Two Bikolanos set to attend Mexico’s Book Festival

Historian Dr. Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. and poet, translator and filmmaker Kristian Sendon Cordero — are set to join the Philippines’ delegation to the 39th Feria Universitaria del Libro (FUL) in Mexico, where the Philippines will be the festival’s country of honor.

The 39th edition of the Feria Universitaria del Libro will take place from Sept. 4 to 13, 2026, at the Ciudad del Conocimiento in Mineral de la Reforma, Hidalgo. Organized by the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (UAEH), the fair will feature the Philippines as its invited country of honor and will explore the theme of “Comercio Global,” or Global Trade. Organizers have announced hundreds of literary, academic and cultural activities for the 10-day festival.

Dr. Aguilar, a professor in the Department of History at Ateneo de Manila University, is a historian whose scholarship examines nationalism, global migration, citizenship, elections and popular culture, as well as the social histories of rice and sugar. His recent work has also returned to the history of Bicol, including research on the devotion to the Virgin of Peñafrancia and the making of the region.

His academic career has extended beyond the Philippines. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Ateneo de Manila, a master’s degree from the University of Wales and a doctorate from Cornell University. Before returning to the Philippines, he taught at the National University of Singapore and James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. He has also served in major professional organizations, including as president of the International Association of Historians of Asia and chair of the Philippine Social Science Council.

Aguilar was editor of Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints for 18 years, from 2003 to 2021. In 2025, he received the Grant Goodman Prize in Philippine Historical Studies from the Association for Asian Studies. His scholarship includes work on the colonial Philippines, overseas Filipinos, nationalism and the political history of the country.

Cordero arrives in Mexico from a very different but closely connected terrain: the multilingual world of contemporary Bikol literature.

A poet, fiction writer, essayist, translator and filmmaker based in Bicol, Cordero writes in Filipino, Bikol and Rinconada. His poetry collections have received major Philippine literary honors, including the National Book Awards, while his debut collection won the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award. He represented the Philippines at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2017 and has also been an artist-in-residence at the University of Michigan and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. He is the founder and creative director of Savage Mind: Arts, Books, Cinema and Kamarin, a bookshop and artspace in Naga City.

His presence at FUL 2026 will have an especially literary dimension. Cordero is scheduled to present his poetry collection La tristeza de lo alado, the Spanish-language edition of his selected poems, published by Círculo de Poesía, translated into Spanish by the award-winning poet and translator Lawrence Schimel.

The host institution, the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo, is one of Mexico’s major public universities and the organizer of the Feria Universitaria del Libro. The FUL describes itself as a major literary and publishing event whose programs combine literature with academic exchange, professional activities, translation, poetry, children’s programming and cultural events.

The 2026 edition is expected to bring together hundreds of publishing houses and a large program of conferences, book presentations, workshops, literary encounters and artistic events. Organizers have said they hope to surpass the previous edition’s attendance of more than 148,000 visitors. The university has also framed the Philippine participation as an opportunity for academic and cultural exchange. In June, Philippine Ambassador to Mexico Arvin Reyes de León visited UAEH as preparations for the festival intensified, with university officials emphasizing the potential for stronger institutional and cultural ties between Mexico and the Philippines.

For Aguilar and Cordero, the trip places two distinctly Bicolano intellectual traditions on an international stage: the historian’s examination of how Filipinos became a people through migration, colonialism and nation-building, and the poet’s insistence that the country’s regional languages are not peripheral to Philippine literature but central to its imagination.

Their participation also arrives at a moment when Philippine literature is increasingly being encountered through translation. In Cordero’s case, the journey from Bikol and Filipino poetry into Spanish and now into the Mexican literary sphere makes the book fair not simply a showcase for Filipino writing, but another stage in the continuing movement of Philippine voices across languages.