Is AI to Blame for UNAM Admissions Crisis?
The entry exam scandal that has embroiled UNAM in its most significant crisis in years is highlighting the urgency of questions about artificial intelligence and education more broadly, and lands amid a wider debate the Mexican government has opened about technology’s role in young people’s lives.
This is the first year that Mexico’s premier public university has gone fully online for its admissions exams, aiming to make the process more accessible for students across the country. The stakes are high: the acceptance rate via the exam runs at roughly 10–14%, gating access to what is effectively free tuition at a globally reputable institution that has proven to be an engine of upward social mobility. UNAM fell out of the QS World Rankings’ global top 100 in the most recent edition, dropping from 94th to 136th place, though it remained in the top five universities in Latin America and second-best in Mexico after Tec de Monterrey, with the highest academic-reputation score in the region.
The controversy began when results published 17 July showed a marked jump in high scores for competitive degrees such as Medicine and Law: where most 2025 applicants scored below half of the exam’s 120 multiple-choice questions, a substantial share of this year’s roughly 158,700 applicants scored well above historical averages. Deputy Higher Education Secretary Ricardo Villanueva attributed the anomaly to the online format and the specific questions used, though the university has not ruled out misconduct: it has already annulled about 3,000 exams (2% of the total) for unspecified rule violations, filed a criminal complaint against companies allegedly selling fraudulent exam services, and viral tutorials have circulated online promoting cheating methods ranging from identity impersonation to AI tools. The university suspended undergraduate enrolment and installed a 16-member technical committee, chaired by Eduardo Bárzana García, to review the results.
Of the 50,113 places on offer this year, 28,151 are guaranteed through UNAM’s regulated pass system for its own preparatory-school graduates, leaving 21,962 places contested via the exam now under scrutiny. Protesters at Ciudad Universitaria have called for a repeat exam, while public opinion splits between a full in-person retest and a narrower review limited to degrees with irregular score patterns. Rector Leonardo Lomelí has said the university “has to stand with those who studied, who prepared, who sought in the entrance exam the opportunity to access higher education.”
The technical committee’s recommendation came on Friday: a mandatory in-person “control exam,” to be held as soon as possible so as not to disrupt the academic calendar. Lomelí called the measure appropriate to correct the irregularities and ensure accepted students have the required knowledge without having gained an unfair advantage, and apologised to applicants for the extra test, while urging them to trust in their preparation, saying it would only confirm their place. Dates and venues were due to be announced within hours, alongside a fuller report detailing the platform’s specific failures.
The control exam won’t be applied to all 158,700 original test-takers, but to two groups specifically: those already notified of their acceptance, and those who scored at or above the historical minimum needed for admission to the same programme, campus and format between 2021 and 2026, despite not being selected this time — effectively giving a second chance to anyone whose original score suggested they’d been unfairly squeezed out by the irregularities. The exam will be held in person, in multiple versions to accommodate the volume of applicants across sessions, with final admission places determined solely by this new result, superseding the original online scores entirely. The Ministry of Education said it remains in contact with UNAM’s rectorate but stressed that, in line with the university’s autonomy, the investigation and any resulting decisions rest exclusively with the institution itself.
Raúl Trejo Delarbre, a researcher emeritus in Mexico’s national research system, wrote in Nexos that the crisis results from the university placing excessive faith in a single technology on both sides of the same test. UNAM had contracted a private firm, Territorium Life (which had previously run the university’s high-school entrance exam), to manage the platform and its security mechanisms: cameras and microphones had to remain constantly on, with an AI system meant to verify identity, monitor surroundings, and flag anomalous behaviour. He argues this ran into two separate problems; insufficient material conditions among applicants (borrowed computers, unstable connections, the requirement to sit motionless for the exam’s duration) and, separately, no shortage of applicants willing to exploit the system’s vulnerabilities. Comparing 2025 and 2026 results by faculty, he shows the anomaly was systemic: among Medicine applicants, the share scoring 100+ of 120 rose from 9% to 29.7%; for Law, from 3.7% to 18.9%; for Actuarial Science, from 9.7% to 30.4% — a pattern repeated across nearly every programme, pushing cut-off scores sharply higher throughout. This isn’t a simple morality tale about AI, he contends, but points to the limits of automated proctoring.
Mexico is of course not alone in this predicament as globally, education systems increasingly embrace AI as a tool, but worry when students enthusiastically do the same.
In Latin America, Brazil’s ENEM remains fully invigilated, with the national testing body, INEP, instead using AI defensively — simulating candidate profiles during question pre-testing to reduce the number of people involved in setting the exam and cut the risk of leaks. Chile’s PAES is likewise proctored on-site, and its exam authority, DEMRE, has directed its AI concerns elsewhere: protecting its question bank from being scraped to train outside AI models, rather than policing live cheating during the exam itself. Set against that backdrop, UNAM’s decision to run a single, high-volume, first-time remote exam, open for weeks, with no device-screening layer was a risky move from the outset.
The case also lands amid a broader domestic reckoning over technology’s place in Mexican schools. Education Secretary Mario Delgado noted internet use among Mexicans aged six and up exceeds 70%, rising to 90% among adolescents, while UNESCO’s Mexico representative cited global data showing one in three internet users is a minor, and that 83% of parents worry their children spend too much time on screens. UNAM psychologist Cimenna Chao Rebolledo added that eight in ten Mexican students now use generative AI, with one in eleven using it for emotional support or guidance.
President Sheinbaum has announced there will be regional forums aimed at building consensus on regulating minors’ use of digital platforms and has floated a possible national ban on phones in primary schools, noting the measure already exists in some states. The Estado de México, for example, made reforms to the state’s education law in May with backing from Morena, the PRI and the PAN, to regulate mobile phones and other devices in basic education and address AI and digital platforms more broadly, committing the state education authority to promoting “responsible, ethical and gradual” use of AI among teachers and students (how this is to be enforced is not entirely clear).
UNESCO Has Questions about Calakmul
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee reviewed the conservation status of the Antigua Ciudad Maya y Bosques Tropicales Protegidos de Calakmul, Campeche — Mexico’s only mixed (cultural and natural) World Heritage property — at its 48th session held in Busan, South Korea. The Committee postponed a full evaluation to its 49th session in 2027, seeking further information from the Mexican government on the cumulative impact of infrastructure linked to the Tren Maya, including Section 7 of the railway, the Hotel Mundo Maya Calakmul, and the CATVI visitor centre.
Mexico’s conservation report, prepared by Conanp, detailed 35 mitigation programmes tied to these projects (12 for the Tren Maya, 14 for the hotel, 9 for the CATVI) and argued that Section 7 touches only the reserve’s buffer zone, not its protected core, and that visitor numbers remain well below capacity. On the hotel, Mexico maintains further expansion is barred by new zoning within the reserve.
A recurring sticking point is UNESCO’s repeated request for a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) to measure cumulative impact across projects, which Mexico considers already satisfied by its project-by-project Environmental Impact Statements (MIAs). ICOMOS and the IUCN continue to view this as insufficient, arguing MIAs cannot substitute for integrated cumulative analysis, and that the absence of an SEA mechanism in Mexican law does not exempt the country from carrying one out.
Mexico says its report was submitted on time, by the 1 February 2026 deadline, and summarised a joint UNESCO–ICOMOS/UICN monitoring mission (2–6 September 2025, supported financially and logistically by Mexico) assessing the Tren Maya and related infrastructure. However, the mission’s technical report was not finalised in time for the Committee’s working document, pushing its conclusions to the 49th session.
That timing gap caused friction: Conanp and INAH issued a joint statement rejecting any suggestion Mexico had failed to submit complete, timely documentation, attributing the delay to the mission’s own reporting process. Former INAH director Diego Prieto has said there was “no damage, none at all” from the railway or hotel works.
Mexico must submit an updated mitigation and monitoring plan before 1 February 2027. The decision does not change Calakmul’s status or place it on the List of World Heritage in Danger but keeps the site under active scrutiny. The same session also reviewed the Gulf of California islands, El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar, and the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.
A Leonora Carrington on Facebook Marketplace?
In 2020, a Mexico City public servant, Jesús Rodríguez (a pseudonym), bought a gouache on Facebook Marketplace for 2,000 pesos after searching “gatos” and finding a black-ground image of a wild blue cat flanked by branches and stars. He gave it to his wife, a cat lover; she recognised the signature on the piece — L. Carrington — and the couple began investigating. The seller, who had inherited the piece from his father, said he had no information about the work’s origins.
The Fundación Leonora Carrington, run by the artist’s son Gabriel Weisz, told Rodríguez it lacked the means to authenticate the work and directed him to the Galería de Arte Mexicano (GAM), a gallery founded in 1935 by Carolina Amor and now run by Alejandra Reygadas and Mariana Pérez Amor, with an artist list that has included Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Carrington herself. After a three-week study, GAM issued a signed certificate identifying the piece, titled Chapeau chaud pour le ski (1952), as part of Carrington’s Paris hat designs for the Galería Pierre.
Attempted sales stalled repeatedly. Morton, recommended by the Fundación, offered 460,000 pesos (about $26,000), then 480,000; Rodríguez held out, believing the work worth two to three times more. Sotheby’s Mexico, via vice-president Tatiana Peralta, valued it at $180,000 for a New York surrealism sale, citing the GAM certificate — until the Fundación blocked authorisation and Peralta stopped responding. A deal with Subastas en México, which appraised the piece at $125,000, collapsed the same way; when Rodríguez sued that house for breach of contract in 2022 and lost, it was in that defence that the Fundación first claimed the work was inauthentic, a reversal Rodríguez disputes given GAM’s certification.
The Fundación, created in 2015 and launched in 2016, has been largely inactive since, with no fixed address and a website that hasn’t been updated since 2020.
Rodríguez has since filed a $1-million moral-damages suit against the Fundación in Mexico City civil court over the two blocked sales, though serving Weisz took two years and three attempts before his wife, Patricia Argomedo, accepted the papers. Meanwhile, Rodríguez continues to collect art and seems unwilling to admit defeat in what he has described as a David vs Goliath story.
Carrington’s legacy has produced another surreal subplot. The UAM bought her Roma Norte home from her son Pablo Weisz in 2017 and spent roughly 12 million pesos acquiring and restoring it. By 2021, the Casa Estudio Leonora Carrington was supposedly ready to open, complete with more than 8,600 personal objects and archival materials, although weirdly for a museum on an artist none of the paintings for which she is famous were there (presumably the Weisz family wanted any paintings left over for themselves.). But it never did open. After years of disagreement over staffing and responsibility, the UAM announced in 2024 that the museum would remain closed and become a ‘research centre’ instead.
Thus, while a private owner is suing for the right to have one possible Carrington accepted and sold, the capital’s publicly funded Carrington museum sits unavailable to the public. The house can currently be visited mainly through an online ‘virtual tour’ which is in reality a picture of one room with some links to the mundane descriptions of the unimpressive artifacts. (The oven was a gift from her son Pablo…) Considering her Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted in 1945, was sold for $28.5mn back in 2024, it is a rather sad, but maybe suitably surreal outcome, and maybe one that the notoriously private Leonora would not have minded about too much.
From a Mexico City Hospital to the Booker Prize Longlist
Mexican-British-American writer Chloe Aridjis has been named to the 2026 Booker Prize longlist for The Shadow of the Object, her fourth novel, in which an encounter at a Mexico City hospital sparks a life-changing friendship. The judges praised the book as a mysterious, free-spirited work moving between the real and the oneiric, built around the idea that deeper truths can surface in shadow.
Born in New York in 1971 to Mexican poet and diplomat Homero Aridjis, and American translator and environmental activist Betty Aridjus (Ferber), Chloe Aridjis spent much of her early childhood in the Netherlands where her father was a diplomat, followed by her teens at the ASF in CDMX, Harvard undergrad, Oxford DPhil, and time in Berlin. She has long lived in London — though her fiction remains closely tied to Mexico, art, memory and the fantastical. Her debut, Book of Clouds, won France’s Prix du Premier Roman Étranger; Asunder followed and then came Sea Monsters, que took the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2020. No Latin American writer has yet won the Booker. Back in 2015 she co-curated an exhibition on Leonora Carrington at the Tate Liverpool.
Her sister, Eva Aridjis, is an award-winning filmmaker whose brilliant latest documentary, Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus, tells the extraordinary story of the singer behind the cult song featured in The Silence of the Lambs. Q Lazzarus vanished from public view for more than two decades before Aridjis tracked her down and began filming her life. The documentary premiered at the Morelia International Film Festival in 2024, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. Eva’s earlier film Niños de la Calle also won Best Feature Documentary at Morelia and received two Ariel nominations, while La Santa Muerte, narrated by Gael García Bernal, won Best Documentary at the Trieste Latin American Film Festival.
According to a 2020 profile by novelist Carlos Fonseca in the Los Angeles Review of Books, her father Homero Aridjis ranks among the greatest living writers in the Spanish language. Across more than 50 books of poetry, novels, essays and plays, he has built a body of work that blends myth, history, dreams and environmental themes, while largely avoiding the irony and metafiction associated with much contemporary Latin American literature. Fonseca argues that Aridjis has created “a poetics of nature,” giving voice to landscapes, animals and the environment decades before climate change became a central literary concern. Beyond literature, Aridjis founded the Grupo de los Cien, bringing together leading writers, artists and scientists to campaign for environmental protection. The group’s work helped secure protections for Mexico’s monarch butterflies, sea turtles and the gray whale sanctuary in Baja California, while also blocking imports of milk contaminated after the Chernobyl disaster. As president of PEN International and later Mexico’s ambassador to UNESCO, Aridjis has combined literary hyper-productivity with political and environmental activism, becoming a much admired if not always understood Latin American public intellectual.
Chloe Aridjis is one of 13 authors on this year’s “Booker Dozen,” chosen from 163 eligible novels published in the UK and Ireland between October 2025 and September 2026. Judging chair Mary Beard called the selection “dynamite,” and the list spans settings from a remote Scottish island to a Zurich assisted-suicide clinic, 1980s Jamaica and post-apocalyptic Kent. Fellow longlistees include past winners Douglas Stuart (John of John) and Marlon James (The Disappearers), alongside Elizabeth Strout, recognised for The Things We Never Say. High-profile omissions include Maggie O’Farrell, Ann Patchett and Julian Barnes.
The shortlist of six will be announced on 22 September, each receiving £2,500, with the overall winner named on 9 November at a London ceremony and awarded £50,000. Last year’s prize went to British-Hungarian author David Szalay for Flesh.
The Mexican Revolution in Colour
La bola had its world premiere this week in the Official Selection of the Festival Internacional de Cine Guanajuato (GIFF), the culmination of a project from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Cinematográficas (ENAC-UNAM) that uses artificial intelligence to reinterpret archival footage of the Mexican Revolution. Directed and written by Alfonso Coronel and produced by Gabriela Ivette Sandoval, the 95-minute documentary began as a master’s thesis project in documentary film, for which Coronel first presented fifteen minutes of test material; the idea took full shape after he won ENAC’s Óperas Primas support programme in March 2023.
The film draws on the Filmoteca de la UNAM’s Colecciones Cinematográficas Testimoniales de la Revolución Mexicana (1898–1932), supplemented with extracts from period and classic Mexican films — including El automóvil gris, El compadre Mendoza, Memorias de un mexicano, Vámonos con Pancho Villa, Río escondido y El tesoro de Pancho Villa — drawn in part with support from Fundación Azteca, alongside interviews with historians and INAH material.
The technical core of the project is Adelita, free, open-source software built over roughly a year by Emilio Morales Juárez and Gibrán Fuentes Pineda of the UNAM’s Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas and intended to remain publicly available after the film’s release. Early tests with conventional AI models (trained mostly on non-Mexican datasets) rendered subjects too light-skinned and coloured uniforms incorrectly; the team hand-coloured thousands of frames to retrain the system, with every scene subsequently reviewed by military-history and costume specialists Edwin Álvarez and Pedro Celis, so that, in Coronel’s framing, the AI served historical knowledge rather than substituting for it.
Beyond restoring colour, the filmmakers say a central aim was to bring forward faces and populations typically left out of the frame or pushed to the margins in this period of footage — among them the soldaderas. The documentary features testimony from an extensive roster of historians, including Soledad Loaeza, Lorenzo Meyer Cossío, Salvador Rueda, Josefina Mac Gregor Gárate, Roger Bartra, Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Felipe Ávila, Alejandra Moreno Toscano, Gabriela Cano and Ángel Miquel, with narration by Yalitza Aparicio. Dramatised sequences were performed by a cast including Orlando Moguel, Óscar Ixta and Omar Ramírez. Following its GIFF debut, La bola will continue to national and international festivals, with further screenings planned at cultural venues and universities, ahead of an eventual digital release.
The Gelman Collection Saga Goes On..and On
July brought at least two more instalments, both in Nexos.
The first came from constitutional lawyer Ismael Reyes Retana, who approached the affair with the assurance of the successful corporate lawyer, and former White & Case Mexico head no less, he is. His argument was straightforward. The Gelman Collection remains privately owned. Mexican law allows private owners to hold works classified as artistic monuments. The INBAL can authorise temporary export, and Santander can manage the collection without acquiring it. On this reading, the legal structure is ordinary, the permissions are valid, and much of the public outrage belongs to politics, ideology and cultural nationalism.
Reyes Retana also questioned Mexico’s restrictive system for protecting artistic heritage. Countries such as France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have allowed major works to circulate internationally, helping their artists reach global audiences. Mexico’s rules, in his view, can leave important art hidden in private homes or warehouses, depress the local market and encourage opaque transactions. He argued that the law permits temporary export and may even allow permanent export in some cases, despite regulations and presidential declarations that say otherwise. The Supreme Court is now considering a related case backed by the Del Valle family involving the permanent export of a Frida Kahlo work, which could make the debate even longer.
Four days later, the art critic María Minera replied in the same publication. She is part of the self-appointed Defendamos la Colección Gelman, the group challenging the agreement among the INBAL, Santander and the Zambrano family. Minera said Reyes Retana had described a position the collective does not hold. Its members accept that the collection is private and that works can travel. Their concern centres on an agreement she says is described by Santander officials as long-term, renewable and effectively permanent, with the collection becoming a central feature of the bank’s new cultural centre in Spain. (Except Santander does not say that – or no longer says that – as far as we can tell.)
Minera argued that Mexico’s artistic-monument declarations matter because they place public duties around privately owned works. She cited European governments that block exports, exercise purchase rights and require private owners to lend significant works to public institutions. Those countries also built major public collections over generations. Mexico, she wrote, has largely stopped buying art for its museums, leaving institutions with thin budgets and collections that have barely grown in decades.
Her larger complaint concerned transparency. The collective wants the INBAL to explain why it approved a five-year export with possible extensions and how the agreement protects public access. Minera also criticised the government’s response to the group, including public attacks from the president’s morning press conference. She cited the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, which called for clarity around the collection’s future.
In short, Reyes Retana focuses on the law, and says nothing illegal nor untoward has been done. Minera focuses on alleged lack of transparency, and nationalist disillusionment that the works are moving to Spain and not staying in Mexico in a public space, presumably to be bought by the Mexican government.
By this point, the Gelman affair is worthy of a Netflix drama. A final recap for those not up to speed on this season: Jacques Gelman made much of his fortune producing Cantinflas films during Mexican cinema’s golden age, and he and his wife Natasha used part of that money to assemble several major art collections. Their European modern collection comprised about 80 paintings, drawings and sculptures by artists including Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Dalí, Miró, Modigliani and Renoir. Natasha bequeathed it to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1998, along with money for its upkeep. At the time, it was the largest gift of modern art the Met had received.
The Mexican collection – the Frida Kahlo’s, etc- meanwhile has been mired in litigation ever since Natasha died in 1998. After Jacques died in 1986, Natasha named her close friend the American curator Robert Littman as executor of her estate, and the beneficiary (although this has been disputed). Her death triggered years of litigation among relatives and Littman, amid disputes over the validity of the will and whether the works were meant to remain together in Mexico. Littman won the litigation, secured control, and later sold much of it to the Zambrano family, it is thought with loans from Santander, secured in turn by the art and a long-term management agreement.
The decision by Santander and the Zambrano family for the collection to launch the September inauguration of a new cultural centre in Spain, Faro Santander — a Leonora Carrington show is also one of the opening attractions — and remain for a long or short period following this year’s blockbuster exhibition at Mexico’s Modern Art Museum has led to the latest drama. The cast of characters spans from the President, the Minister of Culture, the Supreme Court, Santander the huge Spanish bank, the wealthy Zambrano family of Monterrey, seemingly all the country’s top art critics and influencers, international museum committees, the New York times, the Financial Times and many more local and foreign newspapers. Cantinflas might be having a chuckle.
Chatter Box
Canta y No Llores. The second edition of “México Canta”, a binational (Mexico and US) singing contest for young Mexicans aged 18 to 29, is underway. Organised by Mexico’s Culture Ministry, it aims to promote music centred on peace rather than violence and addiction.
This year’s edition focuses on regional Mexican music, with most semifinalists (seven from the US and seven from Mexico) so far favouring ballads. Semifinals take place 23 August in Los Angeles and 30 August in Mazatlán, each selecting three finalists by public vote. A recap broadcast on 6 September adds a seventh finalist, ahead of the grand final on 13 September at the Auditorio Nacional and a winners’ presentation on 15 September in the Zócalo.
Last year’s inaugural edition drew roughly 15,000 applicants and closed on 5 October 2025 at the Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris. Sergio Maya won Best Performance for Quiero soñar; Carmen María González took Best Composition for Tanto para nada; and Galia Siurob received the jury’s special recognition. Winners receive a recording contract and an LP.
Pay Raise for Culture Workers. Mexico’s Culture Ministry will apply a 13% pay rise to the salary scales of 2,600 unionised workers in its central sector, on top of the general 4% increase already applied for 2026 — bringing total gains to 17% by year’s end. Culture Secretary Claudia Curiel de Icaza said the adjustment, the first retabulation of its kind since the ministry’s creation in 2015, addresses a decade-long wage gap left after Conaculta’s separation from the Education Ministry, during which affected workers fell behind counterparts at INAH and INBAL. The increase will be made permanent under Chapter 1000 of the federal budget. Curiel also announced plans to gradually regularise roughly 8,000 workers currently employed under Chapter 3000 fee-based contracts, some in place for nearly three decades.
Two new museums open in Yucatán. Mexico’s Culture Ministry and the Yucatán state government inaugurated two new museums joining the National Institute of Anthropology and History’s (INAH) network of 165 sites.
The first, the Museo Arqueológico del Puuc, opened in Kabah, an ancient Maya city on the Puuc Route in the municipality of Santa Elena, 101km south of Mérida. The museum displays over 200 pre-Hispanic pieces drawn from two decades of INAH excavations across the Puuc region, which encompasses Uxmal, Sayil, Labná and Xlapak.
The building’s design echoes Uxmal’s Cuadrángulo de las Monjas, organised around a central space representing the vernacular Maya house, with pathways to the four cardinal points. Kabah is known for its Palacio de los Mascarones (Codz Pop), decorated with over 250 masks of the rain god Chaac.
The second site, the Museo Ichkaantijoo and visitor centre at Dzibilchaltún, near Mérida, holds 304 archaeological pieces from the ancient Ichkaantijoo settlement.
Ballet in Texcoco. The ninth Festival Danzatlán returns 13–16 August at the Centro Cultural Mexiquense Bicentenario in Texcoco, State of Mexico, with 19 activities across seven venues. Ballerina Elisa Carrillo, who directs Stuttgart’s John Cranko Schule, headlines with performances of Transparente (choreographed by Ronald Savkovic) and the third act of John Cranko’s Onegin during the “Elisa y Amigos” gala, alongside international guests including Tatiana Melnik and Motomi Kiyota of the Hungarian National Ballet, the Royal Ballet’s Funi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov, Stuttgart Ballet soloist Martí Paixá, and American choreographer Braylon Browner.
The festival opens with “Pregúntale a Elisa,” a Q&A for young dancers, and includes open rehearsals on 14 and 15 August. The Academia de Danza del Bosque will stage Swan Lake on 13 August. Danzatlán closes 16 August with Carrillo’s free open class for children and young dancers, featuring live music.
A Diverse Lineup for Hay Festival Querétaro. The 11th Hay Festival Querétaro runs 4–6 September with over 100 participants from Mexico, Latin America, Europe and the Global South, spanning literature, artificial intelligence, geopolitics and journalism. Headliners include Booker laureate Kiran Desai, presenting The Inheritance of Loss and her latest novel The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, partly set in Mexico; British writers Gwendoline Riley and Eley Williams; and Ugandan-born poet Nick Makoha. Mexican voices include Emiliano Monge, Liliana Blum, Martín Solares and linguist Yásnaya Elena Aguilar, who will discuss narrative authorship with Colombian writer Cristina Bendek as part of the Otras historias del Archivo de Indias project. Other sessions address Mexico’s disappearances crisis, AI’s redefinition of humanity with philosopher Carissa Véliz, and urbanist Carlos Moreno’s “15-minute city” concept. The festival extends to Huimilpan, Colón and a new Hay Festival Presenta space in Morelia, with tickets at ten pesos, free for students, seniors and people with disabilities.
Italy at the FIL. Italy will be guest of honour at the 40th Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara (28 November–6 December), sending a delegation of 61 authors led by novelists Alessandro Baricco and Federica Manzon, alongside a programme marking ten years since Umberto Eco’s death.
The fair also marks the Spanish-language launch of Feltrinelli Editores, which is anchoring its new catalogue around Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli — who writes in English and Spanish and is published in 30 languages — with her novel Principio, medio, fin. Editor José Hamad called her “one of the great authors of world literature” today, pairing her book with a reissue of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago to bridge Feltrinelli’s history with its future. Baricco’s essay on classical music and Richard Ford’s En palabras sencillas round out the launch titles.
Culture Outing
YUPICA: Eikō – Sombra Aromática at Museo del Perfume
If you’re intrigued by “looking with your nose”, the Museo del Perfume is presenting the immersive exhibit Eikō (Aromatic Shadow) by Japanese artist Yupica through 25 October. Combining resin painting, video art, sound design and scent installations, Yupica explores a concept he calls techno-animism — the idea that humans, living organisms and technological systems share a common sensory dimension.
Culture Conversation
“En la cocina las mezclas se valen y se deben hacer”: Pati Jinich on Ciberdiálogos with León Krauze
“The Mexico I know and love wasn’t well known in the United States,” says chef and TV personality Pati Jinich, whose series “Pati’s Mexican Table” has run on PBS since 2011. In this interview, Jinich emphasises the importance of food as an ambassador for culture, and as common ground in times of political polarisation.