Over the past few weeks, just prior to children returning to school, a war between education officials and parents has been raging in Mexico.
Parents have been setting fire to hundreds of textbooks in protest over curriculum that has introduced controversial themes to children.
Parents say that the books assigned by Mexico’s Education Ministry (SEP) — which provides learning for more than 24 million preschool, primary, and secondary students — teach children to defend gender theory, LGBTQ content, and communism.
One book burning occurred in San Antonio del Monte, where nearly all residents are evangelical Christians, Mexico News Daily (MND) reported.
Parents in Mexico burn boxes filled with LGBTQI+ gender ideology books that were being used in schools to indoctrinate children. pic.twitter.com/ZS6gONcFZh
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 29, 2023
In response to the incident, Mexican President López Obrador said that parents who protest believing that the “virus of communism” is included in the books are “misinformed and manipulated.”
“They have the right to demonstrate. We are free,” he said, while, as recounted by MND, calling on people not to be manipulated by leaders, businesspeople and influence peddlers on the right.
At a separate protest, parents showed up to an elementary school in Chiapas, piled up boxes of new textbooks, doused them with fuel, and set them on fire.
Mexican Catholic Parents in Chiapas burn books distributed by the government that promote Communism, LGBT, & demonic graphics ⬇️the movement is spreading throughout the state. pic.twitter.com/2HGU5lkDFe
— Orthodox Catholicism (@CathChivalry) August 21, 2023
Upon the boxes not catching fire immediately, one parent said, “the books are from the devil, they don’t burn so fast.”
Other protests were held in Aguascalientes (located roughly 300 miles north of Mexico City) and Baja California (across the U.S. southern border from San Diego).
During the Aguascalientes protest, around 12,000 people took to the streets, marching in protest of the textbooks they say as laced with “Marxist-communist” indoctrination.
Governors in four states say they are blocking distribution of the textbooks to schools, while two have filed an injunction with the court, MND noted.
SEP is not delivering the textbooks to Chihuahua and Coahuila, because of the injunctions filed by governors Maru Campos and Miguel Riquelme. Six other states will not distribute the books until the Supreme Court rules on whether production the books should be stopped, MND said.
A federal judge granted an injunction to the conservative National Union of Parents, following a lawsuit that was filed in May.
