"Terroristas" and Torch Carriers: Televising the Cold War in Mexico, 1968

‘Terroristas’ and torch carriers: Televising the Cold War in Mexico, 1968            Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, television became the most important form of mass communication in urban centers such as Mexico City. As one of the most prevalent forms of television genres, news programs played an integral role in informing citizens about domestic and international affairs, such as social unrest and the Cold War. Moreover, like film in the 1940s and 1950s, television in the 1960s functioned as a medium that shaped as well as reflected U.S.-Mexico socio-cultural relations. By 1968, at the height of the Cold War and the country in the midst of social upheaval, citizens looked to news programs in an effort to add meaning to what was transpiring around them and around the globe. Yet programs such as Su Diario Nescafé, hosted by news anchor Jacobo Zabludovksy offered capital city residents limited perspectives about the country’s connections to events at home and abroad. Through a qualitative content analysis of news programs located at Televisa’s archive, the author examines the intersections between the student movements, the XIX Olympiad hosted in Mexico City, and the Cold War. Television newscasts included reports on all three of these issues, and through a comparison of news coverage regarding student movements and the Olympics, Mexico’s unique position during this pivotal period emerges. Further, television producers – through their news reports – became cultural diplomats of the twentieth century.