History Revised or Reframed?
The geography of place names in Mexico is, as in most of the world, a reflection of a particular history and how it has been told; here, it is an atlas of the encounter between the Old and New Worlds. In some regions of the country, Indigenous place names saturate the map while in others, they are far outnumbered by the names of Spanish cities and saints. Local heroes are often honoured with street or park names, and of course, certain national historical eras and figures are favourites from big cities to rural hamlets (”Insurgentes”, “Reforma”, “Revolución”, “Hidalgo”, “Lázaro Cárdenas”).
While commemorating International Indigenous Peoples Day on 9 August, President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that the Paso de Cortés, a mountain pass between Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl that leads to present-day Mexico City, would be re-christened the Paso de los Pueblos Indígenas; a move that predictably provoked accusations of historical revisionism and politicising the past.
Critics have pointed out that Cortés’s march through the pass in November 1519 would have amounted to little more than a historical footnote without the Totonac, Tlaxcaltec, Huejotzinca, Texcocan, Chalca and Xochimilca fighters who allied with him against the Mexica empire, complicating the straightforward “conquistador versus Indigenous peoples” narrative. Others have noted that renaming historic sites is not among the presidential powers enumerated in Article 89 of the Constitution; a point bolstered, in their view, by Sheinbaum’s own admission that she proposed the renaming publicly before consulting her legal advisers.
Historian Alicia Mayer of UNAM’s Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas called the gesture legitimate but insufficient, warning against replacing one historical narrative with another rather than layering them: she proposed naming the site “Paso de Cortés y de los Pueblos Indígenas” with on-site historical context, and argued that genuine “decolonisation of memory” requires far more than a new sign, calling instead for investment in education, archives, oral history and museum practice, alongside urgent attention to Indigenous communities’ present-day poverty, health and education gaps.
Sheinbaum has defended her proposal, arguing that street names and monuments “reflect who we venerate and who we don’t”, framing the renaming as part of a broader shift towards recognising Indigenous peoples. When she was mayor of Mexico City in 2021, she renamed Puente de Alvarado Avenue as Calzada México-Tenochtitlan, and the Plaza del Árbol de la Noche Triste as Plaza de la Noche Victoriosa.
To support her case, Sheinbaum presented evidence of Cortés’s crimes, citing a 1548 document attributed to King Carlos I detailing charges against the conquistador, including the execution of 400 Indigenous people and the enslavement and branding of 3,000 women and children in Tepeaca.
Reactions among residents near the pass have been divided: local chronicler Bonifacio Cholula Rincón backed the renaming as a historically valid act of social justice, telling El Sol de Puebla that the route was known in Náhuatl as Mexicotle (”road to Mexico”) long before the Conquest. Others argue that the new name should have been consulted with Indigenous communities first, and questioned the term “Pueblos Indígenas” itself as a colonial-era label, suggesting “Pueblos Originarios” instead. Still others dismissed the symbolic gesture as merely another empty government exercise in self-promotion.
The Puebla and Estado de México state congresses are getting to work on renaming the pass, which Pavel Gaspar Ramírez, head of Puebla Congress’s Junta de Gobierno y Coordinación Política, estimated could be finalised before the end of 2026.
The politics of place names is perhaps even more conspicuous in swanky Polanco, where the street map reads like an Allan Bloom syllabus of the white male Western canon: Homero, Horacio, Aristóteles, Sócrates, Dickens, Molière, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Ibsen, Tennyson and Dumas are all commemorated. Women writers, by contrast, are almost entirely absent; Juana de Ibarbourou, the Uruguayan poet whose name appears on a tiny street in Polanco V Sección, close to Plaza Uruguay, is the only exception to an otherwise male landscape. Ángela Peralta, the nineteenth-century Sinaloan soprano, has an (annoyingly noisy) open-air theatre in Parque Lincoln named after her, but no street.
Nor is the Polanco neighbourhood that atypical: mapping by a UNAM urbanism student, drawing on INEGI data, counted some 10,800 streets in Mexico City named after men against fewer than a thousand named after women. If street names, as Sheinbaum argues, reflect “who we venerate and who we don’t”, Polanco offers a literal illustration.
Miranda Culture Chatter suggests Mexico’s first female president convoke a plebiscite, along the lines of AMLO’s referendum that cancelled Mexico City’s new airport, to improve the neighborhood’s literary DEI credentials. Residents could choose between Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (who to be fair may feel more at home in the Santa María la Ribera where her name currently resides, among other places), Emily Brontë, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Gabriela Mistral, Rosario Castellanos and Elena Garro; and pick the man that deserves to be ousted (who in Polanco has any idea who Eugenio Sue, Lamartine, Sudermann, Alfredo de Musset, Emilio Castelar are?). Or maybe vote to cancel the notorious cad ‘’Carlos’’ Dickens (who left and humiliated his long-suffering wife who bore him ten children, and had to put up with his long affair with young actress Ellen Ternan, among others). Perhaps the government could distribute a helpful “acordeón” to nudge voters to the correct conclusion.
What Happened at Canal Once?
The occupation of public television station Canal Once, which lasted 74 days from 21 May to 2 August, has become the flashpoint in a broader dispute over governance and funding at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), one now contested on two fronts: what caused the damage to the channel’s archive, and what the underlying student movement is demanding.
IPN student protests began in late April and escalated after five schools joined a strike demanding the removal of institute director Arturo Reyes Sandoval, who faces an investigation by the attorney general’s office (FGR) over alleged diversion of funds. Students are also demanding a break with the current board of trustees, a freeze on its assets pending investigation, restitution of misappropriated funds, and emergency budget support for schools facing supplier debts and materials shortages. The dispute centres on an internal IPN watchdog review of contracting between 2021 and 2026, including the termination of the institute’s agreement with the Fundación Politécnico and creation of the new board, amid a battle over resources reportedly worth up to 5 billion pesos.
Students say the Education Ministry, under Secretary Mario Delgado, has offered no concrete response and prioritised recovering Canal Once’s premises over addressing their academic and budgetary demands. They also allege intimidation by the IPN’s private security.
Canal Once stayed on air throughout the occupation using shared facilities from five other public broadcasters. When staff regained access on 2 August, they reported ransacked offices, damaged electrical, computer and satellite-uplink systems, and a rat infestation. The Videoteca, or film archive, holding over 300,000 hours of recordings spanning 67 years, was allegedly hit hardest: roughly a third of its holdings were found on the floor, with tapes, discs and cassettes damaged. Director Renata Turrent said no equipment appears to have been stolen, but a loss of power may have compromised the archive’s climate controls. Canal Once has filed a criminal complaint “against whoever is found responsible”.
Student leader Yei Coatl, who led the occupation, rejects this version entirely, calling the footage of damage circulated by Turrent and allied media staged, intended to incriminate protesters and discourage other schools from joining the movement. He says students occupied only three areas (the car park, a main corridor and a cafeteria) and never had access to the archive, which he says was kept locked by Canal Once staff throughout.
Coatl also disputes Turrent’s account that the 2 August handover was peaceful; he says students were instead encircled, assaulted and forcibly expelled by roughly 100 people who arrived in tourist buses, some identifying themselves as CFE or Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos personnel. He alleges students had proposed a joint walkthrough of the premises with Canal Once staff to verify conditions but were refused, and that the channel would not share a list of personnel entering to inspect the archive. Students say President Sheinbaum’s swift description of protesters as facing criminal proceedings reflects an attempt to make an example of them and deter solidarity from other schools.
In response to the archive damage, dozens of Mexican and Latin American public broadcasters issued a joint statement warning that any permanent loss would damage national documentary heritage, calling for a rigorous technical and legal investigation involving specialist conservation bodies. Canal Once has not yet responded to questions about the extent of the damage or the existence of internal security-camera footage.
Meanwhile, the underlying IPN dispute remains unresolved, with negotiations continuing ahead of the 24 August start of classes.
Binging Mexico
Summer is blockbuster season at the cinema (The Odyssey, Toy Story 5 and Spider-Man: Brand New Day drew 37 million cinema-goers in Mexico) but as the summer holidays wind down, several highly anticipated Mexican series and films are also heading to streaming platforms.
Las Azules
The second season of Las Azules premiered its first two episodes on Apple TV+ on 12 August. Producer-director Fernando Rovzar (Lemon Studios) and actors Bárbara Mori and Horacio García Rojas discussed the season a few weeks ago at the Guanajuato International Film Festival (GIFF).
The series is inspired by the real story of Mexico’s first female police corps, founded in 1970 and expanded in the wake of the 1971 Halconazo student massacre, when authorities sought to soften the force’s image. Rovzar said he began researching the story roughly five years ago after coming across a newspaper article marking the corps’ 50th anniversary, finding little documentation until he met former officer Atala. Recruits underwent firearms and parachute training but, once sworn in, were denied weapons, arrest powers or investigative authority (issued only a whistle to alert other officers) and confined to Bosque de Chapultepec, ostensibly to showcase Mexico’s female police to the public while keeping them from real duties. Rovzar said the women gradually earned greater standing within the force despite this, eventually gaining admission to the granaderos corps and the right to carry firearms.
Rovzar described the story as centred on “four ecosystems” rather than four individual women, and said that although set in 1971, it resonates with 2026, exploring themes of machismo, equality and women’s institutional roles.
La captura
Netflix’s La captura (released internationally as Facing El Chapo) premieres 21 August, directed by Chava Cartas and written by Bernardo Esquinca, based on a chronicle by Héctor de Mauleón. Unlike prior dramatisations of the downfall of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, it centres not on the kingpin but on two federal police officers, Arturo Carmona (Alfonso “Poncho” Herrera) and Héctor Rosales (Noé Hernández), whose routine patrol in Los Mochis draws them into the operation tied to Guzmán’s real-life capture on 8 January 2016. The film’s inciting incident has the officers stop a vehicle flagged as stolen and discover Guzmán among its occupants, then face a choice between turning him over to authorities or accepting a multimillion-peso bribe to let him go. Héctor Kotsifakis plays Guzmán. The film focuses on the officers’ tension and moral dilemmas during the hours following the raid — and the consequences of whichever choice they make — rather than cartel operations or Guzmán’s biography. Netflix is positioning the film as part of the platform’s continued investment in Mexican productions based on real events. It marks Cartas’s return to Netflix following Contraataque.
Mal de amores
A seven-episode adaptation of Ángeles Mastretta’s 1996 novel, Mal de amores, will premiere 2 September on Netflix. Renata Vaca stars as Emilia Sauri, a woman navigating Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century who insists on her vocation and her right to love without limits in a society that rarely accounted for women’s rights or desires. Over the series, Sauri must choose between studying medicine and her feelings for two men: childhood friend and revolutionary Daniel Cuenca (Juan Pablo Fuentes) and Antonio Zavala (Iván Amozurrutia), a doctor seeking peace amid the war. The cast also includes Humberto Zurita, Miguel Rodarte, Diana Bovio, Cassandra Ciangherotti, Juan Pablo Medina, Alejandro Puente and Sofía Carrera.
The series is directed, written and executive produced by Catalina Aguilar Mastretta (Todos queremos a alguien), Mastretta’s daughter, with Humberto Hinojosa (Príncipes salvajes) co-directing and Mastretta herself serving as executive producer. Mastretta, born in Puebla in 1949, is regarded as one of contemporary Mexican literature’s key voices for her female characters’ defiance of machismo and misogyny, and for her vivid portraits of twentieth-century Mexican political life; her other major work, Arráncame la vida (1985), was adapted by Roberto Sneider into a popular film in 2008.
Moscas
Fernando Eimbcke’s black-and-white drama Moscas will stream exclusively on MUBI from 4 September, having premiered in the Berlinale’s official competition, opened the Guadalajara International Film Festival, and screened in Cannes’ Écrans Juniors programme. Starring Teresita Sánchez as Olga, a solitary woman in a large apartment complex whose ordered routine is disrupted when she takes in a lodger and his nine-year-old son, the film was the first Mexican title MUBI distributed theatrically across Latin America. To mark the release, MUBI is also launching a retrospective collection, “Verano sin fin: Tres de Fernando Eimbcke”, featuring Lake Tahoe, Temporada de patos and Club Sándwich.
Eimbcke’s 2025 bilingual dramedy Olmo has just opened in US cinemas (it is yet to have a theatrical release in Mexico). The film follows a 14-year-old Mexican American boy caring for his bedridden father over the course of one fateful Saturday in 1970s New Mexico. Shot on location in Las Cruces and led by newcomer Aivan Uttapa, the film marks Eimbcke’s first story set on the US side of the border, extending a career-long focus on adolescence that began with his 2004 debut Temporada de patos. Eimbcke says he was drawn to the bicultural dynamics he observed in bilingual households, and structured father-son dialogue so it’s often unclear whether the pair truly understand one another through language. Uttapa, a second-generation Mexican American cast from a self-tape, said the film’s Spanish-English family dynamic mirrored his own.
Netflix also announced a wider slate of upcoming Mexican titles, part of what the platform’s VP of Content for Mexico, Carolina Leconte, described as a push to tell “audacious stories that entertain and offer an authentic viewpoint on Mexican reality.” The line-up includes further instalments in the Contraataque universe; Contra el huracán, following two half-brothers surviving Hurricane Otis off the coast of Acapulco; Diego Luna’s Ceniza en la boca, starring Anna Díaz and Adriana Paz, arriving on Netflix in Latin America, Spain and Portugal after premiering at Cannes and touring San Sebastián, Toronto and Sarajevo; 35 días, about a father’s recovery from alcoholism; and Luis Estrada’s El enemigo del pueblo, starring Alfonso Herrera and Cassandra Ciangherotti, set in late-1993 Mexico around a student’s turn towards the Zapatista uprising. Documentaries include El invencible verano de Liliana, adapting Cristina Rivera Garza’s book about her sister’s 1990 murder, directed by Inna Payán and Samuel Kishi; Marcos. Otro mundo es posible, Diego Enrique Osorno’s portrait of the Zapatista movement’s masked spokesman; and the real story of Keiko, the iconic orca, who lived at Mexico City’s Reino Aventura before becoming globally famous in the blockbuster film Free Willy. The documentary is directed by Santiago Fábregas and produced by Mexican companies The Lift and Mezcla.
Netflix greenlit a feature documentary about the life of Keiko, the orca who was a star attraction at a Mexico City theme part before becoming globally beloved in the film Flree Willy and a symbol for the animal rights movement.
Netflix also launched a dedicated Mexican-content hub, “Que México Se Vea”, from 13 August, coinciding with the platform’s 15th anniversary in the country, and announced that its Cantinflas film catalogue (34 titles spanning the comedian’s career) will stream from 1 September through March 2027.
Mexico City Loses a Beloved Scribe
Poet, essayist and scholar Vicente Quirarte died on 11 August in Mexico City, aged 72.
A leading chronicler of the capital, he held Silla XXXI at the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua and had belonged to El Colegio Nacional since 2016, which praised his “monumental legacy” across poetry, essay-writing, drama and prose.
Born in 1954, Quirarte worked as a leather craftsman before studying languages and literature at UNAM, where he later earned his doctorate and taught literature and the history of the capital. He also served as director of the Biblioteca Nacional de México and sat on UNAM’s governing board.
His 1979 debut, Teatro sobre el viento amado, won UNAM’s Punto de Partida prize; he later won the Xavier Villaurrutia prize in 1991 for El ángel es vampiro and the Premio Universidad Nacional in 2012, capping a prolific career of more than 60 books, including Elogio de la calle and Sintaxis del vampiro. In 2024 he received the Premio Nacional de Artes y Literatura. His devotion to gothic and horror writers spanning the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Poe, Lovecraft, Baudelaire and Melville) shaped recurring gothic and defeated-hero motifs in his poetry, alongside his observations of the streets of central Mexico City, where he was born and raised.
At the time of his death, he left unfinished a scholarly edition of Federico Gamboa’s 1903 novel Santa, intended to restore authentic Mexican Spanish over the Spain-adapted text long in circulation; Academia Mexicana de la Lengua director Gonzalo Celorio has said the academy hopes to complete it.
Colegio Nacional president Felipe Leal called him one of Mexico City’s great chroniclers whose legacy would continue inspiring future generations. A poem Quirarte had written, “Para abrirse después”, circulated within hours of his death, urging friends not to mourn but to celebrate his passing:
“Si me toca marcharme antes de tiempo, no se duelan, amigos que me dieron más de lo merecido; alégrense y celebren mi estar con nueva luz entre los vivos.”
Chatter Box
Tomás Parra dies at 89. Painter, sculptor and cultural promoter Tomás Parra has died in Mexico City, his family announced on social media. Born in 1937, Parra was associated with the Generación de la Ruptura, though he never quite fit its mould; critics have described him as the author of “a rupture within La Ruptura” itself. His health had declined following an accident on 11 March 2025, which had left him with reduced mobility.
Parra began painting stage sets under Juan Soriano at sixteen and exhibited young in the movement’s key galleries, but gravitated towards a broader Latin American identity and libertarian collectives such as the Salón Independiente, rather than the internationalist elite that formed around critics including Raquel Tibol. His painting followed a similar path: early abstraction gave way to a highly personal, technically accomplished figuration populated by nightmarish, often abject imagery, closer to Goya and German Expressionism than to his contemporaries’ aesthetic. He maintained he arrived at these forms independently of Surrealism, deducing them from the possibilities of pictorial language rather than the subconscious.
A graduate and later long-time teacher at “La Esmeralda” (Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado), Parra worked closely with figures including Soriano, Octavio Paz, Vicente Rojo and Graciela Iturbide. Tributes from friends and fellow artists have remembered him as a sensitive, generous presence whose work helped shape the course of Mexican contemporary art.
FILAH honours France and Veracruz. The 37th Feria Internacional del Libro de Antropología e Historia (Filah) will take place from 13 to 23 August at Mexico City’s National Anthropology Museum (Museo Nacional de Antropología), with France and Veracruz as guest country and state this year. Highlights include 150 book presentations, a concert by tenor Javier Camarena, dance and film programming, and four temporary exhibitions (notably the loan of the Azcatitlan Codex from the French government). The fair will feature 95 stands, 85 publishing houses, 37 workshops, 35 artistic presentations, 22 panel discussions and an anthropological film festival.
INAH’s Beatriz Quintanar said France’s participation offers a chance to engage with influential intellectual and scientific traditions in anthropology, archaeology and history, while Veracruz brings its own cultural richness, from Mesoamerican roots to contemporary expression. Last year’s fair drew 183,000 visitors, which organisers anticipate surpassing this year.
Angela Davis to join Mexican literati at Filuni. If you need another book fair fix following the Filah, the eighth Feria Internacional del Libro de las y los Universitarios (Filuni) runs 25–30 August at UNAM’s Centro de Exposiciones y Congresos, offering free entry to over 350 activities and more than 25,000 titles from 150 exhibitors. Programme highlights include a conversation on David Toscana’s work with Verónica Murguía and Rosa Beltrán; a tribute to Elena Garro; a homage to Miguel León-Portilla; and a dialogue with American philosopher Angela Davis on abolition and feminism. The fair closes with a tribute to 2025 Premio Cervantes winner Gonzalo Celorio and a conversation between Cristina Rivera Garza and Sara Uribe. Additional offerings include a Spanish cinema cycle via Filmoteca UNAM, chamber music concerts, and workshops ranging from creative writing to tarot and podcast design.
Utopía Elena Poniatowska Amor opens. Mayor Clara Brugada has inaugurated the Utopía Elena Poniatowska Amor in the barrio San Lucas, Coyoacán (the seventh of 100 planned Utopías), naming it in honour of the beloved writer, who attended the opening. Poniatowska described the space as “beautiful, solid and strong”, one that would protect the community and to which residents could give back “what we have in our hearts”. Brugada said the centre aims to nurture “the Elena Poniatowskas of the future”, crediting the writer with showing that literature can enter history and preserve voices that power sought to erase, citing her chronicles of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre and the railway workers’ movement led by Demetrio Vallejo.
Alongside free care for people with Parkinson’s (the only such public service in the city), the centre houses a tortillería run by native-maize producers from Milpa Alta, a climate action room, an immersive exhibition on Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, physiotherapy and speech, occupational and psychological support services, and multisensory spaces. Long-time residents recalled a nearly three-decade struggle over the site, which had housed the El Parián shopping centre in the 1970s and later a bank branch, before standing derelict for years as residents blocked plans for a housing complex and a National Guard barracks there.
Celebrating Mexican cinema. Mexico’s Día del Cine Mexicano runs 15–29 August with 220 screenings across 66 venues in 23 states, organised by Imcine alongside the Cineteca Nacional, independent cinemas, public broadcasters and the nuestrocine.mx platform. The programme, curated around bodies in motion and communal resistance, spans 14 titles including three features and 11 shorts, several with Mexican sign-language interpretation and audio description. A retrospective honours veteran actress María Rojo, screening restored classics including Idilio and El callejón de los milagros. Opening weekend at the Cineteca’s three sites features new works by Fernando Eimbcke and Daniel Giménez Cacho. UNAM’s Filmoteca and the Cinematógrafo del Chopo contribute archival screenings, including a century-old silent film with live musical accompaniment; UNAM entry is free.
Despertares turns 12. Isaac Hernández hosts the 12th edition of Despertares on 29 August at the Auditorio Nacional, gathering leading dancers from around the world (including the Paris Opera, Mariinsky Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and La Scala), many performing in Mexico for the first time, alongside Yoann Bourgeois Art Company, Light Balance, Mr. Kriss and Bailey Graham. Highlights include Bourgeois’s contemporary piece exploring void and gravity via trampoline and ladder, a Light Balance illuminated routine set to Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift, and a Pas de Deux from El Corsario performed by Hernández and Maria Khoreva. The one-night-only show blends classical ballet, jazz, freestyle and tap.
Hernández, a Guadalajara-born Benois de la Danse laureate (2018) currently dancing a five-week season at New York’s Met, described the physical demands of that schedule while emphasising his focus on continual improvement. He credited Despertares‘ growth to shared responsibility between artists and government-as-facilitator, warning against over-reliance on state support, and highlighted the project’s legacy: two generations of young Mexican dancers who received scholarships through the programme have since graduated from institutions including the Royal Ballet and English National Ballet.
Honours for Mexican jazz. Pianist, composer and teacher Francisco Téllez López received the Medalla Bellas Artes 2026 en Música on 12 August at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, honouring over five decades spent performing and teaching jazz in Mexico. INBAL director Alejandra de la Paz Nájera presented the award, calling Téllez a pivotal figure recognised by musicians, critics and academics alike for training today’s generation of musicians. Téllez dedicated the honour to the wider jazz community; jazz promoter Alain Derbez praised his tenacity and welcomed his recent decision to record his music, noting the Cuarteto Mexicano de Jazz remains active. Born in Mexico City in 1945 into a musical family, Téllez founded INBAL’s Jazz Workshop in 1980, forerunner to its jazz degree programme, and has led the Cuarteto Mexicano de Jazz for over 50 years.
Culture Outing
Museo Tamayo — Tamayo, Nieto, Toledo: Los años en París
This exhibition (running from 20 August to February 2027) brings together works by Rufino Tamayo, Rodolfo Nieto and Francisco Toledo from their years living in Paris. A key theme of the exhibition is how Rufino Tamayo became the guide of a generation of Mexican artists who developed their own ideas and integrated Mexico into international artistic movements.
Culture Conversation
De “Las dos Fridas” a la modernidad: La nueva lectura del acervo del MAM
This episode of INBAL’s podcast features MAM director Marisol Argüelles and co-curator Raúl Rueda discussing La colección. Redes y trayectorias del arte mexicano, 1910–1950, featuring 116 works by 57 artists including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Remedios Varo. They explore the museum’s collection as a permanent anchor for assessing post-revolutionary Mexican art and the exhibition’s non-chronological curatorial approach connecting artworks to documents and photographs.