February 11, 2026
San Miguel PEN has lost a beloved friend, colleague and VP emeritus, Victor Sahuatoba, to a long, valiant battle with cancer that defeated him in January 2026.
Born November 5, 1953 in Durango, Mexico to a family of 15 children, he studied at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico) and became a well-known poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, editor and cultural promoter. As his close friend and San Miguel PEN colleague Lucina Kathmann put it, his life was “completely full of books and literature.”
Lucina tells a wonderful story about Victor that perhaps not many know: When he first came south from Durango, he found that a very corrupt governor of Michoacán had exactly the same name as his. So he decided to take a pseudonymous name—that of a king of the indigenous area in Durango that he came from. Victor definitely had Basque forebears, but he may also have been the son of the son of the son of some indigenous Sahuatoba.
Victor was a long-time member of San Miguel PEN. Lucina recalls that in the late 1980s or early ‘90s, she, her partner Charlie and Victor were all students in a literary workshop at Bellas Artes taught by the celebrated Mexican writer Daniel Sada. Victor had recently arrive in San Miguel and, learning about PEN, he joined. He soon became vice president while Lucina became treasurer and then secretary. As she recalls, “We needed good titles to raise hell with the authorities.”
Victor traveled frequently for San Miguel PEN, regularly attending the annual PEN International Congress, held in a different country each year, and FIL, the Guadalajara International Book Fair. He went to Mexico City for court cases against wrongly accused writers—at one of which, Lucina recalls, “He had a good time with the youngest judge, who told him to forget it as far as anything liberal with that court went, they were all hopelessly pro-army.” In 2020, Victor traveled to Paris for the presentation of the first edition of Resistir, the celebrated anthology of Latin American poetry organized by Ecuadorian-French writer/ activist Rocío Durán-Barba.
Perhaps Victor’s greatest achievement was FELISMA, La Feria Internacional del Libro San Miguel de Allende—a completely free, five-day writers’ conference, literary festival and book fair that he founded in 2004. FELISMA was devoted to literacy and literature for youth, billing itself on its Facebook page as La fiesta joven de las letras, (The youth festival of letters). FELISMA made books in Spanish easily available to local youths and their families by exhibiting and selling them in the heart of the city, the Jardin. Festival events in the Museo Histórico Casa de Allende attracted international authors, publishers and readers, and included indigenous authors as featured guests. Victor also served as president of the cultural foundation Un Chorro de Literatura (A Fountain of Literature), A.C., which officially produced FELISMA.
He invented many engaging ways to encourage and support youthful literary talent and promote literary culture. On Facebook, he issued the following invitation: “From the Young Pen, the ‘Chica FELISMA’ Mailbox, and the Website: Invitation: Write a brief letter declaring your love for books and reading. Send it to the email address c.felisma@gmail.com. Submissions will be read, selected, and discussed during three festival programs at www.felisma.org, …. The youth celebration of letters!” He established the FELISMA Recognition Award and a contest for young writers, Pluma Joven de Poesía, Ensayo y Narrativa (Young Pen Award for Poetry, Essay, and Fiction).
In addition to FELISMA, Victor ran a popular writing workshop in San Miguel as well as a bookstore, both called La Musa Hosca (The Grumpy Muse). As Lucina described it, “For many years he could dependably be found in a tiny bookstore, a closet in the zaguán [entrance area] of a lovely colonial building on the Plaza Cívica.”
He is greatly missed by the Spanish-speaking literary community of San Miguel, as well as by San Miguel PEN and the two sisters who survive him.
A funeral mass for Victor was celebrated in El Oratorio de San Miguel de Allende on February 2, 2026. The community gathered for a memorial at El Museo Histórico Casa de Allende on February 11th.
“For the one who writes speaks with a voice of their own, and the one who reads speaks with themselves and with the other.” — Víctor Sahuatoba
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