Mexico’s Free Textbooks Surrounded by Controversy
Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), President of Mexico, promotes his Cuarta Transformación across all areas of his administration, filling new positions and starting new projects constantly.
One of these projects is playing out in educational reform through AMLO´s Nueva Escuela Mexicana, an effort to innovate and revitalize the Mexican public school system.
Under the new Secretariat of Education Leticia Ramire Amaya, the government took on the project of providing new and free textbooks for all children in Mexico, starting last year.
The first round of books were released in time for this school year in August of 2023, but the story is ongoing as the books continue to face criticism- for both quality and content.
Initial controversies came about when Sady Arturo Loaiza Escalona was first appointed by Marx Arriaga, Director of Educational Materials, to work on the textbooks.
Escalona, former official in the government of Nicolás Maduro, has been deputy director in Development and Innovation of Educational Materials at the SEP in Mexico since January of last year.
His role in the Venezuelan government involved serving as director of the National Library in Venezuela in 2014 and 2018, attached to the Ministry of Popular Power for the Culture.
The decision to put Escalona in charge of the development of these new textbooks has received ideological warnings, including from PRD and PRI party members. Marco Fernández, a specialist at Tec de Monterrey and México Evalúa said that,
“It will be very nice for the rhetoric and ideologies of Marx Arriaga, but not for the urgent educational needs that children and young people have to learn what allows them to become better citizens and achieve both knowledge and skills to successfully integrate into the world of work.”
PRD member Olga Luz Espinosa , member of the Education Commission, described the urgency for Marx Arriaga to appear before the Legislature to explain the intent behind the design of these textbooks.
When the books did come out, the fear of communist influence was soon overshadowed by other concerns- ideological and typographical. Parents found depictions of diverse families, including same-sex couples and use of inclusive language overly anti-machista, though never citing Saidy as a potential culprit.
Beyond this, many found other errors, including the date of Benito Juarez’s birth date being wrong, a lack of mathematics, broken links, and other spelling issues. These complaints have led many to wonder whether this project was rushed through.
In response to the criticism, AMLO urges the public not to politicize the issue. On the issue of Saidy Escalona, he stated,
“These are the politics of conservatism, this talk of ‘becoming like Venezuela, becoming like Cuba.’ Politics. In reality, they have no arguments against the books.”
He disparaged those commenting, claiming,
“It’s a defamatory campaign of conservatism, they talk about how the books will inject the virus of communism without evidence. The truth is grotesque, absurd, not only do they not have evidence, they are making an extremist statement, irrational, in bad faith.”
He compared these comments to the Inquisition,
“It’s very old-fashioned, medieval even, the Inquisition to destroy and burn books. This is a tactic of the conservatism of the left.”
In an effort to discourage politicization of these children’s textbooks, AMLO instead places the blame on a conservative agenda of anti-intellectualism and fear of communism.
The question is why does AMLO place blame on the prejudice of the right, whether in anticipation of the anticommunist criticism, or because the distribution of free textbooks does have a communist sentiment behind it.
Going forward, the SEP has announced plans to correct these errors before the next school cycle starting in August of 2024. Marx Arriaga continues to defend the validity and importance of state-supplied textbooks.
“Some politicians and businessmen talk about how the education of children is the most important, but their actions when in power show they are only interested in the reforms that are profitable, abandoning those projects in education. Today, the Nueva Escuela Mexicana does not measure itself based on productivity or profitability.”
The issue of the content of state supplied public school textbooks is one full of ideological controversy, but parents in communities all over Mexico are focused on educational materials that will provide their children with a well-rounded education.
Anna Hobbins | Latin American Correspondent
Hello everyone! My name is Anna Hobbins, I’m a junior at Tulane University studying Latin American Studies, Legal Studies in Business and Spanish & Portuguese. This spring, as a Latin American Correspondent for Latina Republic, I hope to tell the stories of the people I meet in São Paulo, Brazil and beyond while I study abroad. I would love to highlight African tradition, migration, and community support for new migrants and refugees. Coming from a business background, I’m interested in the environment of innovation in Brazil, especially favela startups, and how these burgeoning businesses may support immigrant populations. I have delved into history, culture, music, language of Latina America and want to raise awareness about it, hoping it also may help ease xenophobia and improve conditions for migrants from the area living in the U.S. I have more recently taken up photography, which I hope to incorporate into my storytelling with Latina Republic.
