On August 5, 2026, public media outlets from Mexico and Latin America issued a joint statement, disseminated by Canal Once, calling for a rigorous investigation into damage detected at the channel's video archive, which safeguards 67 years of Mexican audiovisual memory. According to El Universal, the communiqué warned that "that risk is beginning to materialize."
The damage was identified after Canal Once's facilities, the broadcaster of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), were recovered following an occupation of more than two months by a group of students. According to Milenio, the case is now in the hands of the Fiscalía General de la República (FGR), which has already conducted an inspection, and approximately 120 workers entered the premises to assess the condition of the collection. Among the affected material is the archive of "Aquí nos tocó vivir," the program hosted by Cristina Pacheco for 45 years and inscribed in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in Mexico in 2010. For the country's urban chronicle, that archive is a ledger of popular life.
Beatriz Sid, the video archive's custodian with 29 years of experience, described the scene: "There are tapes thrown around, our digital tapes are on the floor, not in their cases; the discs from our analog system, which are all our Betacam tapes, are also scattered everywhere." The technical staff's greatest concern is the analog material, the oldest held by the institution, because exposure to dust and physical mishandling over those two months threatens to render it unreadable. The broadcaster will launch a comprehensive inventory and technical assessment to determine which items can be restored and whether any are missing. In the statement, public media outlets called on national and international bodies for the protection of documentary heritage to accompany the process.
The inventory will take weeks and will determine how much of that audiovisual memory, including material registered by UNESCO, was permanently lost. The technical assessment and the progress of the investigation will provide the answer.
This article was written with artificial intelligence assistance based on verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.