Before La Mejor and before Estéreo Gallito, there was simply a new kind of radio signal reaching Torreón for the first time. XHPE-FM went on air on December 15, 1975, just a week after its concession was granted, and in doing so became the first FM station ever broadcast in Mexico's Comarca Lagunera region.
From a Local First to a National Format
XHPE launched under owner Alonso Gómez Aguirre, and its concessionaire name, D.L.R. Radio, traces back to Luis de la Rosa, one of the founders of what became Grupo Radio Estéreo Mayran, or GREM, according to a history of the station. Five decades later, GREM still operates the frequency at 97.1 FM, now carrying La Mejor, the grupera format licensed from MVS Radio and heard across dozens of Mexican markets. Locally, the station keeps its older identity alive too, branding itself as Estéreo Gallito alongside the national La Mejor name.
Programming Built for a Region That Loves Grupera
La Mejor's format leans on banda, norteño, duranguense, and romantic grupera ballads, a lineup that fits the Comarca Lagunera's musical identity almost perfectly. The region spanning Torreón, Gómez Palacio, and Lerdo has long been known for its appetite for grupero sounds, with local acts like Banda Lagunera building careers spanning more than three decades in Sinaloan-style banda, according to an account of the group's history. The Laguna area also has deep roots in cumbia, having helped popularize Colombian groups like La Sonora Dinamita locally starting in the late 1970s, per a history of cumbia lagunera, giving the region's grupera stations a genuinely mixed rhythmic backbone rather than a single narrow style.
Fifty Years on the Same Frequency
What stands out about XHPE is less any single format change and more its continuity. Many Mexican FM signals of its era have flipped ownership and identity repeatedly, but 97.1 in Torreón has stayed under the same ownership group's control since GREM took over, running as a Class C1 station with 20 kW of effective power reaching across the Laguna region, per the station's technical record. That stability, on the same frequency that once made local radio history simply by existing in FM at all, gives La Mejor Torreón a claim to longevity that few of its market peers can match.
Tune In
For a station carrying fifty years of Laguna region radio history under a genre built for its audience, La Mejor Torreón is worth a stream on Radio Shuffle.