Playwright Miguel Sabido is honored for his cultural legacy for the benefit of humanity.

Merry MacMasters

La Jornada Newspaper, Saturday, August 9, 2025, p. 5

Writer, playwright, promoter, and theater director Miguel Sabido (Mexico City, 1937) received the Doctor of Doctors award from the Doctoral Cloister of the International Cultural Confraternity (CIC) on Thursday afternoon for his invaluable cultural legacy for the benefit of humanity . The ceremony took place in the auditorium of the Soumaya Museum, Plaza Carso, in a ceremony that also included honorary doctors, ambassadors, medalists, and honorary members of the civil association.

For more than six decades, the poet has transformed art and communication into powerful tools for social change , said Eduardo Gómez Tagle on behalf of the CIC. From Mexico to India, China, Kenya, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and dozens of other countries, his methodologies have inspired programs that educate, raise awareness, and save lives, while always respecting and preserving indigenous cultures .

In his acceptance speech, "Colonization/Decolonization: Do We Want to Save Humanity?", Sabido referred to the opportunity he had as a dramatic theorist, playwright, and television producer to design strategies based on my theory of tone that can help prevent the destruction of human culture . Of the four strategies, Sabido focused on the methodology of entertainment .

Thanks to the sponsorship of Ricardo García Sainz, I was able to develop a theory of tone in human communication that posits that human beings interact with reality through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic codes. I applied this to the design of a different model for the organization of television, one that would be more in keeping with the schizophrenia produced by four centuries of colonialism.

He continued: “On Sunday, June 18, 1972, at a meeting that was said to be to nationalize commercial television, President Luis Echeverría asked me to present the model that I called the Mexican formula for television , which had its origins in the old XEW, completely different from the European one instituted by Hitler and Stalin or the American one which, applied to countries with a colonial history, inevitably leads to tonal degradation.

"In it, I emphasize the enormous social responsibility of the concessionaire, who makes a lot of money using the airwaves that belong to the people and, therefore, has a fundamental obligation to society, which owns the frequencies. The proposal was accepted by both President Echeverría and the television concessionaires. Thanks to this Mexican television formula, the World Communication Meetings were held, the Entertainment-Education program (entertainment with a proven social benefit) was established, and Channel 9 was established, the only cultural station supported by private television for 11 years, with programs by Octavio Paz, Juan José Arreola, and the Channel 2 program, Mexico in Culture .

For 30 years, Mexican commercial television has effectively combated the tonal degradation that occurs when a country with a colonial history applies the American model of fierce competition between channels, an unfortunate product of colonial stratification.

Finally, Sabido said he was asking for a favor for the first time , although he doesn't know exactly from whom : "I'm not asking for money, but for help with what I don't know how to do, nor can I: organize a group of Mexican businessmen and intellectuals who will go to the World Bank to present the four methodologies.

The Bank is the only body that can address the presidents of countries that were once called third world and are now called hopeless.

And to teach them to plan their family's lives, to continue their studies, to reforest, to once again respect Mother Nature. To save the culture of humanity, and the beautiful and fragile humanity of men and women. Along this path, I have met hundreds of people who share the same anguish, but also the same hope.