The Government of Mexico, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mexican Cultural Institute in Spain, The Americas Research Network (ARENET), the Cervantes Institute, and various institutions, present a series of special activities to mark the closing of the exhibition “Half the World: Women in Indigenous Mexico.”
This program will bring together diverse cultural expressions that celebrate the voice, memory, artistic creation, and presence of women from Mexico’s indigenous communities: a textile activation with Victorina López Hilario and Jaziel de Jesús López, who will share their creations and the ancestral traditions that accompany their textile art with attendees at the Cervantes Institute; in addition, there will be an exploration of the vitality of the Ñomndaa language at the MARSO Foundation in Madrid. Furthermore, the ARENET Fund for Languages and Knowledge of Indigenous Peoples will be launched at the library of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Spain; a collection designed to safeguard and share the linguistic and cultural richness of Mexico, as well as the M.A. Fund Porrúa, through a book donation and in recognition of its long history dedicated to promoting culture, language, and thought, is helping the library become a vibrant space for support, encounter, and the dissemination of knowledge. This event will be accompanied by a gastronomic gathering with the Xihuiti collective of traditional cooks at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Spain, where technical demonstrations and a tasting of dishes from the Tlaxcalancingo region of Puebla will take place. With poetry as its central theme, the event “Before Silence: A Gathering of Poetry in Indigenous Languages” will be held, where the voices of Celerina Sánchez and Diana Domínguez from Oaxaca; Letisia Domingo Olivares from Morelos; and Lyz Sáenz from Chiapas will resonate at the Cervantes Institute with their knowledge, memory, resistance, and contemporary thought. These women are heirs to great traditions, and Izaira López Sánchez, a Tu’un Savi speaker, will also participate. And, to close with a flourish, the Originaria Internacional film festival, a multidisciplinary celebration of tradition and modernity translated to the seventh art.
Beyond the cultural celebration, these activities seek to open a space for reflection on the role of indigenous women in Mexico and their profound connection to creativity, life, territory, and power. A recognition of women, not as museum pieces, but as guardians of memory, the word, and ancestral knowledge, and as fundamental protagonists of the present and the past of a multicultural country: Mexico
