Mexico Culture Chatter, Aug. 29, 2026

End of Era

Ediciones Era, one of Mexico’s most influential independent publishers, announced its closure on 17 August after 66 years in business, citing a steady fall in sales. A day later the closure was revised to “reducing operations to a minimum”, though sources close to the company describe the underlying reality as bleak, with mounting debt and declining revenue.

Era’s origin story sounds like a fairy tale for bibliophiles: it began as a bookshop and small press run by Catalan editor Tomás Espresate, who had fled Franco’s Spain and settled in Mexico City, where his children and other young Spanish exiles printed anti-Franco propaganda. On 5 August 1960, Ediciones Era was born, its name both an allusion to great historical epochs and an acronym of its founders’ surnames: Espresate, Rojo and (José Hernández) Azorín. Over the following decades, the house’s books came to represent Mexico’s leftist intellectual culture and modernised the country’s publishing aesthetic under co-founder Vicente Rojo, a leading figure in the “Generación de Ruptura” artistic movement.

Era’s debut title was La batalla de Cuba, historian Fernando Benítez’s sympathetic account of the Cuban revolution, published mere months after Castro’s victory with a cover designed by Rojo; writing in Letras Libres, critic Federico Guzmán Rubio notes its first print run of 5,000 copies sold out within a month. That founding book, he argues, already contained the seeds of the imprints that would define Era’s early success: Ancho Mundo for world political affairs, Serie Popular for Marxist theory, and the more expansive Biblioteca Era for literature across every genre, later joined by the more intimate, Mexican-focused Alacena. Guzmán Rubio situates Era within a wider regional current (alongside fellow left-leaning publishers such as Mexico’s own Siglo XXI, Argentina’s Centro Editor de América Latina, Uruguay’s Arca and Cuba’s Casa de las Américas) that fused politics with literary ambition.

The catalogue of more than 500 titles grew to include classics by Elena Poniatowska, José Emilio Pacheco, Sergio Pitol, Carlos Monsiváis, Salvador Elizondo, Juan García Ponce, Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo, alongside contributions from Paz, who worked with Rojo on experimental projects including visual poetry discs. Several Era titles became staples of Mexican school curricula, among them Fuentes’s Aura and Poniatowska’s La noche de Tlatelolco, her testimonial account of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre; the house’s poetry list, meanwhile, ran from Fabio Morábito and Antonio Deltoro to Coral Bracho and David Huerta, and gave Argentine poet Juan Gelman a home in exile. Novelist Verónica Murguía, an Era author and Huerta’s widow, called the publisher part of “our sentimental education”.

Despite its illustrious roster, Era’s sales have fallen to roughly a quarter of pre-pandemic levels, a casualty of a book market increasingly concentrated around short-term profitability, in which backlist titles (Era’s particular strength) are dropped if they don’t sell quickly enough.

Writing in Reforma, Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez called Era’s decline nothing less than a catastrophe for Mexican culture, a loss of one of the richest sources of literary conversation in recent decades. He invoked Roberto Calasso’s idea that a publishing house is ultimately writing a single book, built from the sum of its titles. Era’s legacy is as much visual as literary: Rojo’s design direction gave the books not only striking covers but a distinctive, nearly square format for easier reading, with asterisks and typographic play animating the pages. Pacheco used to joke that he wrote his books so that Rojo could design the covers; he credited the designer with teaching readers how to see.

The announcement drew an outpouring from Mexico’s literary community. Writers and intellectuals described the closure as a profound loss, several comparing it to a death in the family. Novelist Julián Herbert linked the collapse to a broader “Uberisation” of publishing and reading habits, while David Toscana noted that Era had sold its longtime home in Mexico City’s Roma neighbourhood some time ago as financial pressure mounted. Reaction has not been uniformly elegiac, however: some, including author Eduardo Antonio Parra, praised Era’s old-school rigour and loyalty to its authors, while others argued the house might have survived by diversifying with more commercial titles or younger writers. Murguía called that criticism partly fair, partly unjust, noting that Era continued to publish contemporary authors alongside its historic catalogue. Author Alberto Ruy Sánchez recalled a line from Marcelo Uribe, who led the house in recent decades after succeeding Rojo, that might serve as its epitaph: he had never published a book he was ashamed of.

President Claudia Sheinbaum addressed the news briefly at her morning press conference on 18 August, saying she would see how the government could help, and asked culture secretary Claudia Curiel to contact Era’s leadership to explore support options. That conversation began taking shape on 21 August, when representatives of the state-owned Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) and Era met to discuss possible collaboration.

The meeting concluded with three measures to be finalised over the following week. First, FCE will purchase Era’s remaining warehouse stock to distribute free to reading clubs and libraries. Era’s titles will also be featured at a discount at FCE-Educal bookshops nationwide during the Fondo’s Venta Nocturna on 3 September. The two houses are also evaluating an initial list of 12 titles from Era’s historic catalogue for co-edition, pending agreement from rights-holders and authors; if approved, FCE would print them before the end of the year, with the new collection distributed from January 2027.

The Complejo Cultural Los Pinos will host a special Era sale on 29 and 30 August, from 10am to 6pm at the venue’s tennis court in Bosque de Chapultepec, with free admission. The sale will offer first editions, author-signed copies and out-of-print titles, alongside discounted stock and Era-branded merchandise.

Perhaps a fairy-tale happy ending for the publishing house is still possible.

Online to offline

A meme has escaped from the digital to the physical world again, this time in plazas and streets across Mexico and Latin America, in a Gen Z trend that, according to one El País headline, “scares Millennials and Boomers” (who seem confused more than alarmed). “Aura farming,” or farmeando aura, borrows from gamer culture, where farming means repeating an action to rack up resources or points, while “aura” signals charisma, style or perceived status. The concept traces back to the Japanese anime Solo Leveling, where a character’s swagger made the term go viral.

Taken offline, this translates into pairs of contestants squaring off, deploying poses, stares and viral gestures while a crowd decides who “farmed” more aura. Commentators have likened the battles to the breakdance duels of decades past, though with a more performative, less competitive edge.

Like anything viral, finding the source and path of the contagion can be difficult, but it’s spreading fast. A young Argentine known as El Kakas recently won a televised aura tournament there, and the format has since crossed the Atlantic to Spain, with battles already held in Barcelona and a first major duel staged in Zaragoza. In Mexico, UNAM students and content creators staged a battle at Ciudad Universitaria on 21 August, followed by others at the Palacio de Bellas Artes esplanade and Parque México in the Condesa (with a 3,000-peso prize), where Spanish pop star Rosalía (in town for shows as part of her Lux Tour) surprised the crowd when she stopped to watch. A mass battle is now planned for the Monumento a la Revolución on 30 August. The phenomenon has also spread to Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Mexico City mayor Clara Brugada has welcomed the trend, framing it as young people reclaiming public space.

A cave in Chiapas, a stela in Veracruz

INAH director Omar Vázquez Herrera presented updates last week about recent archaeological findings, including Cueva del Mundo Zoque, a cave 20 metres underground and 100 metres long in Cintalapa, Chiapas. Local guide Jairo Díaz alerted INAH to the site after a January report; archaeologists excavated between January and June, recording 13 offerings and 179 pre-Hispanic pieces, vessels and human and animal figures dated to the Late Classic period (600–900 CE). The cave is believed to have been a pilgrimage site where the Zoque prayed for rain and good harvests: its stalactites and stalagmites were deliberately carved into human figures and the jaws of the “earth monster,” with iconography including jaguars, monkeys, owls and ceiba-thorn motifs. A standout piece is a censer bearing a quincunce, the five-point symbol for the four cardinal directions, with a 32-centimetre serpent-carved handle. INAH plans further LiDAR and 3D scanning, plus lab analysis of the recovered urns and vessels, with Chiapas’s Secretaría de Turismo, the federal Secretaría de Cultura and Conanp.

In Coatepec, Veracruz, archaeologists have recently uncovered a civic-ceremonial platform and monolithic stela near the 2,000-year-old site of Campo Viejo. The 30-by-12-metre platform, built from gypsum-finished limestone slabs, bears circular stones and square motifs unusual for the region. The 1.88-metre andesite stela depicts two seated elite figures receiving a liquid offering from a divine entity, interpreted as a fertility ritual; though Maya-influenced in style, specialists attribute it to a distinct local Gulf Coast culture rather than the area’s usual Totonac tradition. A preliminary Protoclassic dating (200 BCE–200 CE) awaits carbon-14 confirmation. The dig, triggered by a land-use permit request, also yielded carbonised maize, ceramic vessels, a greenstone bead fragment and cinnabar pigments.

The find has become a local flashpoint. Residents are urging INAH to halt construction on the private San Lucas and La Trinidad developments where the remains emerged, warning that a pre-Hispanic city spanning up to 50 hectares could be built over — pointing to earlier finds nearby that were reported but ultimately paved over regardless. Developers plan 400 homes on the San Lucas plot; INAH has restricted work to a 20-by-30-metre containment area, which campaigners call inadequate.

México Canta

México Canta 2026, the binational singing competition run by Mexico’s Culture Ministry, has been building momentum through August with a US semifinal, a new streaming partnership and an expanding national footprint ahead of its 13 September final at the Auditorio Nacional.

The competition’s first semifinal took place at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles on 23 August, where seven Mexican-American singers performed, with the winners chosen by public vote. Tiffany Galaviz, Joshua Soto and Rosalba Valdez advanced to the final.

Los Tigres del Norte, whose own career began in the United States, performed as special guests alongside Emmanuel Cortés, with singer Majo Aguilar hosting; band members Jorge and Hernán Hernández spoke of wanting to give younger, especially Mexican-American, artists opportunities they themselves lacked when starting out decades ago.

Pressed on the government’s stance toward corridos that glorify crime, Curiel de Icaza said the ministry opposes censorship of art but rejects narratives that normalise misogyny, discrimination or violence “as a life choice” while stressing that young performers in the competition remain free to sing what they choose.

The competition drew large numbers on both sides of the border: 5,761 entrants in the United States and 10,528 in Mexico, the latter narrowed to seven finalists representing Yucatán, Morelos, Estado de México, Nuevo León (two finalists), Coahuila and Jalisco. Mexico’s own semifinal takes place on 30 August at the Teatro Ángela Peralta in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, after which its winners will join the Los Angeles contingent, plus one further wildcard, for the 13 September final.

Two days before the Los Angeles semifinal, Spotify formalised its involvement by signing a strategic partnership with the Culture Ministry, Canal 22 and the Mexican Council of Music. Under the deal, Spotify will build a dedicated México Canta playlist and run masterclasses for the competition’s 14 semifinalists, connecting them to the wider Mexican and US music industries. Spotify’s Karen Duque noted that Mexico entered the world’s ten largest music markets for the first time this year, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, with regional Mexican music consumption on the platform growing more than 500 per cent domestically and over 450 per cent globally in the past five years; Mexican artists now account for roughly 70 per cent of the platform’s daily top 50 in Mexico.

Mexico’s art market in numbers

Mexico consolidated its position as Latin America’s leading art market in 2025, accounting for roughly 38% of the region’s sales value at an estimated USD 510 million, up 8% year-on-year, according to the first regional report from BlackSwan Research. Together with Brazil (USD 390 million, up 11%), the two countries represented 66.7% of a Latin American market worth some USD 1.35 billion — still about 14% below its 2022 peak. Argentina (USD 130 million) and Colombia (USD 95 million) followed, with roughly 72% of the region’s value transacted outside the artist’s or buyer’s home country, often through international auction houses.

Mexico’s dynamism was linked partly to events such as Zona Maco, which drew around 200 galleries from 29 countries and 81,000 visitors in 2025. The report also flagged growing friction from US trade uncertainty, with cross-border logistics costs up 8–14% and customs transit times extended by 30–50%, even though artworks retained tariff exemptions.

This regional growth mirrors a broader global recovery. According to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2026, worldwide art sales rose 4% year-on-year to an estimated USD 59.6 billion in 2025, snapping two years of decline, with auction sales up 9% and dealer sales up 2%. The United States, United Kingdom and China together accounted for 76% of global sales, with the US alone reaching USD 26 billion despite trade unpredictability of its own. Against that backdrop, Latin America’s roughly USD 1.35 billion still represents only about 2.3% of the global market.

The UBS report also noted rising art fair turnover and continued gains in representation for female artists, trends broadly consistent with Zona Maco’s expanding international footprint. BlackSwan Research forecasts a “solid” 2026 for Latin America, with a 55% probability of 3–9% growth, contingent on Brazil sustaining momentum and Mexico absorbing ongoing trade-related uncertainty with the US.

Angela, interrupted

Activist and philosopher Angela Davis, 82, received the keys to Mexico City from head of government Clara Brugada on 27 August, a day after addressing an overflowing UNAM audience for her first visit to Mexico in nearly six decades. Brugada called Davis “a living symbol of struggle, revolutionary thought and resistance” in presenting the honour, part of the capital’s push to position itself as a city open to the world and committed to human rights; the same distinction went to former Colombian vice-president Francia Márquez earlier this year. President Claudia Sheinbaum also praised Davis at her 27 August morning press conference, calling her “an institution in the defence of women’s rights and civil rights” and citing Davis’s own definition of feminism: treating a woman as a person, “simple as that.”

The UNAM appearance, on the evening of 26 August, formed part of the university’s Feria Internacional del Libro de las Universitarias y los Universitarios (FILUNI). Davis appeared with Gina Dent (her collaborator and partner of 30 years) in the Sala Miguel Covarrubias at the Centro Cultural Universitario to present the Spanish edition of Abolition. Feminism. Now., co-written with Dent, Erica R. Meiners and Beth E. Richie. Demand was such that UNAM urged latecomers to follow the talk via TV UNAM and its social channels; many in the young audience had queued for hours beforehand.

The conversation opened late after four students took the stage to denounce violence against women in Mexican prisons and demand the release of a fellow student recently detained on charges linked to a campus occupation and protests against gender violence. Davis said she was struck by the protest’s energy and expressed hope that the momentum could be channelled into “real changes, like ending prisons, advancing the abolition of capitalism, or ending femicides in Mexico.”

Dent argued that feminist and abolitionist struggles form an indivisible “compound noun” rather than parallel or complementary causes, insisting it is impossible to dismantle the prison, police and military apparatus without understanding how gender, sexuality and structural violence sustain those institutions.

Davis warned that “hopelessness is not an option” amid what she described as antifeminist, anti-gender campaigns and the spread of semi-fascist and fascist governments worldwide, adding that the primary task of radical activists is to generate hope by convincing people a better world is possible. She traced that conviction to her own history (including her 1972 imprisonment on murder and kidnapping charges, of which she was acquitted after a campaign of public pressure) and to her early support for the Black Panther Party.

Late in the talk, a student threw a Palestinian flag onto the stage; Davis rose to retrieve it and held it up for the audience and press, linking the Palestinian cause to wider movements against racism, colonialism and state violence. She also rejected the idea that “American” belongs to the United States alone, saying she feels “americana” not through nationality but through solidarity with Latin American women such as Francia Márquez and Brazilian activist and politician Marielle Franco, murdered in 2018 — a line that drew applause.

Chatter Box

A new “curator at large” in Monterrey. The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (Marco) has named curator and critic Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, from Mexicali, as its first “curator at large”, a title Marco director Taiyana Pimentel says is new to Mexican museums (more commonly found in the UK or US). The role, two years in development and funded by founding member Yolanda Santos de Hoyos in coordination with the board, will see Hernández Chong Cuy lead Marco’s forthcoming permanent collection, occupying an entire second-floor gallery for the first time in the museum’s history. The collection will focus on northern Mexican identity and its cross-border artistic ties with the United States, building on research into regional art scenes and incorporating loans, donations and partnerships with collectors. Hernández Chong Cuy previously directed the Museo Tamayo and Kunstinstituut Melly, and curated the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection.

Separately, the plans for a 2028 exhibition of the Gelman Santander Collection at Monterrey museum remain unconfirmed: Pimentel told Proceso that the Culture Ministry “got ahead” of itself in announcing the arrangement in July, and that talks with Fundación Santander continue without a signed agreement (the famed collection will be part of the inaugural exhibits of the Faro cultural centre in Santander, opening on 8 September, before going on tour in Europe).

Mexico recovers more archaeological heritage. Mexico’s consulate general in Boston received a voluntary return of 1,132 archaeological objects, one of the largest such handovers to the office in years. INAH specialists determined the collection, which comprises over 1,000 ceramic sherds, figurine fragments, obsidian and flint pieces (and even shark’s teeth), originates from southeast Mexico. Dating will draw on provenance documentation supplied by Jeremy Pilver, an archaeologist and teacher at Farmington High School in Connecticut. More than 40 secondary-school students spent nearly two years cataloguing, cleaning and packaging the collection, coordinated by the consulate with INAH and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), alongside New England academic institutions.

INAH has also completed the formal registration of a pre-Hispanic skull inlaid with a turquoise mosaic, repatriated from the Netherlands’ Wereldmuseum in Leiden after six decades on display there. The return followed advocacy by the Nohivi Ñuu Savi collective and negotiations between Mexican authorities and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; the skull was transferred to Mexico in May 2025. INAH’s report concluded it is pre-Hispanic human skeletal material of Mexican origin; the turquoise, shell, jadeite and rock-crystal mosaic depicts a serpent and is stylistically linked to the Late Postclassic period (1200–1521 CE) in Puebla and Oaxaca. Earlier isotope and X-ray fluorescence studies by Leiden and a French restoration institute identified the remains as those of a man aged 25–40; the object’s exact origin remains unclear, as the museum acquired it on the art market in 1962 without provenance records. INAH is now in talks with the Museo Comunitario Yucu Saa in Villa de Tututepec, Oaxaca, which has expressed interest in housing and exhibiting the skull.

Casa del Lago renovation complete: Casa del Lago, UNAM’s cultural centre in Bosque de Chapultepec, has completed an eight-month renovation making it the university’s first venue to adopt a comprehensive sustainability strategy. Director Cinthya García Leyva says the project links the site’s historic relationship with the forest to today’s climate and water agenda. The upgrade introduced a 60,000-litre rainwater harvesting system, LED lighting and solar panels expected to cut annual electricity use by roughly 50 per cent. The venue’s 40-year-old cinema has been modernised with a new screen, sound and seating, reopening in September with a Palestinian film season. The outdoor Espacio Sonoro 8.1 has gained a new sound system for immersive performances.

Juanga on the silver screen. Sony Music Vision is releasing Juan Gabriel: Mi primer Bellas Artes, a remastered cinema edition of the singer’s 9 May 1990 concert at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, marking the tenth anniversary of his death. Directed by María José Cuevas (the original 1990 concert was directed by Benjamín Estavillo), the roughly 110-minute film incorporates previously unseen rehearsal and close-up footage from Juan Gabriel’s personal archive, alongside remastered Dolby Atmos sound. In Mexico it opened exclusively at Cinemex on Friday 28 August, across more than 250 screens. “The movie theater will become a big karaoke,” predicted Cuevas.

The release also includes a special Chicago screening at Millennium Park with the National Museum of Mexican Art, followed by a wider US release on 15 September in around 440 cinemas, with openings in Chile and other Latin American countries including Argentina and Colombia. The concert previously drew renewed attention last year when it was screened in Mexico City’s Zócalo before a crowd of around 170,000. The new edition coincides with a commemorative vinyl reissue of the live album En el Palacio de Bellas Artes.

Mexico picks two films for two international prizes. Mexico’s Academia Mexicana de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas (AMACC) has named the country’s official submissions for two international film prizes. Moscas, directed by Fernando Eimbcke, will represent Mexico at the 2027 Goya Awards in Spain; the film, winner of the Ecumenical Jury Prize at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, follows a woman who forms an unlikely bond with a nine-year-old boy after renting a room to his father. Meanwhile, David Pablos’s En el camino — a story of love and masculinity set against the northern Mexican desert, produced by Diego Luna among others — will compete for a nomination in the Best International Feature Film category at next year’s Academy Awards in the US.

Return of the King. Rey Lear returns to the Teatro Helénico for a second brief season, running from 3 September to 4 October, following a sold-out first run earlier this year. Adapted and directed by Angélica Rogel, the production relocates Shakespeare’s tragedy from the throne room to a theatre company, reimagining Lear as a director ceding control to his daughters.

The revival brings back Luis de Tavira, 77, in the title role — his first engagement with Shakespeare after decades devoted to Spanish-language dramatists such as Lope de Vega, Calderón and Cervantes. “Theatre chooses you, not the other way round,” he says, describing Lear’s tragedy as rooted in extremity: fury, ingratitude and the corrosive nature of power, with echoes of Milton’s vision of paradise and hell coexisting within the human heart.

De Tavira is joined by Diana Sedano, Mariana Gajá and Mayra Batalla, with new additions Erika de la Llave and Rodrigo Virago.

Leonora Carrington retrospective. The Centro Vlady at Mexico City’s Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México is marking 15 years since Leonora Carrington’s death with “Un viaje sagrado” (”A Sacred Journey”), an exhibition of roughly 140 works and personal objects opening 27 August. Drawn entirely from the artist’s own house and never previously acquired by outside collectors, the show includes graphic work, bronzes, jewellery, sketches, letters (including one to Octavio Paz) and photographs by her husband, Emérico “Chiki” Weisz. Fermín Llamazares, president of the Leonora Carrington Council, describes her practice as rooted in dream diaries rather than deliberate imagery, shaped by her engagement with Tibetan Buddhism, alchemy and Kabbalah. The exhibition also traces Carrington’s influence on Vlady, who considered her a principal mentor after their friendship deepened in Mexico, having first met among the Parisian surrealists. The show runs until 9 November at Centro Vlady-UACM in Mixcoac.

Culture Outing

Aztlán, túnel del tiempo (Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes)

Following record attendance of over 270,000 visitors, the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes has extended “Aztlán, túnel del tiempo” until 27 September. The show, the museum’s first dedicated to Chicano art, brings together more than 70 works by over thirty artists and collectives exploring migration, community life and hybrid identities across four curatorial sections. Free guided tours run Tuesday–Saturday at 11am and 3pm.

Culture Conversation

El escultor detrás de “El Caballito” de Reforma | Enrique Carbajal “Sebastian”

Sculptor Enrique Carbajal González, known for his “El Caballito” monumental work on Reforma, reflects in this talk on authenticity and identity in art, recalling how his self-discovery as an artist led him back to Mexican tradition and colour.