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Miracles from Mexico: Christianity, corporate restructuring, and the telenovela in Nigeria

ABSTRACT When DStv, the main digital satellite television provider on the African continent and a subsidiary of the South African conglomerate MultiChoice, began offering the Nigerian soap opera Taste of Love in early 2015, it promoted the series as ‘Nigeria’s first telenovela’ - the culmination of MultiChoice’s efforts to combine two distinct yet frequently entangled entertainment forms: Latin American, Spanish-language telenovelas, which have long been broadcast in Nigeria via terrestrial and satellite television, and Nollywood films, which MultiChoice began broadcasting via its satellite channel Africa Magic in 2003. With its formulaic emphasis on heterosexual romance amid the ‘dirty dealings’ of superrich rivals, Taste of Love resonates not merely with Latin American (and especially Mexican) telenovelas but also with those recent Nigerian films and television programs that similarly centralize sex, scandal, and multibillion-dollar deals. As Latin American telenovelas gain an even greater prominence and respectability in Nigeria thanks to a range of corporate interventions, media producers and media critics are embracing them as explicit influences on local representational styles. This article offers a tentative history of this intersection by addressing the significance of certain corporate restructurings and their effects on the production and circulation of what might profitably be termed ‘Nigerian telenovelas.’