Carlos Converso received the 2026 Bellas Artes Medal in the Theatre category on July 28, the highest recognition the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL) confers for an artistic career. The puppeteer, actor, and playwright of Argentine origin, naturalized Mexican, marked 50 years of residency in Mexico, where he built a career devoted to animating the inanimate.
Born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1947, Converso arrived in Mexico in the late 1970s after training under master puppeteer Javier Villafañe. In Mexico he developed virtually his entire body of work: more than 50 stagings as director, some twenty awards including the 1984 Rosete Aranda prize for best puppet show, and a teaching legacy that includes founding the Centro de Estudios en el Arte de los Títeres. "Mexico has been everything to me; it has offered me all of these possibilities," Converso said during the ceremony, according to La Jornada.
The medal was presented by Alejandra de la Paz, director general of INBAL, who highlighted Converso's role in elevating puppet theatre as one of the most complex, sensitive, and powerful expressions of the performing arts. The dais included Luis Mario Moncada, national theatre coordinator; playwright Berta Hiriart; and cultural manager Raquel Bárcenas. At the close of the ceremony, Marco Antonio Alcántara, representative of the Unión Internacional de la Marioneta (Unima), presented an additional award to the honoree. Converso defended the craft with a precise image: "The theatre of actors resembles the novel, and puppet theatre resembles poetry," as reported by El Universal.
Five decades after his arrival in Mexico, the puppeteer dedicated the honor to the community that makes this art possible. "God created the cat to allow humanity to caress the tiger. And humanity created the puppet to allow itself to caress its dreams," Converso said before leaving the Sala Manuel M. Ponce. As director of the Centro de Estudios en el Arte de los Títeres, he continues training the generations that will carry the craft into the next five decades.
This article was written with artificial intelligence assistance based on verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.