Paco Ignacio Taibo II Prepares Ambitious Plan to Promote Reading for Latin American Youth

ByMexico Solidarity

This article by Alonso Urrutia and Alma E. Muñoz originally appeared in the October 23, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico City. Through agreements with Latin American governments—national, state, and municipal—the Fondo de Cultura Económica will launch an ambitious plan next December to promote reading among young people aged 15 to 30 and disseminate Latin American literature in 14 countries, announced the director of the public publishing house, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, who described this project as the largest reading promotion program in the world.

The goal is to give away 2.5 million copies of 25 books (which could be expanded to 28, as negotiations are still underway with publishers or the authors’ families to transfer copyrights) exclusively to young people of that age, Taibo said.

President Claudia Sheinbaum highlighted the importance of this project, in collaboration with other governments, to disseminate literature from an important period in Latin America. It is the recovery of literature from that era because there are topics addressed that are important to know.

Taibo mentioned that the authors include Gabriel García Márquez, Sergio Ramírez, José María Arguedas, Mario Benedetti, Piedad Bonnet, Amparo Dávila, Nona Fernández, Juan Carlos Onetti, among others.

He said that to this end, agreements were made with governments like Cuba and Colombia, so they would contribute to the production and support this program. “The collection was directed toward them. But we faced a huge problem securing copyrights. It was a crossroads. If there wasn’t any money, it wouldn’t come in, or the publisher or the literary agency would. A series of specific alliances had to be made. Originally, 70 or 80 authors were selected, and we ended up with 25 or maybe 28.”