Book excerpt: The Latin-American conference on algebra, the XV Coloquio Latinoamericano de Algebra (Cocoyoc, Mexico), consisted of plenary sessions of general interest and special sessions on algebraic combinatorics, associative rings, cohomology of rings and algebras, commutative algebra, group representations, Hopf algebras, number theory, quantum groups, and representation theory of algebras. This proceedings volume contains original research papers related to talks at the colloquium. In addition, there are several surveys presenting important topics to a broad mathematical audience. There are also two invited papers by Raymundo Bautista and Roberto Martinez, founders of the Mexican school of representation theory of algebras. The book is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in algebra.