Goodbye to a brilliant mind (with a library bigger than your Netflix profile)
It seems that the universe decided to take another talent from us, because Isabel Turrent—writer, essayist and, basically, the person who made political debates sound interesting—died this Wednesday. Yes, just when we thought 2025 couldn’t get any more dramatic. Sources close to his family confirmed the news to EL UNIVERSAL, because of course, in these cases one does not find out from a shady tweet but from the serious media (how vintage).
The life of Turrent or how to be a scholar without dying of boredom
This woman not only wrote books that probably decorated your shelves unread (we don’t judge you), but she was also a crack in Art History, International Relations and Political Science. He studied at the UIA, El Colegio de México and even at the University of Oxford, because when it comes to accumulating degrees, some know no limits. While we drown in memes, she analyzed world geopolitics with the elegance of someone having tea with their pinky up.
His work, between scathing essays and cultural reflections, was like that university professor who made you feel ignorant but motivated. And although his name did not appear in the trending topics (because, let’s be honest, culture today competes with videos of kittens), his influence on journalism and political analysis was indisputable. The kind of person who could quote Octavio Paz in a discussion about Brexit without flinching.
The ironic thing? In an era where we are all “content creators”, Turrent showed that deep ideas don’t need Instagram filters to be relevant. Of course, if I had had TikTok, it would have been the only one where someone talked about art and diplomacy between viral dances.
A legacy that will survive algorithms
Beyond the formal obituaries (which, let’s be honest, almost no one reads in full), his death leaves us with an uncomfortable question: who will occupy that critical space in a world dominated by Twitter threads and 15-second takes?. Turrent was one of those voices that did not limit itself to describing reality, but rather dissected it with a scalpel. And in times of cheap polarization, that amounts to a superpower.
So, while the world continues to revolve between political scandals and influencers promoting detox smoothies, his work remains a reminder that complex thinking is not extinct. Just buried under a pile of ephemera.
Now what? If you want to honor his memory, share this article (yes, this one you just read between WhatsApp notifications). Or better yet: read one of his books. In short, you can always pause that series that you only watch out of inertia. #Priorities.
Explore more about key figures of Mexican culture in our dedicated section —because knowledge doesn’t take up space in the cloud (but it does take up space in your brain).




