Television and cultural politics in Mexico: Some notes on Televisa, the state, and transnational culture

The Mexican state's recent adoption of neoliberal policies has accentuated the mass media's role in construction of Mexico's national culture. The focus of this article is the shift of the locus of ideological influences from a function of the state to the domain of the culture industries. Specifically, the article examines how the private television conglomerate Televisa's power and prestige have grown while a shifting marketplace, rapid technological change, and political discord have caused the government largely to abandon its role as caretaker of Mexican culture identity. As the government has become increasingly unstable, Televisa—privately owned, largely free of government control, and adept at negotiating the global market—has emerged as one of the more stable institutions in Mexico and as the unlikely, but central, force in defining national culture. These political and economic processes have converged to reshape the contours of national culture, and frame possibilities for the reinterpretation of, and reinvestment in, identity.