The radio as a cultural experience: an overview of broadcasting in the international arena and the early days of radio “educational” in the nationalist period in Mexico 1924-1936

Abstract

Abstract: The article discusses the beginnings of broadcasting in Mexico making a tour of the main projects that emerged in the international arena and whose main theme was the extensive use of the communication as auxiliary of nationalist propaganda. The second part of this article is reconstructed by the use of primary sources —mainly— the history of the CZE station of the Secretaría de Educación Pública, which emerged in 1924 as a means of non-formal education and advertising whose purpose was to bring the most distant communities to the national culture. With this paper and by going into depth on the case, the history and genesis of the radio is desmythologized as a proyect that “emerged only” from wealthy businessmen, and instead is presented as one born from the communities’ initiatives, although rapidly implemented by the state’s policy to spread the idea of a new, racially mixed, “cultured” and modern Mexico.