FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
KPFK 90.7 FM Pacifica Radio - Los Angeles
www.KPFK.org

Unprecedented Coverage of Sunday's Mexican Presidential Elections

from a Progressive Perspective

Eight Hours of Bilingual Coverage on Election Day, July 1, 2012

June 29, 2012 – North Hollywood, CA. 90.7 KPFK Radio announces special coverage of Sunday's Mexican National Election, in which a new President and Congress will be elected. The July 1, 2012, coverage will be produced by a team of news and public affairs producers who oversee the Spanish-language programming heard on the politically progressive Pacifica Radio station, with coverage from 12pm to 2pm PDT; and again from 6pm (when polls close across Mexico) through midnight, when the first election results will be announced.

KPFK's coverage, besides being more extensive than any other locally produced coverage, will be distinctive because of willingness to expose not only the wide-spread corruption of the Mexican political system, but also place that corruption in an historical context as well as a regional context, that will include analysis of the role played by Mexico's northern neighbor and the impacts felt by both documented and undocumented Mexicans who reside there.

Most national polls predict that Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will recapture the Presidency for a party that ruled Mexico uninterrupted for most of the 20th Century, until it was finally defeated in 2000 by the conservative National Action Party (PAN). However, the candidate of the progressive Left, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), is thought by some to be within range to pull off an upset win. Ló pez-Obrador's candidacy received an unexpected boost from the growth of a powerful student movement "Yo Soy 132" that sprung up over the past two months to capture the nation's attention as it decries the corruption of the Mexican political system in general and Peña Nieto's role in that corruption in particular. The rise of "Yo Soy 132" has made the outcome of Sunday's election far from certain.

Two production teams will be working on KPFK's coverage on Sunday, including Telemundo TV’s Rubén Luengas, host of KPFK’s Contragolpe. Luengas will report from Mexico City, with U.S.-based anchors Ernesto Arce of the KPFK Newsroom and Professor Miguel Tinker Salas from Pomona College. The other team will consist of many of KPFK’s long-time hosts from the Spanish-language programming bloc, including activist journalists Rubén Tapia, Fernando Velázquez and Rodrigo Argueta, of the show Enfoque Latino, Informativo Pacifica and Voces de Libertad, respectively.

CONTACTS:

Fernando Velázquez (Spanish, English)
(213) 248-1928
copecheuno@yahoo.com

Rubén Tapia (Spanish)
enfolati@jps.net

Ernesto Arce (English, Spanish)
818-339-8358
earce@kpfk.org

Alan Minsky (English)
KPFK interim Program Director
818-749-9497
aminsky@kpfk.org