GUANAJUATO, Gto (Proceso).– In Guanajuato, textbooks for basic education have been immersed in controversy due to the ideological incidence of conservative groups, which have sought to influence the training of students during the last governments in the hands of the PAN, even with alternative books to those published by the Ministry of Public Education (SEP).
The use of school materials with related content – in the case of Guanajuato to a right that has governed for 32 years – even led sympathizers and public officials to burn biology books from the SEP in 2009 in the main square of León.
Now, the state authorities have decided that the new books will not be distributed due to the provisional suspension granted by the Federal Judiciary to the National Union of Parents.
While the Secretary of Education of the state of Guanajuato (SEG) keeps the books published by the SEP in warehouses, PAN deputies are demanding that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador make Vicente Fox Quesada, the former president of Guanajuato, appear as a “tyrant” in the history.
Although the entity’s Secretary of Education, Jorge Enrique Hernández Meza, has avoided commenting on the contents and has taken refuge in the lack of legal certainty to keep the new books in the warehouses, in the state Congress, from the PAN benches and Morena were the reason for rebutting.
Deputy Rolando Alcántar Rojas said, at a press conference, that the new books “address traumas of President López Obrador” who seeks to “instruct instead of educate.”
Rolando Alcántar considered the National Union of Parents as the main actor in the educational issue of the country, while the coordinator of the Morena bench, David Martínez Mendizábal, pointed out that the association has maintained privileges in Guanajuato such as imposing a secretary of Education, when referring to the yunquista Alberto Diosdado, during the six-year term of Governor Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez.
“They have so much power here in Guanajuato that we are not a secular entity… The fundamental problem for Guanajuato is educational conservatism,” said the legislator from Morena.
With his statements, David Martínez recalled that it is not the first time that disagreements have arisen in the state over the content of free textbooks.
14 years ago, during the six-year term of Felipe Calderón and with Alonso Lujambio at the head of the SEP, conservative groups that have PAN militants among their ranks burned Biology I books for secondary schools in a public square in León, considering that in the texts encouraged eroticism and homosexuality.
In 2009, with Alberto Diosdado at the helm of the Guanajuato Education Secretariat (SEG), the state government ordered the printing of its own high school biology books, which based sexual education on marriage, abstinence, and virginity. When the SEP withdrew the textbooks from the classrooms for not adhering to the curriculum, conservative groups protested by burning the SEP books.
Among the protagonists of the burning was the then PAN councilor, Hortensia Orozco, and Lourdes Cázares, who four years later was appointed by Governor Miguel Márquez as president of the State Council to Prevent, Address, Punish and Eradicate Violence Against Women.
Alberto Diosdado is a character who has remained in the cabinet during three PAN state governments. After leaving the SEG in 2012, he was away from public office for three years, but in 2015 then-governor Miguel Márquez appointed him general director of CONALEP, a position he held for the first three years of Diego Sinhue Rodríguez’s government.
In September 2022, the current governor appointed him general director of the Advanced System of Baccalaureate and Higher Education in the State of Guanajuato (SABES), a position he holds to date.
Fox, “tyrant” in the history of the 4T
By assuring that the contents of the new textbooks are aimed at imposing the political ideologies of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the PAN bench in the Guanajuato Congress ruled against their distribution, in addition to calling on the federal authorities to comply the provisional suspension determined by the Federal Judiciary.
PAN deputy Rolando Alcántar Rojas called a press conference to advance that they are going to promote calls against books to “defend the interest of parents and students who do not know how to express it due to the issue of age.”
According to the legislator, Morena seeks to impose a “Bolivarian, Chavista education” on the country, to later ensure that socialism is promoted in the new texts.
Alcántar claimed that the books talk about the former Guanajuato president Vicente Fox Quesada with adjectives, one of them, he stated, is “tyrant”, in the chapter where the issue of the results of the 2006 election is addressed, when the then Federal Institute Electoral gave the victory to the PAN Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and not to Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“If these books circulate, we are going to spoil a generation of students, they would also be affected if the textbooks of the previous cycle do not reach the classrooms,” said the legislator.
In addition, he reiterated that the books that are in the SEG warehouses will not be distributed in Guanajuato, given the provisional suspension granted by a federal judge.
One of the measures that Guanajuato could adopt, he said, is to recover textbooks from the previous year for the start of the next school year, and if necessary, the State Government allocates resources to print the necessary support materials.
“As long as the judicial mandate exists, we in Guanajuato are going to respect the Law,” he insisted when asked if the new textbooks would definitely not enter state classrooms.
On the other hand, David Martínez Mendizábal, coordinator of the Morena bench, assured that he has asked for the opinion of primary and secondary teachers, who have told him that only “there are some details to correct, they are minor details.”
Questioned about the controversial chapter of the alleged electoral fraud of 2006, the morenista affirmed that it is a section of history and each government reflects its version in the books.
“This is how it happened, it was a fraud, they did not want vote by vote, box by box. It is exactly the version of history that the Fourth Transformation is handling, as the previous governments handled their version of history and their mop of history. The story is an interpretation, that’s the interpretation of Morena; they don’t like it, so they discuss it in the classroom.”
He added that what is written in the books “is not the word of God”, but elements are given so that the topics can be discussed among the students and within the family to promote “critical awareness”.
Locked
The SEG warehouses serve as a warehouse for more than 2.7 million books. The state authority has indicated that it will not make the distribution until there is legal certainty about the legality in the delivery to students of the materials sent by the Federal Government.
The SEG consulted the SEP about the provisional suspension obtained by the National Union of Family Parents, but the response from the federal authority is that it has not received official notification.
In an information card dated August 1 that the Guanajuato Secretary of Education received, the SEP says it respects “every judicial agreement of which it has been notified,” but until that day they had only seen publications in the media.
Jorge Enrique Hernández Meza, Secretary of Education in Guanajuato, pointed out that a legal analysis was carried out within the agency and the conclusion is that they cannot distribute them, but also, he assured that in other states they have also decided not to distribute the books of text.
“It is not that we do not want to distribute them, on the contrary, all my statements have been about the need to distribute textbooks, but we need legal certainty. We are in the best disposition to do what we have to do, which is not much, because it’s not a discussion we’re not in.”
The statement of the head of the SEG was given after versions circulated about the withdrawal of books in schools where the distribution had already begun. The state agency, through the area of social communication, told Proceso that, by mistake, the education delegation in León began with the distribution in some schools, for this reason they collected the books to return them to the warehouses.
Under the protection of the SEG there are just over two million 670 thousand basic education books, with a cutoff of July 20 when they received the last package. The figure represents only 39% of the total number of books that have to reach the state to be distributed among preschool, primary, secondary and telesecundaria students.
According to Jorge Hernández Meza, the school year will be able to start on August 28 without the new books because the first three weeks the teaching staff make an evaluation of the group, but for the second half of September it is necessary that they have the material.
“It is a delicate legal process that we have to attend to together. We have a meeting with the federal authorities on August 10, surely there we will have to address this point of what will be required to finally be able to come out with the textbooks.”
In mid-July, the government of Guanajuato launched the national public tender SEG-LPN10-2023 for the printing of close to one million booklets as supplementary material for Spanish and mathematics in primary and secondary schools that would not replace free textbooks. , according to the SEG itself, but they could be used to start the school year.
The bidding rules establish that the provider must deliver all the booklets to the educational authorities by September 15 at the latest.
Prior to the suspension granted by the Third District Judge in Administrative Matters of Mexico City, Yadira Elizabeth Medina Alcántara, Governor Diego Sinhue and Jorge Hernández called on parents to donate the books from the previous cycle, for the delay in the arrival of the material in charge of the SEP.
“Textbooks are a base with which the educational system works, it is not the only base, because we have well-prepared teachers, an educational model, educational infrastructure, other materials, but books are an important part of full development,” declared Jorge Hernández Meza.
Guanajuato has only received all the books for preschool, which are 232 thousand 77 texts, while for secondary school no copy has arrived.
The last cut that the SEG has is that for primary students, two million 438 thousand of the three million 783 thousand 280 books that they have planned have arrived.
For high school, one million 169 thousand 682 books are expected, to which another 326 thousand 746 are added for the subject of English. In telesecundarias, one million 22 thousand 414 copies would have to be delivered plus another 254 thousand 254 English books.
In total, Guanajuato has to receive six million 789 thousand 147 books to distribute in public and private basic education schools.
