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Behind Puerto Vallarta’s Latin Fest: Diversity Week, local activists have begun raising questions about how the festival’s $7.5 million-peso production contract was awarded — and about how little visibility the public, or even city officials, appear to have into who books the festival’s talent.
The Contract
Víctor Espíndola, founder and general coordinator of MOVii (Movimiento por la Igualdad en México), has publicly raised concerns about the bidding process and how the estimated 7.5 million pesos budgeted is being spent.
According to a Fallo de Adjudicación (award ruling) issued July 17, 2026 by Jalisco’s Secretaría de Administración, the licitación for “Servicio Integral para la Producción del Evento Latín Fest, Diversity Week 2026” (LPL 403/2/2026) was awarded to Creativa Leventoph, S.A. de C.V. for $7,495,099.00 MXN (IVA included). The contract bundles artistic talent, technical production (stage, audio, lighting, video), power generation, security and medical staffing, and illuminated decorative structures for the Muelle de los Muertos and Romantic Zone into a single package.
Espíndola raises concerns about several elements of the process, including:
No Acquisitions Committee review. The ruling is explicitly titled “Sin Concurrencia del Comité” — issued without the involvement of the body normally responsible for overseeing competitive bidding.
Only one of two bidders survived technical review. Two companies submitted proposals — Creativa Leventoph and HAI Experiencias — and both were initially deemed solvent on documentation.
But at the technical evaluation stage, HAI Experiencias was disqualified for a long list of missing materials: no detailed lighting proposal for the pier installation, no artist biographies, no technical riders, no signed commitment letter on artist logistics costs, no certified project manager, and missing ISO and REPSE certifications, among other gaps.
Creativa Leventoph was found to meet all requirements, leaving it the sole technically and economically solvent bidder — which under the binary evaluation method used here meant automatic award regardless of price competition.
Artist requirements described by profile, not by name. The technical specifications called for performers matching narrow professional profiles (an internationally recognized drag artist, an electronic music DJ/producer, a male pop artist with LGBTQIA+ affinity, and an electropop duo/act with at least 10 years’ experience and three commercial releases) rather than naming acts directly — a structure critics argue narrowed the field to a single realistic bidder.
No itemized cost breakdown. The full $7.5 million is awarded as one lump “servicio integral.” The technical annex spells out exactly what’s bundled inside it — down to the main stage’s audio and lighting equipment, a 100kVA generator, three 3×3-meter dressing rooms, 20 twelve-hour security shifts, two paramedics, and all four pier structures — but none of it is priced separately, making it impossible to assess whether any individual component was priced at market rate.
Separately, based on city council (Cabildo) records, the festival’s funding appears to combine a $1,000,000 MXN municipal contribution with roughly $7,000,000 MXN from the Jalisco State Entertainment Agency (AEEJ) — for a combined public investment in the neighborhood of $8 million MXN.
Background research on Creativa Leventoph shows the company is also the contractor behind Puerto Vallarta’s World Cup Fan Zone buildout — a separate contract worth roughly $48 million MXN awarded via national public bidding. That prior contract is not among the concerns Espíndola has raised about the Diversity Week award, but it does establish the company as an active, high-volume state and municipal contractor beyond this single event.
Local Performers Speak Out
The institutional questions Espíndola has raised aren’t the only pushback the contract has generated. A group of local drag performers and diversity-community figures has separately gone public, in a Spanish-language statement circulated on social media, arguing that Diversity Week was built around their community without actually including them.
The statement’s signers — Angystar, Diva Divine (described as a “drag pioneer”), Karla Fifi, Jeybra Queen, Alexis DJ, Mario Moreno, and Diva Daniela, along with allied waitstaff and bartenders who work the local circuit — say they spent years building Puerto Vallarta’s diversity scene themselves, often without support and while facing discrimination. Their complaint is that an event named for that diversity was organized without any of them at the table, and that the artists actually booked have no local name or face in the community.
Their statement raises the same structural objections Espíndola has: that a contract of this size moved forward without the oversight committee involved, and that only one company ended up “competing” by the end of the process. But it also introduces a distinct grievance that the procurement critique alone doesn’t capture — that local talent was left out of the casting and booking process entirely, even as the event traded on their community’s identity.
The group’s demands, addressed to the Agencia Estatal de Entretenimiento, largely mirror Espíndola’s transparency requests: a clear, itemized account of how the roughly 8 million pesos in combined state and municipal funding was spent, an explanation for the lack of oversight on the contract, a commitment that local talent will appear on the main stage at future events rather than in supporting roles, and a broader call for “promoting diversity” to mean actually paying the diversity that already exists in the city.
Espíndola’s group says it has filed transparency requests with both the State Entertainment Agency and the City Council and plans to publish responses as they arrive.
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