Can a Ministry practice autogestión ? No. The moment it does, it stops being a Ministry. And maybe—just maybe—that is the point.
Education is one of the last spaces where society accepts the "Father State." We want the Ministry to be strict, standardized, and reliable because we are terrified of the messiness of freedom.
April 14, 2026
So, what would a Ministry of Education that practices autogestión actually look like? And more importantly, can it work? The Ministry of Education is, by definition, a tool of the State. Its primary functions are to distribute funding, enforce national standards, certify learning, and suppress variation. Autogestión , conversely, argues that the people doing the work (teachers, students, janitors, parents) should control the conditions of that work.
Further Reading: "Calibán y la Bruja" (Federici) on the body politics of education; The Zapatista Escuelitas for a real-world model of autonomous education. autogestion del ministerio de educacion
Autogestión argues that messiness is the actual curriculum. It argues that a child learning to resolve a dispute in a school assembly is more valuable than memorizing the date of the Battle of Ayacucho.
In a direct democracy, 51% of the assembly can vote to cut math class because math is hard. A Ministry provides a technocratic guardrail against the tyranny of the majority. The Verdict: Saying Goodbye to the Father The demand for autogestión del Ministerio de Educación is not really about textbooks or budgets. It is about the psychology of authority. Can a Ministry practice autogestión
When teachers in Oaxaca block the Zócalo, they aren’t asking for a new textbook. They are asking for the abolition of the bureaucratic approval process for local curricula. They want the poder (power) to decide, without a Director General signing off on it.