Mexico’s Education Secretary Warns Canal Once’s Archive Was Indeed Damaged. It’s Still Not Known How Much

BySugeyry Romina Gándara

This article by Sugeyry Romina Gándara originally appeared in the August 3, 2026 edition of SinEmbargo, a Mexican independent digital news outlet.

Mexico City, August 3 (SinEmbargo).— Mario Delgado Carrillo, head of the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP), warned this Monday morning that Canal Once‘s historic archive was indeed damaged during the student takeover of the facilities that lasted more than two months, but he stressed that it is still unknown how serious the damage is.

During President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo‘s morning press conference, he recalled that since this past May 20, a group of young people from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) decided to stay in the Canal Once facilities. “We made many attempts to establish dialogue with them, what their list of demands was; they refused for a long time to have dialogue,” he recounted.

Finally, Delgado Carrillo explained, working groups were set up, led by Ricardo Villanueva Lomelí, Undersecretary of Higher Education, and IPN authorities, in order to analyze the list of demands of the dissenters; however, he emphasized, no point in the document had anything to do with Canal Once.

“So from the beginning we asked them to return the Canal Once facilities because there is a lot of technology, equipment, and above all the historic video library of Canal Once, with more than 70 years of content stored there that must be kept under certain conditions, and the state of that archive and of all the Canal Once facilities was already starting to cause great concern,” he added.

According to Delgado, the students repeatedly denied access. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that the workers also had the right to be in the facilities, so yesterday they decided to organize to peacefully take Canal Once.

“Led by the channel’s director, by Renata [Turrent Hegewisch], they peacefully took the channel. There were only six young people. They were invited to leave. They are now outside,” specified the Secretary of Public Education.

Faced with that situation, he recounted, “control of the doors was taken, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office and a notary public were called to certify the conditions in which the facilities are.”

“So an evaluation is going to be done by the corresponding authorities. Unfortunately, at first glance there is indeed damage to the archive. There is broken material, in disarray, on the floor, but we are going to wait to see how serious that damage is,” said the official.

—Damage only to the audiovisual material? a reporter asked him.

—From the first review done of the archive, there is indeed broken material on the floor, everything in disarray. We still don’t know how serious the damage done to Canal Once’s historic archive is, Mario Delgado insisted.

Finally, he noted that the dialogue tables with the Politécnico students will continue, but he stressed that “it is not possible that a channel that belongs to the people of Mexico had continued to be kidnapped by a group of young people.”

Later, Sheinbaum Pardo revealed that investigation files have already been opened following the occupation of Canal Once, and announced that a review will be carried out of what happened during the two months it was in the hands of the dissenters, in order to determine the damage to the Nation’s heritage.

“An analysis is going to be done of the inventory, of what happened in this takeover, and there are also investigation files on this matter, especially if they damaged the Nation’s heritage,” she declared from the National Palace.