“Indigenous peoples are more alive than ever”: Manuel Espinosa Sainos

▲ Manuel Espinosa Sainos (first on the left) has poems that condemn social issues affecting indigenous communities; they are also romantic and erotic. Photo courtesy of Elvia Chaparro

Reyes Martínez Torrijos

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, p. 2

Totonac writer Manuel Espinosa Sainos believes in poetry as a form of resistance and a reclaiming of language, a way of saying, "We are here, we have not died ." It's about making visible what has long been hidden: our indigenous cultures .

The author of the poetry collections Nitu wantu nitlan / Nothing is perverse and Xtaspitatkan laktsu spun / The return of the birds , published by Alcorce Ediciones and the Veracruz Culture Secretariat, respectively, expressed to La Jornada his disbelief about people who think that indigenous peoples are in museums, that we are a bygone culture and that the pyramids are there; however, we are more alive than ever, we continue to resist .

Espinosa Sainos (Ixtepec, 1972) stated: "We have been resisting our whole lives, our languages, our vision, our oral tradition. Making poetry is a way of resisting and of being present, of giving our people their rightful place ."

The translator and broadcaster has evolved since his first book, published in 1999, and the subsequent book , Tlikgoy litutunakunín / The Totonacs Sing , which can be downloaded for free from the Internet. "It's about poems of social denunciation, which speak to what happens in indigenous communities.

“In my third book , Kxa Kiwi Tamputsni/In the Tree of Navels , I begin to write love poetry, erotic poetry, because if erotic poetry is written in English or French, why couldn’t it be done in our languages ​​if we are also a product of the act of love, of this very beautiful act of being human?”

With Nothing is Perverse and The Return of the Birds , Espinosa Sainos continued, I continue to emphasize love, but there's also more poetry of denunciation, of what's happening in our region and that wasn't common before; for example, the femicides, which we heard were happening far away, and in recent years there have been women found murdered in a coffee plantation, in some small hotel in the community. These are necessary themes to address in my work .

He recalled that he had a period before when he addressed the Totonac gods and Mother Earth, and then realized that things happen in his community too. We, the indigenous peoples, remain invisible in most media outlets , unless there are elections, someone trying to sell us something, or a tragedy occurs. But as a living and rich culture, one that can contribute to humanity, we remain invisible. It's not possible for us to have a multilingual, multicultural Mexico and continue to be named in a single language .

Espinosa Sainos said that through poetry, he denounces current problems such as "the threat of large corporations toward indigenous populations, seeking to dispossess them of their land, such as mining or hydroelectric companies that have sought to monopolize rivers and the lands of the communities. The Return of the Birds speaks to the struggle of peasants to defend their land. I witnessed people in Olintla defending their territory, because there was a mining company that wanted to monopolize the community's river and spent the night on the riverbank so the machinery wouldn't start working there."

“A woman said, 'I don't want to sell the land. How am I going to sell the land that feeds me? That's where the seeds grow, the cornfields grow, that's where our dead and the people I love are. I'll give it to my son, I'll give it to my fellow countryman or my neighbor, but not to a foreign company.'”

The poet explained that this is why he captured the ancestral thought surrounding the land, saying, "We don't see it as something isolated because it thinks, listens to us, feels, and we are part of it. When we Totonacs say 'our skin,' 'our flesh,' we say 'tiyatliwa.' 'Tiyat' is 'earth' and 'liwá' is 'flesh.' We are made of earth. Our care for it and what the earth means to us are implicit in our language."

"The poetry collection Nada es perverso (Nothing is Perverse) moves from protest to love. It contains a bit of what I've been writing over the past 20 years, since I began writing. El regreso de las aves (The Return of the Birds) speaks to these community struggles and the Indigenous way of thinking we have about the land."

The second chapter deals with death, but from the perspective of Indigenous peoples: a way of being reborn, of living again, because our dead return; they never leave; they are there with us. That's why we adorn them, we await them with fruit, tamales, coffee, atole, with all the grand offerings we make in Indigenous peoples and throughout our country. My dead are loving, erotic, and they always return.

He commented that since they were children, they were taught to be respectful of the environment. This relationship we have with animals, the land, water, and everything else is the vision our ancestors had, and that's why people defend their territory .

▲ Excerpt from The Road Not Taken (So Far), a performance by Gloria Benedikt which will be presented at the MUAC on May 18. Photo © Jason Nemirow

Alondra Flores Soto

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, p. 3

Following the green or ecological dream outlined in the Paris Agreement or continuing with business as usual—a path that seems to remain the same—is the path that forks before the eyes of Austrian choreographer and researcher Gloria Benedikt, who addresses the students of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in a speech about the future of 2050.

The speculative performative lecture The Road Not Taken , which will be given on May 18, is an act of hope in which he addresses children who are being born today and who will graduate in 25 years, he announced about his participation in El Aleph, Festival of Art and Science, which will take place from May 9 to 18 and will have Networks as its thematic axis.

In a conversation with the press, he read a letter in which these university students asked him about the vision that once existed of a planet Earth where resources were shared equitably, the wisdom of indigenous peoples was incorporated, and nature was a prerequisite for human dignity.

Although not a fan of dystopias, the stage creator also said that for this discursive proposal, she was inspired by the book The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres. Regarding artificial intelligence, she believed it's necessary to stick to the fundamentals, which means ensuring that technology serves us as humanity and not the opposite.

We lack narrative art. We don't have good stories about the future . With that in mind, he decided to direct his performance to strive for a better future. In current narratives, heroes don't try to save the Arctic, for example, so it's necessary to create characters who are good role models.

By uniting art and science, a way is proposed to help alleviate anxiety in the face of the current crisis and be more receptive to speaking from the present, explained the Harvard-graduated researcher and dancer trained at the Vienna State Opera Ballet School, who, in addition to the performative reading on the cultural climate reaction, will offer a workshop on adapting her work End to Begin for Latin American audiences on May 16 and 17.

José Gordon, science popularizer and curator of the El Aleph festival, celebrated the fact that Borges's dream remains alive, given the possibility of integrating all points into a single whole. Although today we talk about fragmentation, the worlds of art and science offer the possibility of integration.

In this sense, he noted that the wonderful dancer and stage director blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, science and art, to achieve other kinds of connections. At its core lies a Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken ," which helps us see the multiple paths we could take to get closer to the dream of having a cosmic hologram that contains all the points and all the themes, in order to project possible futures.

▲ Portrait of the Austrian choreographer and researcher. Photo courtesy of UNAM Culture

Networks, a relevant topic

With Benedikt's presence, some details were revealed about the ninth edition of the festival, which begins on May 9th and aims to combine art and science. Rosa Beltrán, Coordinator of Cultural Outreach at UNAM, Juan Ayala, General Coordinator of the El Aleph Festival, and journalist José Gordon participated in the press conference.

Networks, the central theme of El Aleph2025, connect us in different ways and dimensions, from atomic particles, social relationships, as well as ecosystems, Rosa Beltrán highlighted, which is why it is a pertinent topic, and it also includes many aspects of human life .

Exploring fragmented knowledge in a transdisciplinary manner is the goal of more than 80 activities, with the participation of 168 guests from 11 countries, experts in physics, biology, artificial intelligence, music, dance, and literature, to foster creativity and knowledge.

The university official and writer highlighted some of the events in the program; for example, the participation of Emma Sanders, exhibition coordinator for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Science Gateway, who will give the lecture How Your Particles Became You , as well as the dramatized reading of the dystopian novel There Is No Planet B , by its author, Hassun El-Zafar, and the lecture Artificial Civilization , by writer José María Lassalle.

In the artistic programming, Beltrán mentioned the presence of the Canadian company Alan Lake Factori[e] with the choreography Orpheus , which from a symbolist perspective intertwines mythology with modernity. Also Canadian, Rubberband will present Ever so Slightly Redux , a piece that mixes classical ballet and hip-hop to ask how to open the way to a place where noise and aggression have no place?, in addition to the eagerly awaited performance by the early music group Europa Galante and the screening of the film Redes , accompanied by the composition by Silvestre Revueltas, performed live by the UNAM Philharmonic Orchestra.

The El Aleph festival program is available at https://festivalelaleph.com