Mexico TV Cuts Off Satellite Tie as Skeptics of Free Trade Testify

This nation’s top television chain refused Thursday to allow coverage of a panel of Mexican free trade skeptics, then pulled the plug on an electronic connection between the panel and a U.S. Senate hearing in Washington.

The action, critics said, showed how Mexico lacks press freedoms.

“I’ll say it again: You can’t have free trade when you don’t have a free society,” said Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), who was chairing the hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

The action Thursday by Televisa, Hollings declared, typifies the authoritarian atmosphere in Mexico as the U.S. Congress debates the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, which would lift tariffs and ease commercial barriers between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

The Senate committee, which conducted hearings Thursday on NAFTA, arranged with Televisa, Mexico’s television conglomerate, for a live satellite hookup of testimony by five prominent treaty doubters here.

As the Mexican panel gathered in a Televisa studio here Thursday morning, Hollings and participants said, company executives refused access to Mexican reporters--despite the committee’s approval of such coverage. Then, participants said, Televisa terminated the audio hookup between Washington and Mexico City a half-hour prematurely.

“If that’s not proof positive of a government that wants to control and limit debate so that people won’t get the truth, I don’t know what is,” Hollings said in a statement later.

Hollings is one of many American NAFTA opponents who have cited the need for the Mexican government to make more democratic reforms before the two nations liberalize trade relations.

While a range of opinions is available in Mexican newspapers, the airwaves--and particularly television--still seldom feature viewpoints contrary to those of the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Televisa dominates Mexican television and its news coverage is widely regarded as a virtual mouthpiece for government views.

Thursday’s live broadcast to the Senate hearing room lasted for about an hour before the scheduled half-hour of audio testimony was abruptly canceled.

Televisa executives declined Thursday to comment.

The incident, said Jorge G. Castaneda, one of the panelists, shows how the government here can muzzle the press, particularly broadcasters. Critical coverage of NAFTA on the Mexican airwaves has been nonexistent, he noted, despite doubts expressed by a range of opposition leaders, environmentalists and others.

“What this shows is that the government and television, which is the main media here, do not want any real discussion of this issue in Mexico,” said Castaneda, a commentator who also frequently contributes to the opinion pages of The Times. “They know that support of NAFTA is falling here, and they don’t want the public to hear alternate opinions.”

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has based his nation’s economic recovery plan on NAFTA. A defeat would be a blow for his governing party less than a year before scheduled presidential elections.

Thursday’s incident occurred a week after Mexican authorities, moving to quell a troubling censorship controversy, replaced Manuel Villa Aguilera as chief of the government agency that regulates radio, television and film. Many journalists had assailed Villa as a de facto government censor.