The president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Alejandro Moreno, sharply criticized the call by Marx Arriaga, Director of Educational Materials for the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), and questioned the ideological orientation of his proposal. Moreno called it a 'national tournament of the biggest absurdity in the governments of Morena' and stated that the SEP is not a 'political toy' but an institution that should serve the people, not a 'rotten narco-Morena ideology.' He warned of the proposal's effects on education: 'The bad thing is that its brutality carries away what is most precious to us as a country: the education of our girls and boys.' Senator and PRI General Secretary Carolina Viggiano considers Arriaga a risk to the national education system and must be dismissed. In turn, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) defended the 'New Mexican School' (NEM) policy, stating that it has strengthened public education by guaranteeing free educational materials and promoting equity and the well-being of students across the country. In a statement, SEP head Mario Delgado Carrillo noted that the NEM 'is a state policy that consolidates the public, free, secular, and inclusive character of education and places at its center the social right to a comprehensive education with a humanistic and scientific sense.' He pointed out that during the 2025-2026 school cycle, more than 160 million Free Textbooks (LTG) were distributed, including versions in 22 indigenous languages, with the goal of ensuring relevant materials aligned with the pedagogical principles of the NEM. 'The president [Claudia Sheinbaum] should take this issue seriously, it is not just any topic, it is a very delicate matter, it is madness, without a doubt,' he said in statements reported by the newspaper El Universal. Meanwhile, the PAN deputy Héctor Saúl Téllez shared a video on his X account in which he demanded the 'immediate dismissal of this character' and to 'stop the attempt to influence the country's educational policy.' In the same vein, the MORENA deputy Francisco Farías stated: 'What Marx Arriaga deserves is to be fired immediately, because what they intend is to indoctrinate the new generations in basic education.' In a post on X, he wrote: 'What is he trying to do? Teach children that embracing organized crime is okay? Make them believe that the 'narcodictator' Nicolás Maduro is an example to follow? Promote incompetence as an aspirational model?' According to Delgado Carrillo, this policy demonstrates the inclusion of historically marginalized communities: 'Justice is being done for these groups that were forgotten by neoliberalism.' Additionally, the agency reported that the federal government's priority programs have allocated more than 144 billion pesos in scholarships and educational improvement actions, benefiting more than 13 million students and thousands of schools. SEP also highlighted the transformation of School Technical Councils, which it pointed out have become spaces for dialogue for teachers to present ideas, projects, and proposals aimed at improving the content and values of the NEM. Delgado Carrillo emphasized that 'educational transformation is advancing with results and institutional responsibility, consolidating public school as a pillar of social well-being, democracy, and national development.' Carrillo's statements, released on Saturday, came after last week, the Director of Educational Materials of the SEP, Marx Arriaga Navarro, called for the formation of Committees for the Defense of the New Mexican School and the Free Textbooks, accusing the existence of a 'trend towards the privatization of the National Education System.' Through his X account, Arriaga called on 'every free soul, insurgent, with thought and critical consciousness, to organize in Committees for the Defense of the New Mexican School and its LTG,' describing them as spaces where the teaching profession will be instructed, agitated, and organized to 'develop political actions that defend public, popular, critical, emancipatory, and democratic education.' The call details that the Committees will work on instruction in 'the philosophy, theology, and pedagogy of liberation' and on identifying the mechanisms that, according to the document, state operators use to implement educational privatization policies. It also proposes to build 'a popular power, a massiveness, under a clear political formation, based on non-negotiable principles.' In his text, Arriaga highlighted that since 2018, 'an educational transformation has been built in Mexico,' although he assured that despite the advances, practices inherited from the neoliberal educational model persist, such as simulation, coercion to limit teacher professional autonomy, and the promotion of competency-based educational models in the service of business interests. 'I believe that this gentleman does deserve to be removed.'
