Afro-Mexican and indigenous authors promoted the letters of 2025

Mexican literature was enriched in 2025 with the voice and themes of women from indigenous peoples and Afro-Mexicans in the Palace of Fine Arts, an example of the conquest of spaces with which these communities dented a long invisibility in the country.

In a couple of literary events in the country’s highest cultural venue, these creators showed the power of their poetry, themes and demands around equality and the permanence of the cultural legacy of their communities, in the declared Year of the Indigenous Women.

In March, the Poetry Recital in Native Languages ​​was held, an example of the word and worldview, of resistance and joy, of a group of authors in what was the first time that a meeting of that nature and importance was held in the main venue.

At the National Meeting of Women Writers in Indigenous Languages, 10 authors shared their symbolisms, sounds and poetic universes, among them, Natalia Toledo, Ruperta Bautista, Emilia Buitimea, Rubí Huerta, Ateri Miyawatl, Sasil Sánchez, Rosario Patricio, Juana Karen Peñate, Celerina Sánchez and Mikeas Sánchez. The soprano María Reyna gave a brief recital.

A few months later, in August, the first National Meeting of Black-Afro-Mexican Women Writers brought together a dozen poets in the same venue, to present to the public the mosaic of their creation born of territories, resistance and generations.

It starred Patricia Guadalupe Ramírez Bazán, Jamel Ydzu Martínez Fonseca, Ana de las Flores, Malva Marina Carrera Vega, Aleida Violeta Vázquez Cisneros, Montserrat Aguilar Ayala, Juliana Acevedo Ávila, Raquel González Mariche, Azucena López Ventura and Elizabeth Avendaño Sayagua.

The evening addressed, from the particularity of each one, memory, resistance against the dispossession of traditions and the pride of belonging to a historically minoritized community, as well as the demand for justice and against xenophobia, racism and inequality.

Last December, during the reception of the American Indigenous Literature Award, the Bats’i K’op Tsotsil language narrator María Victoria Díaz Ruiz summarized the situation: “they silenced us, they intimidated us just for being women, but today we have to fight, raise our voices and believe that literature is a powerful tool to capture what we want to express.”

The Zapotec writer Andrea Gómez was awarded the first Fine Arts Prize for Literature in Indigenous Languages ​​for her book Xaga tlhaz (Peach Cheeks). The 2025 Nezahualcóyotl Prize for Literature in Mexican Languages ​​went to the writer and translator Margarita León, for her poem written in Otomi/Hñähñu “Pothe/Manantial”.

This 2025 was marked by the commemoration of the importance of the poet, narrator and feminist diplomat Rosario Castellanos, 100 years after her birth, who was one of the first to develop the story of indigenous communities. Exhibitions, convocations, conversations, conferences and other honors were held.

This year the writer and journalist Elena Poniatowska was honored with the appointment in her honor of the hearing room of the Senate of the Republic.

The narrator and essayist Cristina Rivera Garza appeared among the candidates for the most recent Nobel Prize in Literature. His book was also published The broken precedes the whole: One hundred and twenty-five infraessays. It was announced that Liliana’s invincible summer, why the columnist of The Day won one of the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes, it will be made into a film. The author was a central figure at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL).

Greatness

At that meeting, the launch of the most recent book by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Greatness, It became a sales phenomenon for the Planeta label. Even before its arrival on the shelves, it generated expectation, which later translated into thousands of copies purchased in the four days it was on display.

In its 39th edition, the FIL once again broke the attendance record, with around 953 thousand visitors, which meant an increase of more than 45 thousand people compared to 2024, reported its president, José Trinidad Padilla López.

It was attended by authors of international stature, such as Chimamanda Ngozi, María Dueñas and Eduardo Mendoza, Donatella di Pietrantonio and Samer Abu Hawash, as well as Nona Fernández and Horacio Castellanos Moya.

This year, the Mexican narrator Dahlia de la Cerda was among the 13 finalists for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

Despite the growing visibility of women writers on the world publishing scene, most of the literary awards were given to men, with the exception of the Formentor de las Letras 2025, which went to the French-Algerian Hélène Cixous; for the Canadian Margaret Atwood, the Joan Margarit International Prize for Poetry, and Gioconda Belli won the Carlos Fuentes International Prize for Literary Creation in the Spanish Language 2025.

The authors distinguished with other awards this year were the Hungarian László Krasznahorkai (Nobel); the Canadian-Hungarian-British David Szalay (fictional Booker) for Flesh; the Frenchman Laurent Mauvignier (Goncourt), for his narration La maison vide (The empty house); the Catalan Eduardo Mendoza (Princess of Asturias of Letters); the Mexican Gonzalo Celorio (Cervantes); the Franco-Lebanese Amin Maalouf (FIL of Literature in Romance Languages ​​2025), and the Argentine Guillermo Saccomanno (Alfaguara de Novela).

Last April, Mario Vargas Llosa died at the age of 89 in Lima, Peru. He was the last survivor of the boom Latin American and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (2010). In May, the death of the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a strong candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, occurred. He was considered one of the most influential authors in East Africa; He was the author of a work that reflects the land and his town of origin.