Malinchismo on Mexican TV and the Development of Telenovelas

Examining television and fan magazines from the late 1950s and the 1960s in Mexico reveals a great deal of the underlying issues and anxieties of the Post revolutionary period.  In these sources there was a discussion about malinchismo that arose because of the amount of American and British programs in Mexican TV in the 1960s. Some sectors from the urban middle class expressed concerns about a foreign media invasion that also included music and movies; others argued that they preferred foreign programs over Mexicans because the former were better than the latter.  These opinions echoed the fragmentation of Mexican society: those concerned with foreign programs were adhering to a nationalist discourse while those that preferred American series vented their dissatisfaction with the one-party state to sustain its promises of industrialization and modernization.  Telenovelas were one of the main targets of the letters complaining about the quality of Mexican television.   Meanwhile Telesistema Mexicano –the only television network in Mexico from 1955 to 1968- experimented extensively with the themes in the telenovelas produced during this period.