Too Close for Comfort: the Political Telenovela El Candidato and the 2000 Mexican Presidential Election

Abstract

Explaining the 2000 Mexican presidential election through the telenovela El Candidato that aired in parallel and was based on the actual candidates and events is a cautionary account of how a fictional television series can influence a major national election. To understand how it could impact an election, one needs to go beyond seeing the series as purely entertainment. Instead, it needs to be examined from many perspectives, including media, sociology, political science, anthropology, history, etc. This paper analyzes how the telenovela El Candidato was intertwined with and could have interfered with a key recent political process, and how the television company that produced it also instrumentalized it for economical and political gain. To examine how viewers are influenced by the point of view of a media company that aired both the newscast and the telenovela, I developed a methodology I call cognitive-socio-pragmatics and applied it to the analysis of the 2000 presidential election and the telenovela titled El Candidato