Victoria Díaz. Image: Indigenous Literature of the Americas Prize
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Generations Have Changed’
In the first of its several 2025 awards, the University of Guadalajara has announced that Victoria Díaz is the 2025 winner of the Premio de Literaturas Indígenas de América—the Indigenous Literature of the Americas Prize. The formal presentation of the recognition is to be made on December 5 at Marisol Schulz‘ Guadalajara International Book Fair (November 29 to December 7).
Díaz, 30, is an indigenous Tzotzil speaker from Chiapas, and award organizers say she was chosen for her short-story work, focused in Hombres absurdo/ Sokem Viniketik, a compilation of six texts that revolve around death as a constant event and a reality marked by poverty, tradition, and the clash with modernity.
In speaking by a remote digital feed, Díaz said that stories in the chosen collection reflect the reality experienced by indigenous communities in the state of Chiapas, one of the regions in Mexico most deeply affected by migration, violence, and rural abandonment.
“Sometimes I realize that the community or indigenous people where we live isn’t as rosy as the Western mind sometimes portrays it, so to speak. Indigenous peoples also suffer from violations and poverty, and now that we’re in the 21st century, generations have changed, and our lives have changed as well, but there has been poverty even today.”
In this week’s news conference announcing Díaz’ win, jury spokeswoman Cessia Esther Chuc Uc gave as a brief statement of rationale, the panel’s conviction that, “The stories expose how the tensions between tradition and change, hope and fatalism, faith and medicine generate changes in the characters’ lives, revealing a common background of social inequality and tragic destinies.”
She’s to receive a cash award of 300,000 pesos (US$16,057); a commemorative statuette; and publication of her work.
Díaz, as winner, works in one of 10 indigenous languages from Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador represented in the entries for this year’s competition.
The 2025 competition, according to the award’s interinstitutional committee’s Gabriel Pacheco Salvador, was focused entirely on short stories as “one of the best-known genres in the oral tradition of indigenous peoples.” Unpublished works written in the author’s indigenous language and translated into the language of his or her country of origin were accepted among entries.
‘An Exercise in Recognition and Memory’
Adira Monsrrat Fierro Villa
The Rector of the Centro Universitario del Norte (CUNorte), Adira Monsrrat Fierro Villa, made the point during the news conference that this award is considered by many to be more than a literary honor. She said that it instead is “an exercise in recognition and memory of the stories of indigenous communities.
“The presentation of this award,” she said, “is not a literary award,” she said. “It’s an act of memory, of justice, and of recognition of the voices that remind us of where we come from.
“Our native languages contain ancestral dreams, the teachings of our grandparents, and the strength of those who have defended life and the land since time immemorial.”
Karla Planter Pérez
Karla Planter Pérez, rector general of the University of Guadalajara, told the press at the news conference, “This is another way in which the University of Guadalajara, through various strategies, serves as a bridge for dialogue and recognition among diverse communities.
“It seeks to highlight authors who also write in indigenous languages and who, through their work, contribute to preserving and strengthening cultural wealth.”
Born in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, she speaks the Chamula variant of Tzotzil.
She holds a degree in language and culture from the Intercultural University of Chiapas and teaches at an Indigenous primary school.
Díaz has published several short stories in collective books in Mexico and Argentina. She’s the co-author of the collective book Yayijemal ts’ibetik / Tales with Scars (2023). She was a 2022-2023 National Fund for Culture and the Arts fellow; and is a member of the Tzotzil Writers Collective called “Jal K’opetik.”
Our special thanks to Joshua Nando and Mariana González Márquez for their help in the preparation of this report.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the Guadalajara International Book Fair is here, more on the Mexican publishing market is here, more on Spanish-language literature is here, and more on international book fairs and trade shows is here.
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