Xtabay Festival 2025: Celebrating Maya Art and Culture

Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Mexico — The fourteenth anniversary of the Xtabay Festival has commenced, an event created and spearheaded by visual artist Marcelo Jiménez Santos. The festival serves as a space where poetry, painting, dance, and community converge.

The festival is scheduled to take place from October 16 to October 19, 2025, across various venues.

In an interview, Marcelo Jiménez described the Festival of the Xtabay as a community-based, self-managed initiative that promotes participation from everyone through the different artistic and cultural expressions present in this Maya territory.

The festival began on Thursday with a talk-workshop titled "Pre-Hispanic Music Yesterday and Today," delivered by ethnomusicologist Hilda Pous Acosta in the Popol Naj 2 classroom at the UQROO campus in Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

Simultaneously, the documentary video "Xtabay: Mujer hermosa que mata" (Xtabay: The Beautiful Woman Who Kills) was presented at the Casa de la Crónica. The day concluded with the conference "Fundación de Chan Santa Cruz" (Foundation of Chan Santa Cruz), led by anthropologist José Luis Ruz Escalante.

This 14th edition of the festival will also feature a book and community cultural products expo-sale in the corridor of the Felipe Carrillo Puerto Casa de la Cultura. Additional events include a performance by the Compañía Artística Bahía Manglar of the work "Xtabay" by Iván Carrillo Ríos, the inauguration of the collective visual arts exhibition Xtabay 2025, a presentation by the women's poetry circle, and a dramatization of myths and legends from the Maya zone.

Marcelo Jiménez stated that this initiative has been consolidated with the participation of artists from various parts of the Yucatán Peninsula. He noted that it has served as a space for free expression and for highlighting the contributions of women, which have long been rendered invisible.