 1 percent of the viewing households). After 1986, ratings declined sharply. As of the mid-1990s, average audience ratings for telenovelas were 33 points for the 6:30 P.M. to 7:00 P.M. time slot, 33 points for the 7:30 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. time slot, and 34 points for the 9:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. time slot.

There have been many reasons for the decline in ratings. First, producers have continuously transgressed collective values. At the same time, the overall breadth of content variety has, paradoxically, decreased. Furthermore, a vicious cycle began when the drop in audience ratings lowered the advertising rate for commercial time during a telenovela broadcast: networks were forced to sell a greater number of these cheaper commercials, thus aggravating viewers and leading to a further drop in audience ratings. During the broadcast of a telenovela in December 1995, for example, a 30-scene-long chapter was interrupted by 50 advertisements. Finally, the drop in ratings may be explained by the greater number of television channels now available in Mexico.