My previous text ended with the following data: in 1954, Mexican television began with national comedy shows with Manuel “El Loco” Valdés, Sergio Núñez Falcón, Héctor Lechuga, and later Chucho Salinas.

For its part, North American television, increasingly pressed by the big traders, continued to produce interesting series, which we enjoyed for a while: Jim West, Star Trek, The Flintstones, Combat, Bewitched, Super Agent 86, Los Locos Adams, The Monsters, Lost in Space, Bonanza, The High Chaparral, Mission: Impossible, Highway Patrol and The Untouchables.

The Untouchables is a special case as it is the first detective series, and deals with the era of the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States and the life of the first major criminal Alphonse Capone dedicated to importing banned from Canadian beverages. , among many other crimes. The case responds to what the famous economist Vance Packard said in 1964 in his book The Naked Society, whose theme is the extreme surveillance to which the population is subjected by the police and especially by companies by obtaining personal data. of their workers.

Packard placed particular emphasis on new methods of mind manipulation introduced by television such as subliminal messages. Packard was the first American thinker to denounce the techniques of mental and psychological manipulation with his book The Hidden Forms of Propaganda. He found that introducing subliminal messages such as “drink Coke” increased sales by 15%. This book, a best-seller in the 1960s in the United States, inspired consumer movements and still serves today as a basis for denouncing excessive consumption.

I must say that television and cinema entertained us enormously during our teenage years. The weekends were reserved for the cinema. We visited almost all the cinemas in Mexico City and were left speechless by the beauty of María Félix, Dolores del Río, Rita Macedo, Elsa Aguirre, Sarita Montiel. Where we would die of laughter with the jokes and jokes of “Mantequilla”, of Joaquín Pardavé, of Agustín Isunza, of “Chino” Herrera, of “Cantinflas”, of Manuel Medel, of “Palillo”, of “Springs”, of “Clavilazo”; or else we guessed the sensual shapes under the outfits of Lilia Prado, Rosa Carmina, Meche Barba, Ninón Sevilla, Amalia Aguilar, María Antonieta Pons, Tongolele. Our senses of attraction were beginning to awaken. We left the cinema singing what we heard from Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Emilio Tuero, Antonio Badú, Fernando Fernández, Pedro Vargas, Miguel Aceves Mejía and others. Years later, we went to theaters showing European films prohibited for minors.

I can’t help but mention that we also love foreign cinema beauties like Maureen O’Hara, Debora Kerr, Elizabeth Taylor, Olivia de Havilland, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Gina Lollobrigida, Kim Novak, Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, and many more. And we envied the main men: Gregory Peck, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Marlon Brando, James Stewart, Gary Cooper, James Dean, Marcello Mastroiani, Vitorio Gassman and many more.

But regardless of cinema, radio and television, there was a very important issue for me, my love of writing. To begin with, in sixth and first year of secondary school, I had the privilege of being the “spelling champion” of my class. It made me extremely proud.

And one fine day in high school, it occurred to me to write something. But what? Then I saw my mother’s typewriter (on which she prepared her texts for the radio).

I took three blank sheets, interleaved two sheets of carbon paper, put them in the roll of the machine, now what? Poetry? because no one would read it; prose?, some maybe. Then I remembered that, in the school, our teacher Agustín Lemus Talavera had drawn up, with the help of some, including me, a wall journal of one square meter, called MAS (acronym for More Healthy Souls), and that it hung on one of the downstairs walls.

I decided that I would make a document on paper, attractive and pleasant, and that it would pass from hand to hand. I set myself the task of writing a journal of two sheets, which folded in half would make four, taking care not to crush in the same quarter. What would it be called? My brain, which was already convulsed enough at the idea of ​​writing, automatically suggested to me: “THE VOICE THAT RED”. It was not a title that had anything suggestive, but the worst is nothing.

And now? Well, I started by saying that it would be a new way of communication between students in the class, and it would include a short but interesting story, also gossip from classmates and classmates, a sign movie display. I also invited that, for the next issue, texts or proposals from colleagues be accepted.

Founder of Notimex

National Journalism Award

pacofonn@gmail.com