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Mexico

Article

The Sowers of Fear

“Are we witnessing the death of journalism or the end of the courage to speak the truth?” The appraised writer, human rights activist, and journalist Lydia Cacho writes about a brutal climate in...

Text: Lydia Cacho October 20 2020
Fiction

Bittersweet dreams

In the beginnings of the 1990s the dramatist and actor Petrona de la Cruz Cruz founded FOMMA (Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya), an organisation for Maya women who make use of theatre as an educational and...

Text: Petrona de la Cruz Cruz December 12 2019
Article

Self-translation as a political activity

The writer and researcher Manuel Bolom Pale belongs to the Tsotsil people, the largest indigenous group in Mexico’s southernmost state Chiapas. “Writing in Tsotsil means reviving and reconnecting with...

Text: Manuel Bolom Pale November 26 2019
Poetry

In America

Writers all over the world are today subjected to daily threats for practicing their basic human rights to freely express what they want in whichever language they choose. During her term of office...

Text: Jennifer Clement November 08 2019
Article

Being Jts’ibajom te jbats’I k’optik

What is it to be Jts’ibajom te jbats’I k’optik – meaning, what is it to be a writer writing in one’s indigenous language? Does it entail a certain responsibility? Resistance? Defense? Taking a stand...

Text: Ruperta Bautista October 18 2019
Poetry

“Our essence changes, fades away”

Enriqueta Lunez, born in Chiapas in Mexico in 1981, is a poet and writer who belongs to the new generation of Tsotsil writers in the country writing in Tsotsil instead of Spanish. Her poems revolve...

Text: Enriqueta Lunez October 18 2019
Interview

“Every journalist's life is in danger”

Cartels and government authorities tried to silence the media in Ciudad Juárez with violence and threats. But journalists in the Mexican border town refused to give up and created a network to protect...

Text: Ylva Mossing March 10 2013
Article

Press responds to murderers

The drug-related violence in Ciudad Juárez in northern Mexico in the past 20 years has made the border town into one of Mexico's most dangerous places. Shootings, kidnappings, carjackings, and curfews...

Text: Alicia Quiñones March 10 2013
Article

A letter from Elena Poniatowska

Elena Poniatowska is one of Mexico's most famous authors and commentators. Here we reproduce a letter to PEN/Opp about the role PEN's campaigns actually play in today's Mexico.

Text: Elena Poniatowska Amor March 10 2013
Fiction

La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha

Poet and literary critic Víctor Manuel Mendiola looks with dismay at what is happening in his home country of Mexico. In a very personal reflection, he recalls memories of times long past—the Mexico...

Text: Víctor Manuel Mendiola March 09 2013
Article

A land where the storyteller is the story

What actually happens to the people in a country under the yoke of violence? The image of Mexico as a violent country risks ultimately becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Jennifer Clement, poet...

Text: Jennifer Clement March 09 2013
Article

“Impunity is still the rule”

74 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2000. Not a single case has led to charges or sentences. Either because the crimes are being committed with approval from the powers that be or due to...

Text: Pat Hirschl, Lucina Kathmann March 09 2013
Poetry

The Mexico of Juárez

Puns and ambiguities are one of Luis Miguel Aguilar's trademarks. His poem entitled “Juárez” refers to both national hero Benito Juárez, 1806–1872, and the city of Juárez—the most dangerous place on...

Text: Luis Miguel Aguilar March 09 2013
Fiction

Testimony #1: “We got out of Tamaulipas alive”

Most of the times journalists are kidnapped in Mexico, it ends in murder. Raymundo Pérez Arellano got lucky—he survived. He tells PEN/Opp what happened and why he was kidnapped.

Text: Raymundo Pérez Arellano March 09 2013

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