Mexico City. The Mexican Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) has appointed a pedagogue, indigenous poet, and activist for educational and cultural rights as the latest Director General of Educational Materials, effective February 16. The appointment replaces Marx Arriaga.
The SEP highlighted the academic, literary, and cultural trajectory of the incoming director, who holds a degree in Pedagogy from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), with a specialization in educational policy, materials, communication, and intercultural education.
The new director is the daughter of Oaxacan agricultural workers and a speaker of the Mixtec language (Ñuu Savi). She completed her studies in bilingual and multigraded settings, an experience that shaped her dedication to education and the defense of indigenous languages.
The new Director General of Educational Materials is the author of eleven books, translated into English, French, Greek, Arabic, Catalan, Hindi, Bengali, Italian, German, and Chinese.
She has received numerous awards, including the National Youth Award, the Luis Cardoza y Aragón Mesoamerican Poetry Prize, the Cenzontle Award for Literary Creation in Indigenous Languages, and an honorable mention in the Antonio García Cubas Award in the Children’s Book category.
Her experience in designing pedagogical materials, teacher training, and promoting reading will contribute to strengthening educational content with a humanist, inclusive, intercultural, and gender-sensitive approach aligned with the New Mexican School (NEM), the SEP stated. She has too collaborated with academic and cultural institutions on teacher training and reading mediation projects, and her poems appear in Free Textbooks (LTG).
The appointment, according to SEP head Mario Delgado Carrillo, aims to recognize women in history, as requested by President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, and to incorporate more books in indigenous languages and guarantee formats in large print and Braille.
The SEP also plans to expand recognition of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant communities and design educational materials for children and adolescents in situations of mobility – an experience the new director herself had during her childhood between her hometown of Tlaxiaco and the agricultural fields of San Quintín, Baja California.
Efforts will also be made to strengthen learning in humanism and healthy living, and, for the first time, to develop specific teaching materials for multigraded schools, considering that almost half of the country’s public schools operate under this model and require specially adapted resources.
Prior to her appointment, she served as National Coordinator of Literature at the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL), where she promoted initiatives focused on youth and diversity, national meetings of indigenous and Afro-Mexican writers, and the production of freely accessible reading materials.
Meanwhile, the former head of Educational Materials, Marx Arriaga Navarro, who has remained in his office since Friday, indicated he will not leave the space until Tuesday morning “when (the department) takes possession of the facilities,” according to resolutions he shared during a meeting of the NEM Defense Committee.
In a message, Arriaga stated he is “working normally” and has not yet determined when he will hold a press conference. He plans to reinstate the virtual assembly at 7:00 PM.
During a press conference Monday, President Sheinbaum, when questioned about Arriaga’s dismissal – he was instrumental in transforming the free textbooks during the previous administration with what has been called the New Mexican School – and his refusal to leave his office, stated she agreed with the Undersecretary of Basic Education, Noemí Juárez, on the require to incorporate the contributions of women into the history and construction of Mexico in the new free textbooks, a request Arriaga reportedly rejected.
On Friday, the SEP announced the change in the general direction that Arriaga Navarro had held since 2022, following a demonstration broadcast on Facebook from his office.
