Mexican Evangelical Christian Group Burns Textbooks Over Alleged Communist and LGBTQ+ Content

In Mexico, a debate over the politics of education is intensifying as a group of Evangelical Christians recently burned their children's textbooks.

The book burning took place on August 20 in the southern state of Chiapas, following reports that the new textbooks contained content promoting communism and LGBTQ+ identities, according to Mexico News Daily.

In the deeply religious community of San Antonio del Monte, parents confiscated unopened boxes of books from outside a local elementary school and set them ablaze. The book burning was followed by demands for the government to reinstate old textbooks reported by the publication.

These protests highlight a nationwide controversy over the new textbooks, which have the endorsement of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

"What is really being revealed in this conflict, this debate is how polarized Mexican society is," sociologist Ishtar Cardona Cardona told the Associated Press.

Many have accused the López Obrador government of using these textbooks as tools for propagating left-wing ideologies. One news anchor went so far as to claim that the government aims to inject "the virus of communism" into schoolchildren according to AP.

In response to these protests, Obrador said that those opposing the textbooks are “misinformed and manipulated,” as per Mexico News Daily.

Apart from ideological skirmishes, experts point out another critical issue: the books were rushed to print so they could be included in the curriculum before López Obrador's term ends next year.

As a result, the textbooks are riddled with factual errors, such as a diagram that incorrectly places Mars and Earth in the solar system and a math problem that falsely suggests that ¾ is greater than ⅚.

"Regardless of the government's ideology or the type of government we have, mathematics must be taught," said Luz de Teresa Oteysa, a researcher at the Institute for Mathematics Research.