Some radio frequencies carry more history than their current name lets on. Red Ciudadana broadcasts on 1120 kHz out of Puebla, Mexico, under the call sign XEPOP-AM, and behind that citizen-focused branding sits more than fifty years of continuous AM broadcasting in one of the country's most historically significant cities.
The station's concession was granted on April 4, 1974, to original owner Sergio Fajardo Ortiz, who launched it on 1490 kHz. It changed hands in 1988, moving to XEPOP, S.A., and at some point after that migrated down the dial to its current 1120 kHz home, a Class B frequency that still reaches the Puebla metro area at 5,000 watts during the day. That is a lot of Puebla mornings and afternoons soundtracked by the same station under a series of different names.
Today the station operates under the Red Ciudadana banner as part of Cinco Radio, the largest radio group based in Puebla and, by its own description, one of the more influential media companies in central Mexico. Cinco Radio's stated philosophy, that "comunicar es crear vínculos," communicating means building bonds, shows up in how the network approaches its news and talk stations, leaning on regional relevance over syndicated national filler.
Red Ciudadana's format reflects that citizen-first framing directly in its name. Rather than positioning itself purely as a wire-service relay, the station has built its identity around real-time news gathering that folds in reports from the community itself, alongside coverage aimed squarely at Puebla and neighboring Tlaxcala. It is also designed to reach Mexicans living in the United States who want a direct line back to news from home, a common and important role for regional Mexican AM stations with an online stream.
For listeners inside Puebla or scattered across the diaspora, Red Ciudadana 1120 offers something a national feed cannot: five decades of local institutional memory, still broadcasting from the same corner of the dial it staked out back in the 1970s, now filtered through a station name built specifically around its own audience.