At the time of the Scorpion, there was an abundance of periodical information referring to the name “Ciudad de las ideas”, which was transformed into the “Festival of Ideas”, an annual meeting of scientists, artists, writers and other personalities celebrated every year since 2008 in Puebla, initiated by Andrés Roemer and Ricardo Salinas Pliego. A spectacle that was not always seen in entrances, in the participation of great personalities or in private patronage, until it was largely paid for with public money, in administrative opacity and the presence of these uncomfortable figures today.
What was sold as a forum of ideas functioned for years as a bridge between the public treasury and cultural projects managed by private structures. This option is generous according to available data. Halfway through the six-year age of PRI member Mario Marín Torres, in 2007, Roemer went to Pueblo with his City of Ideas project under his arm and his Civic Power association as a tool.
The Marinista administration allocated a fund of 29.4 million pesos for it, but Roemer did not come alone, he was accompanied by the name of Salinas and his media power, so the festival continued for the rest of the year in Puebla. At the end of Gobierno, AC Poder Cívico completed three years of the festival and reported a SAT entry of 87.6 million.
At the end of the government he started in Puebla, panista Rafael Moreno Valle also replaced the festival, in Roemer ya Salinas Pliego, during the six years of his government (2011-2017), and increased the turnover to 35 million per year. In all, during this six-year period, Roemer acquired the government of Pueblo for less than 231 million pesos.
The death in a helicopter crash of Moreno Valle and his wife, Gov. Martha Erika Alonso, and among complaints of violence and sexual assault against Roemer in 2019, the government received 35 million pesos just for the city of ideas and the pandemic. The financing of the festival cost 35 to 29 million.
However, Roemer also took important positions in the federal government and joined the administration of panista Felipe Calderón, who was given 30 million pesos by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (Conaculta) for his festival, a source of funding that amounted to 180 million pesos between 2012 and 2018, during the Peña Nieto federal government, which last year recorded a payment to the Nieto federal government.
In the same period, the National Council for Science and Technology paid Roemer more than 12 million pesos in four annual payments, more than three million from the Instituto Nacional del Empresador, according to information from the National Transparency Platform. Indeed, the government of the city of Mexico, in the hands of Miguel Ángel Mancera, received more than 13 million pesos through the Secretaría de Ciencia y Tecnología to organize the “Day of Knowledge”, an event with “the most exceptional professors of the world’s universities”, the experiment did not last even in a single edition.
The SAT reports and the information on the transparency pages allow us to complete this information and specify that in the 13 years of its existence, the AC of Andrés Roemer has also credited more than 925 million pesos between donations from individuals and companies.
Reports against Roemer carried out in 2021 by Mexico’s #MeToo movement generated five arrest warrants for violations, which was also opposed by the UNESCO ambassador who sought refuge in Israel. In 2023, there is a report of an arrest in that country, but pending extradition treatment, the person remains hopeful of being sent to Mexico.
The presence of Ricardo Salinas Pliego – and the structures associated with his group – have given this Festival of Ideas a head for completeness, where public support is channeled into projects that benefit business conglomerates with media, business and political interests, the line between cultural support and political-economic advocacy is widening.
The relaunch of the festival in 2024 under the branding and logistics of TV Azteca and the Ricardo B. Salinas Center was not just a name change; it represented a repetition of a model in which private initiative raises revenue for the state treasury without clear mechanisms of transparency. This happened at a time when a clash between the TV Azteca pair and the federal government escalated due to non-payment of the businessman’s request.
In this Festival of Ideas of 2024, the Marquis of Casa Fuerte, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo and Peralta-Ramos, Deputy of the Spanish General Court and the voice of the relevant parliamentary group of the People’s Party, who came to Pueblo to discuss discursively respond to the political coalition that encabezaba Xóchitl Gálvez. In addition to the rhetoric of the Marquesas city, Salinas Pliego was armed as part of a confrontation with former president López Obrador as a sign of his participation.
This was when the government of Pueblo decided to review and in some cases withdraw the apoyos that had been directed to the festival over the years. Figures circulating in the press exceed 500 million pesos in donations and contributions, fueling suspicions that public support ultimately benefited private initiative.
He does not want to demonize public-private cooperation. Great cultural events require repetition and alliances. The problem is the opacity of convenience, the inability to render content and the absence of mechanisms that guarantee editorial independence and clear academic criteria. A festival that aspires to an intellectual referent cannot depend on opaque contracts or the mediation of personalities whose presence conditions the participation of academics and students.
In order to prepare, complete the event and before the situation of financial and financial crisis in Salinas Pliego, the celebration of the Festival of Ideas for 2026 is not announced, although the website of the event and its social networks continue to be functional with general information.
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