City Mexico City | Broadcast area international | |
Branding Radio México Internacional Slogan La voz de México al mundo (English: The voice of Mexico to the world)
Escucha México; México te escucha (English: Hear Mexico; Mexico hears you) First air date September 1, 1969 (1969-09-01) – June 1, 2004 (2004-06-01) (shortwave)
January 1, 2011 (2011-01-01) (Internet radio) Language(s) Spanish, English, French, indigenous languages | ||
Radio México Internacional is a Mexican government-run radio service based in Mexico City. It broadcast as a shortwave radio station with the broadcast callsign XERMX-OC from 1969 to 2004, and was relaunched as an Internet-only radio service in 2011. Since 1983 it has been under the control of the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio (IMER). The -OC suffix is from onda corta, Spanish for "short wave", equivalent to the -SW suffix in Canada (with none being used at all on U.S. shortwave stations).
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Early federal stations
Federal shortwave broadcasting in Mexico goes back to at least 1934, when the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SRE) started XECR. It was discontinued in 1937 when the government of Lázaro Cárdenas began shortwave station XEXA through the Autonomous Department of Press and Publicity (Spanish: Departamento Autónomo de Prensa y Publicidad, DAPP). XEXA continued into the 1940s.
XERMX
In 1968, Luis Echeverría, then Secretary of the Interior (Spanish: Secretaría de Gobernación), ordered Notimex to create a new shortwave station. The Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT) allocated a set of five frequencies to be used at various times of the day: 5985 kHz in the 50-meter band; 9705 kHz in 31 meters; 11700 kHz in 25 meters; 15430 kHz in 19 meters; and 17765 kHz in 16 meters.
XERMX-OC began broadcasting on 1 September 1969. It was taken over by the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio (IMER) in 1983, and ceased broadcasting on 1 June 2004. It had 10,000 watt transmitters.
In a November 2006 interview, IMER director Dolores Beistegui responded when asked why XERMX was taken off the air:
Radio México Internacional was a shortwave project that operated with six transmitters, of which five were broken. Repairing them would have cost 60 million pesos... we would have needed 60 million pesos to reach who knows who, because no one listens to shortwave any more... We cancelled the project and gave the transmitters to Radio UNAM.
Internet audio
Radio México Internacional was relaunched by IMER as an Internet radio service on 1 January 2011, to provide programming in Spanish, English, French, and indigenous languages, with music, dramas, documentaries, and other types of programs.