Azteca America’s performance of Mexicanness in the pan-Hispanic television market

Abstract

The US Spanish-language television and advertising industries have assimilated their audiences into a homogeneous pan-ethnic market, yet this article argues that the newest network, Azteca America, has contested this homogenization by pursuing Mexican viewers. Surveying network practices, this article shows how the market’s pan-Hispanic paradigm has restrained Azteca America from positioning itself as decidedly Mexican. Drawing upon ethnographic evidence and performance theory, this article particularly examines how the network accomplishes its cultural positioning through its ‘upfront’ events, the annual pre-broadcast happenings for advertising clients. Azteca America’s performance of Mexicanness displays Mexican immigrants as domestic consumers but cultural foreigners and, hence, non-citizens. Nevertheless, the network’s practices register a hybrid, transborder Mexican culture and occasionally critique sociopolitical disenfranchisement of Mexican immigrants.