The México Now Festival (MXNOW) is a celebration of contemporary Mexican art, dance, film, music, photography, and more in New York City in November. 🇲🇽
21st México Now Festival 2025
The México Now Festival of contemporary Mexican and Mexican American culture is November 5-8, 2025.
This year’s lineup features Mexican art, books, film, and music.
“Queen of Swords” is a virtual conversation with Mexican author Jazmina Barrera and translator Megan McDowell about the upcoming literary portrait of Elena Garro, an important figure in the Magical Realism literary movement. It’s at the Center for Fiction in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; on Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 1pm. Free with RSVP. 🇲🇽
Many people think of Magical Realism as a literary construct. It’s actually how el Pueblo Latino, common people in the Latin world, see life as caused by magical forces. Latin life is filled with real magic.
“Caricature and Revolution” is a conversation with Rafael Barajas “El Fisgón,” about how religious prints in the 1600s and satirical magazines in the late 1800s and early 1900s led to the Mexican Revolution. It’s at the Center for Fiction in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; on Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 6pm. Free with RSVP. 🇲🇽
One of the characteristics of being Latin in the Americas is a great sense of humor. Life is hard for many and one of the ways you survive is by making fun of it all. Many cultural traditions, including the modern Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), where inspired by mockery. Interestingly, being made fun of is the one thing that dictators can’t stand. So let’s have fun and maybe draw some tacos.
The “Celebrate México Now Festival 2004-2024” presentation and panel discussion about the commemorative book by Rocio Echevarría, is at the Center for Fiction in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; on Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 7:30pm. Free with RSVP. 🇲🇽
Doris Anahí Muñoz is the founder of the Solidarity for Sanctuary concerts of music for social change. She is leading two events.
“Solidarity in Song: Music, Mutual Aid, and the Making of a Movement,” features Doris Anahí Muñoz talking online about using culture to advocate for social change on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 1pm. Free with RSVP. 🇲🇽
This really ties into New York Latin Culture Magazine’s mission. I started the Magazine to promote Latin culture in ways that show that we are more similar than we are different. People around the world and across time do similar things because we are human. In recognizing our common humanity, maybe we can stop being so mean to each other.
“Canciones de Mis Ancestros, a Tribute to the Ranchera Legacy,” has Doris Anahí Muñoz singing ranchera classics backed by Mariachi Real de México de Ramón Ponce. It’s at Joe’s Pub in NoHo, Manhattan; on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 7pm. From $35. 🇲🇽
Ranchera is more or less the Mexican blues. Mariachi is ranchera sung in festive Charro cowboy dress. One of the surprising things about ranchera/mariachi is how much it is loved beyond Mexico. No matter where I go in the Latin world, I’ll occasionally hear ranchera. It always makes me smile. People love the storytelling. Mariachi has become traditional for birthday celebrations. For me, it’s the music of home because I was born and raised in Mexican American communities in Southern California. I was raised in Chinatown and Olvera Street, the old Mexican street in Downtown Los Angeles. The sounds, sights, and smells of mariachi, china poblana dresses, and fresh tortillas being fried, will always be part of me. On special occasions, my parents used to take me to La Fonda de Los Camperos, the Mexican restaurant that was the first to put Mariachi on stage. As an adult, I got to promote them.
The show’s title “Songs of My Ancestors” recalls Linda Ronstadt’s hit album “Canciones de mi Padre” (Songs of My Father), which was the biggest selling non-English album up to that time. I was a professional singer in Los Angeles in the 1990s and used to sing some songs off that album. I love the romantic imagery of “Dos Arbolitos.” Come to think of it, ranchera is the music of my father too. He was Thai, but loved Trio los Panchos. He used to play their music so loud, that I hated it, but I love it now. Even though I’m not Mexican, ranchera and bolero is my family music. When I cook, it’s either Chinese or Mexican. I’m still that little kid from Chinatown and Olvera Street.
“Singing Stones: Celebrating the Ancient Americas” celebrates the Met Museum’s reopening of its Ancient Americas galleries with a concert of works by acclaimed Mexican classical music composer Gabriela Ortiz by Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth; and choral ensemble Coro Acardenchado singing canto cardenche, a form of Mexican a capella choral music. The event includes hand-drawn animated projections by Arturo Lópex Pío, and video of Central México’s Wirikuta desert, sacred to the Indigenous Wixárika people, by Mercedes Aquí and Paola Stefani. It’s in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; on Friday, November 7, 2025 at 7pm. From $35. 🇲🇽
This is a co-production of MetLiveArts and Carnegie Hall. Gabriela Ortiz is a major award-winning Mexican composer of contemporary classical music. This is sort of a sacred ceremony because many of the ancient objects in the Met’s collection are from tombs and religious sites. European art is just visual, but Indigenous art contains the spiritual essence of its creators and the gods that it honors. The gods were always present in ancient life.
Mexican art is a big influence on American art. The Whitney Museum of American Art said that the greatest influence on American art was not the Europeans, it was the Mexican muralists. At the Guggenheim Museum, curator Lauren Hinkson discovered that Joseph Albers, the Bauhaus art teacher of many famous American artists at Black Mountain and Yale, was greatly influenced by Aztec and Maya art and architecture.
“Con Alma” (With Soul) is the New York Premiere of the documentary film about the Covid-19 collaboration between Mexican jazz singer Magos Herrera and Italian classical composer Paola Prestini. The project grew into an album and concert series. The evening opens with a screening of the short film “Lamento” about Grammy-winning Guatemalan singer Gaby Moreno and Guatemalan American actor Tony Revolori sifting through childhood places that are disappearing into the sands of time. It’s at Espacio de Culturas at NYU (New York University) in Greenwich Village; on Saturday, November 8, 2025 at 5pm. Free with RSVP. 🇲🇽 🇮🇹 🇬🇹
Mexican and Guatemalan culture are very similar. Southern Mexico and Guatemala were both ancient Maya lands.
20th México Now Festival 2024
The 20th México Now Festival 2024 is a celebration of contemporary Mexican arts; at Chelsea Factory in Chelsea, Manhattan; from November 20-24, 2024. Free with rsvp. 🇲🇽
This year’s lineup features:
- Patrimonio with Santiago Arau, a book presentation of the drone photographer’s work on Anáhuac, the Valley of Mexico, home of Aztecs and México City, is at Chelsea Factory in Chelsea, Manhattan; on Wednesday, November 20, 2024, at 6:30pm. Free with rsvp. @santiago_arau 🇲🇽
- Selected shorts from the Morelia International Film Festival in Morelia, Mochoacán, México; at Chelsea Factory in Chelsea, Manhattan; on Thursday, September 21, 2024, at 7pm. Free with rsvp. @ficm 🇲🇽
- Fandango Jarocho Newyorkino is a traditional Mexican fandango; a community gathering with music, zapateados dancing, poetry, theater and more; at Chelsea Factory in Chelsea, Manhattan; on Friday, November 22, 2024, at 6:30pm. Free with rsvp. @juliadelpalacio @sinuhe.art 🇲🇽
- Coro Acardenchado is a choral performance of freestyle improvisation and body percussion inspired by the a cappella trios of Durango, México. These community choruses are so beautiful, they will make your hair stand up. It’s at Chelsea Factory in Chelsea, Manhattan; on Saturday, November 23, 2024 at 7pm. Free with rsvp. @coroacardenchado 🇲🇽
- Arts Building Bridges / Construyendo Puentes con las Artes is a panel discussion of major arts presenters, led by Ruth Wikler, about how we can use the arts to bring communities together. These are all women who are influential in their fields. Our work has taught us that women are the guardians of culture. It’s at Chelsea Factory in Chelsea, Manhattan; on Sunday, November 24, 2024 at 1pm. Free with rsvp. @wiklerista @mlaleskie @filloylaura @isabelsoffer @palomaestevez 🇲🇽
- Echoes from the Borderlands is an hour-long excerpt from a 24-hour sonic essay of the sounds of despair and hope that mark the borderlands. This collaboration of author Valeria Luiselli, composer Leonardo Heilblum, and multimedia artist Ricardo Giraldo is at Chelsea Factory in Chelsea, Manhattan; on Sunday, November 24, 2024 at 5pm. Free with rsvp. If you have never spent time in the deserts of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, you have no idea how hauntingly beautiful they are. There is death there, but also life, lots of life. @valeria_luiselli @ricardogiraldom 🇲🇽
The common thread through all of this is community, an extension of family, the living heart of Latin culture.
Mexico has such great historic traditions that it is easy to miss what is happening there now. Many have reported that Mexico City arts are even more progressive than New York City arts. Mexico is young and the future belongs to the young.
Mexico is important because we are neighbors with a long, complicated familial relationship. We fight like brothers and sisters, because we are. Two-thirds of what became the United States was once Mexico. New York City has had a Caribbean focus since at least the 1920s, but most Latins in the United States are Mexican Americans. The Mexican American community used to be regionalized in the Southwest, but is now everywhere, and growing in New York City too. The United States is the second largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico. And now that the era of globalization has ended, Mexico is our most important trading partner. Our future is together. It’s time to get to know each other better.
México Now Festival
The México Now Festival (MXNOW) was founded by culture producer Claudia Norman in 2004. It is New York City’s first and only independent festival of contemporary Mexican culture.
Most New Yorkers think our city is the best in the world, but people who know both México City and New York tell us that México City culture is actually more progressive. The key image is of El Museo Soumaya in México City, an art museum with over 30 centuries of art from México and around the world. So this encyclopedia of Mexican culture has some very ancient culture, yet is very modern. The México Now Festival is like that. It references some very old traditions, but in new ways.
The Museum is sponsored by Fundación Carlos Slim, the foundation of the Mexican businessman who was the world’s richest person from 2010-2013.
Information
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