You cannot understand Latin America without understanding Cuba
At a Mexico City university campus, a week-long festival devoted to Cuban culture and history invites students, faculty, and diplomats to sit with a shared past that neither country can fully understand in isolation. The event at UAM Xochimilco weaves together photography, archival memory, music, and academic dialogue to close the distance between generations and geographies. It is, at its core, a reminder that history does not end — it continues to ask questions of those who inherit it.
- Many young Mexicans and Cubans carry no living memory of the revolution, creating a generational gap that risks turning history into abstraction.
- The festival disrupts that silence by placing photographs, archives, and performances directly in the path of students who might otherwise never encounter them.
- Cuba's ambassador and UAM's rector are both leaning into the university as a deliberate space for political consciousness and historical reckoning.
- Two anchor exhibitions — one on Cuban exiles organizing from Mexican soil in 1955–56, another on the revolution's early years through Rodrigo Moya's lens — give the urgency a concrete, visual form.
- The event is landing as both an act of institutional solidarity and a living diplomatic gesture, with officials, grassroots networks, and artists sharing the same floor.
Through Friday, the Xochimilco campus of Mexico City's Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana is hosting a week-long Cuban cultural festival that opened the evening of June 1st. The gathering brings together academic seminars, art exhibitions, musical performances, and diplomatic voices in a shared effort to connect the university community with Cuba's history and its present reality.
Rector María Angélica Buendía opened the festival by framing it as a space for collective reflection, arguing that Latin America's modern story cannot be told without Cuba at its center — and that the deep relationship between Mexico and Cuba is itself a crucial part of that narrative.
Two exhibitions give the festival its historical backbone. The first recovers a lesser-known chapter: the years 1955 and 1956, when Cuban revolutionaries used Mexican territory as a staging ground for their movement. The second, assembled by celebrated Mexican photographer Rodrigo Moya, documents Cuba in 1964, when the revolution was still finding its shape. Together, they offer visitors an intimate encounter with a transformation still in motion.
Cuban Ambassador Eugenio Martínez spoke to the importance of cultural exchange as a bridge for younger generations who have no direct memory of the revolutionary period. He thanked the university for the gesture of institutional solidarity the festival represents. The opening night also featured a live performance by singer-songwriter Joel Veltrejo, and was attended by Cuban diplomatic officials, university administrators, faculty, students, and members of the Mexican Solidarity Movement with Cuba — a gathering that reflected both formal diplomacy and the grassroots ties that have long bound the two nations.
At Mexico City's Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco campus, a week-long festival devoted to Cuban culture and history is unfolding through Friday, drawing students, faculty, and diplomats into conversations about the island nation's past and present. The event opened on the evening of June 1st and has been designed as a gathering place for reflection, cultural exchange, and expressions of solidarity centered on Cuba's role in the hemisphere.
The festival brings together academic seminars, artistic performances, and exhibitions meant to connect the university community with Cuban history and contemporary reality. María Angélica Buendía, the rector of UAM Xochimilco, framed the gathering during its opening remarks as an opportunity for encounter and collective thinking across different perspectives. She emphasized that understanding Latin America's modern history is impossible without understanding Cuba, and that the relationship between Mexico and Cuba itself forms a crucial thread in that larger story.
Two major exhibitions anchor the festival's visual and historical component. One traces the period between 1955 and 1956, when Cuban exiles and revolutionaries prepared their movement from Mexican soil—a chapter often overlooked in standard accounts of the revolution's origins. The second exhibition, assembled by renowned Mexican photographer Rodrigo Moya, documents Cuba in 1964, capturing the revolution in its early consolidation. These photographs and archival materials offer visitors a window into a specific moment when the island's transformation was still unfolding.
Eugenio Martínez, Cuba's ambassador to Mexico, spoke to the power of cultural and academic exchange as a bridge between generations. He noted that many young people today have no direct memory of the revolutionary period itself, and that dialogue and shared ideas create space for them to understand not only what Cuba was, but what it has become. He expressed gratitude to the university for hosting the festival, recognizing it as a meaningful gesture of institutional support.
The opening night also featured a musical performance by singer-songwriter Joel Veltrejo, adding a cultural dimension beyond the academic and archival. Johana Tablada, the deputy chief of Cuba's diplomatic mission in Mexico, attended alongside university administrators, faculty, students, and representatives from the Mexican Solidarity Movement with Cuba. The gathering reflected both official diplomatic channels and grassroots solidarity networks that have long connected the two countries.
The festival's timing and scope suggest a deliberate effort to position the university as a site where historical understanding and contemporary political consciousness can develop together. By bringing together exhibitions, performances, and academic discussion under one roof, the event creates conditions for visitors to encounter Cuba not as a distant abstraction but as a neighbor with a shared history and ongoing relevance to Mexico's own story.
Citas Notables
Through shared ideas we arrive at a true picture of what Cuba is— Eugenio Martínez, Cuban ambassador to Mexico
It is impossible to understand Latin American history without the history of Cuba and the relationship between Mexico and Cuba— María Angélica Buendía, rector of UAM Xochimilco
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does a Mexican university need a festival about Cuba right now? What's the urgency?
It's not urgent in a crisis sense. It's more about keeping a relationship alive. Many students weren't born when these revolutions happened. Without spaces like this, Cuba becomes a historical footnote instead of a living part of how we understand ourselves.
But the rector said you can't understand Latin America without Cuba. That seems like a big claim.
It is, but it's defensible. Cuba's revolution shaped how every country in the region thought about sovereignty, about the United States, about what was possible. Mexico itself had to navigate that. The festival is saying: let's not forget that.
The ambassador mentioned "sharing ideas" as a way to understand Cuba. What does that actually mean in practice?
It means dialogue instead of ideology. Young people can look at Rodrigo Moya's photographs, read about the exile period in Mexico, hear music, and form their own sense of what happened. They're not being lectured at; they're being invited to think.
Is this about solidarity, or about history?
Both. Solidarity without history is just sentiment. History without solidarity is just academic exercise. The festival is trying to do both at once.