Book fair season: The biggest political events of the year

Mexico’s end of year book fairs are hotbeds of political campaigning, organising, and plotting.

For a country with a declining number of readers, Mexico’s book fairs hold an awful lot of sway. In the last quarter of every year, millions descend on book fairs spread across the whole country—from its very south to the far north. Every fair has its own personality, resulting in a diversity of political affiliations and purposes.

The city of Guadalajara’s book fair, la Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara, known simply as “la FIL”, is the world’s second most important global fair after Frankfurt for editors and the largest Spanish-language fair on Earth. It is also the country’s most important cultural forum for political activities. Just like candidates descend on the primary hotbed of Iowa, no Mexican presidential or gubernatorial hopeful would dare miss the late-November showcase of cultural and political clout in la FIL.

Intellectuals, pundits, and cultural icons that flock through usually sterile halls of the Expo Guadalajara conference centre, find it has been made beautiful by the arrival of 160,000 books.

And just like in the US primary process in Iowa, la FIL is ripe for political gaffes. Most famously, in 2012, when presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto turned up and was blindsided by the perfectly predictable question of “What are your three favourite books?”.

Peña Nieto did eventually win the presidential race in 2012, but he was never able to shake off the accusation of being a dull mind behind a good looking facade. More than a decade later, Mexicans are increasingly looking as unlettered as their erstwhile president.