Hilary Stewart & Rebecca on Bowen Island many years ago

When I married my Canadian Rosemary in Mexico City in 1968 we had the routine when driving our VW Beetle to listen to a local radio station that was in English. There were a lot of ads for moving companies and pest removal. My favourite was the nasty sounding Ratex.

On the hour the station would connect with American CBS and we would have news in English in which our stellar favourite was Dan Rather. I particularly remember a broadcast on October 2 1968 in which CBS went live to a reporter on the Plaza de la Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco in Mexico City. The reporter said that the army and the police were shooting and killing the students. I could distinctly hear the gun fire. Suddenly during all this there was a loud click and, “The baseball scores are as follows.”

All the other stations had music and CBS was censored for weeks.

On another occasion I remember distinctly my favourite left-wing guy on one of the on the hour broadcasts, Nicholas von Hoffman who was talking about the looming problem of over-population. This is what he said:

“If you really want to have a kid, buy a baby goat.”

Yesterday my NY Times had his obituary: this one. On YouTube I was able to find a video where he talks. It was most pleasant to listen to his voice again after all these years.

There is no record that I could find of the name of the English language radio station in Mexico City.