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🇲🇽 Mexico /Culture & Society

Hay Festival opens in Querétaro after major budget cuts

From El Universal · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

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  • The 11th Hay Festival Querétaro opened without its traditional ceremony after the municipality cut its budget by nearly 70 percent.
  • Organizers reduced the festival to three days and fewer activities, citing spending on the World Cup and local infrastructure.
  • Director Cristina Fuentes La Roche said the festival would remain in Querétaro and defended dialogue spaces amid censorship and digital isolation.

The Hay Festival Querétaro opened with nearly 70 percent less municipal funding and without the traditional ribbon-cutting ceremony. The 11th edition began at the Rosario Solano Cinematheque, while activities at Casa Hay brought guests including Iveth Luna Flores, Martha Jiménez Serrano and Pol Guasch into conversations with the press and public.

The cuts reduced the event to three days, with fewer activities and guests. Cristina Fuentes La Roche, the festival’s director general, told El Universal that the municipality’s money had been redirected toward World Cup investments and other local infrastructure spending.

Despite the reduced resources, the organizing committee decided to hold the festival. Fuentes La Roche said Querétaro had adopted the event, making a move to another state difficult. The organizers, she said, would continue fighting to keep it there.

She described the situation as a sign of a broader crisis and argued that spaces for conversation must continue. “We are living in digital bubbles, in totalitarianisms, in censorship, this region of the world is going through that and it is necessary to have spaces to dialogue, think and seek possible solutions,” she said.

We are living in digital bubbles, in totalitarianisms, in censorship, this region of the world is going through that and it is necessary to have spaces to dialogue, think and seek possible solutions.

· Cristina Fuentes La RocheThe festival director defended maintaining public spaces for discussion despite the funding cuts.
About this summary

Originally published by El Universal in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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