Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

cambio (exclusivamente verbal), porque el Estado es todavía el primer empleador y el
PRI no maneja los espacios públicos disponibles’. 63 Those who accepted the offer
became known as aperturos. 64
Echeverría looked for the support of intellectuals. It was strategically important
to gain their confidence, and he approached them believing that ‘en el nuevo contexto
post-68 la alta inteligencia del arte, el pensamiento y la investigación vestiría muy bien
a su gobierno, y la cultivó’. 65 He used the same tactics as occurred with the unions, co-
option, and it worked. He took many on his foreign journeys, gave them presents and
subsidised the trips in what Jorge Ibargüengoitia called (later popularised among artists)
the aviones de redilas. 66 These actions were received sympathetically by the
intellectuals. 67
Echeverría also had a special interest in cinema and gave it significant economic
support, almost nationalising the industry. He encouraged filmmakers to increase both
output and quality. He invited them ‘to deal with social issues and even Mexico’s sacred
past’. 68 The artistic supervision office (in charge of censorship) did not disappear, but
continued banning certain topics and content. 69 Nevertheless, integrating intellectuals
and artists into his social programs gave confidence to the people regarding the system
63
Carlos Monsiváis, ‘1968: la herencia en busca de herederos. (Primera de dos partes)’, Revista de la
Universidad de México, 56 (2008) pp. 18-26 (p. 20)
[accessed 28February
2010]
64
José Agustín, Tragicomedia mexicana 2… p. 14.
65
Ibid., p. 20.
66
Emilio García Riera, Historia documental del cine mexicano, 18 vols (Mexico: Universidad de
Guadalajara, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Gobierno de Jalisco, Secretaría de Cultura,
Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, 1994), 16, p. 8. The author describes one of these trips in which he
participated. Ibid, p. 9.
67
José Agustín, refers to these trips as Jets de redilas although the essence of the name does not change.
José Agustín, Tragicomedia mexicana 2... pp. 78-80.
68
‘The contemporary era’, in Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers, ed. by Joanne
Hershfield, and David R. Maciel, (Oxford: SR Books, 2005), 193-196 (p. 194).
69
Topics such as religion, sex, the army, the clergy, and the policies of the regime were still censored
although, as director Marcela Fernández Violante points out, Echeverría’s sexenio was marked by a new
set of ideas, and was much less marked by the censorship of earlier regimes. Alejandro Medrano Platas,
Quince directores del cine mexicano (Mexico: Plaza y Valdés, 1999), p. 187.
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