Mexico City. Marx Arriaga Navarro, former Director General of Educational Materials for the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP), revealed that Education Secretary Mario Delgado offered him an ambassadorship “months ago,” which he declined. Arriaga acknowledged the positions offer salaries “not subject to republican austerity” and a lifestyle befitting an ambassador.
During a live stream broadcast on his social media channels for over 11 hours, Arriaga stated he rejected the offer as “it was to receive me to leave this position and allow changes to the Textbooks. And it’s true, he offered it, and I didn’t take it, because I wasn’t going to betray the teaching base.” The revelation comes after Arriaga’s removal from his post amid ongoing disputes over the content of new textbooks.
Following Secretary Delgado’s public disclosure of the offer, Arriaga affirmed, “I preferred to stay and defend, even if only for a few more weeks, the materials of all the colleagues in the country who believed in this project, and today, seeing all the function in this hour, I leave well paid, that is, it was worth it.”
He indicated he could have been “the first Texcoco ambassador to Costa Rica, but no, This represents worth more. Knowing that Lucy was able to publish her illustrations and carry out the projects, and have an impact, that those murals were made, that the community changed its culture and spaces that were lost were recovered and became symbols of resistance, is priceless.”
Arriaga Navarro also refuted claims that he opposed including content about women in the Free Textbooks, highlighting that hundreds of women participated in their creation as illustrators, project developers, and evaluators. The controversy underscores the political tensions surrounding educational reform in Mexico.
