Session Abstract

This panel rethinks the function of radio as a tool for state development in Latin America.  The contributors utilize original research to demonstrate the immense scope and scale of radio history, policy, and reception in North and South America during the twentieth century.  Uncovering a series of understudied but historically significant programs and events, the papers thus offer new interpretive frameworks to make sense of the way government interaction with private interests and compatriots living abroad influenced the political, cultural, and social lives of Latin American people.

J. Justin Castro studies the creation and institutionalization of radio broadcasting in Mexico from 1920 to 1924 in the years after the Mexican revolution.  He explores the collaboration between private and government interests in Mexico’s radio development and describes how radio acted as a forum for contending views of post-revolutionary national culture.  The private and public arrangement, he claims, allowed the Mexican government to establish successful radio regulations and programs.

Mary Roldán uses short wave radio broadcasts to examine the Colombian government’s response to a surprise military attack by the Peruvian army in 1933.  She contends that the government was able to use radio to shape public opinion by sending messages over the airwaves to Colombian sympathizers and citizens outside of the country.  The incident, she believes, signifies a critical moment in the history of Colombian mass media as it was the first time the government saw the advantages of joining forces with commercial radio.

Gisela Cramer reassesses the use of radio to foster Pan-American solidarity during the Good Neighbor, a time when the U.S. government and a host of civic organizations promoted good relations with Latin America.  Previous research has highlighted how the U.S. government and private broadcasters combined forces in order to offset Nazi propaganda in Latin America. Cramer, however, shows that radio was also used to promote Pan-Americanism in the United States. Her analysis draws on conceptual frameworks that bridge recent constructivist scholarship in International Relations with media studies.

Sonia Robles examines the Mexican government’s observance and opposition to international media regulations from 1930 to 1950.  After Mexican stations were prohibited from broadcasting to the U.S., she shows, they turned to music radio programming to promote national unity abroad.  She claims that radio stations in Mexico’s northern states were established to not only create commercial links with the U.S. but also to ensure communication between Mexico and the Mexican communities of the U.S. Southwest. 

Jane M. Rausch explores how radio programming became a method for education and national reconstruction in the Colombian Llanos from 1950-1980.  Her paper re-examines the history of Colombia’s “Radio Satutenza,” the first and most influential long distance radio education program developed in Latin America.  She describes how the program was conceived, how it was carried out, the impact it had on the region, and the factors that led to its downfall. 

Taken together, these papers suggest that telling the story of radio within and outside of Latin America must take into account a multiplicity of factors.