When importing blacklists, we forget that prohibiting reading is prohibiting thinking
A year ago I was talking with Doris Sommer, literary critic and university professor. She was returning from Tennessee, a pro-Trump US region, where she had worked with cultural activists facing the wave of book bans in schools and libraries. He told me, with the serenity of someone who has already seen these tides: “They are also vetoing Toni Morrison.” I responded, incredulously: “Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize winner?”
Yes. The same author who taught us to look squarely at the violence of racism and the complexity of childhood.
Today, in Lima, the scene is repeated with other acronyms. The public body Indecopi sanctioned the Peruvian-American school Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the management of its secondary library and ordered the suspension of the loan of 21 titles while a committee with the participation of families is created. The institution announced that it will appeal. The case made headlines with six-figure fines and a “highly sexual” narrative, on a list that includes—again—Morrison along with George M. Johnson, Maia Kobabe, Mike Curato and Kacen Callender, among others. Beyond the technicalities, the political message is clear: discipline the school library from the state.
And that has a name: censorship.
Yes, it happens in an elite school: Roosevelt is the most expensive in Peru. It might seem naive to use it as an example in a country where little is read, but precisely because of its visibility it sets the tone and normalizes an agenda of educational ultra-conservatism. According to the 2023 National Reading Survey, less than half of the Peruvian population read a book in the last year (47.3%), and the national average is just 3.3 books per year. Worse still, only 8% of public schools have a school library and less than 1% of private ones. In a country that hardly reads, the scandal is over the books that do exist. Is that really the priority front?
This “Peruvian index” is too similar to the lists of “banned books” in the United States, promoted by ultra-conservative groups – related to presidential candidates such as López Aliaga – that claim to “protect children” from topics on sexuality, gender identity or racism. In 2024 and 2025, All Boys Aren’t Blue, Gender Queer, The Bluest Eye y Flamer They were among the most attacked titles, not for their quality, but for talking about what makes them uncomfortable: race, body, desire, difference. It is not a pedagogical debate: it is an attempt to discipline identities and memories.
And now this fever of imported purity is disguised as an “administrative procedure” in Peru.
Those who call for banning books often use an uneven moral standard. In networks it is remembered that the Bible contains passages of sexual violence, incest and cruelty and no one proposes removing it. As a believer, I consider that reading it with context and pedagogical sense is precisely what allows us to understand its messages and complexities. Thus, what differentiates the school from the cell phone screen is the teaching mediation: the classroom allows discussion and support. Instead, censorship abandons teenagers to algorithms and underground.
That is why it is disturbing that a consumer protection agency attempts to regulate a space that is, above all, pedagogical. Peruvian education is based—at least in its declarative framework—on a constructivist approach: the student accesses information, critically discriminates it and constructs learning. A school library is the natural laboratory of this process. The paradox is that, instead of strengthening libraries, we are turning them into ideological battlefields.
In its statement, Indecopi insists that it “does not censor,” that it sanctions “transparency” and “appropriateness of the service,” and that the suspension of the loan is “temporary.” But the effect is unequivocal: the 21 books remain under suspicion, the community understands that reading certain topics is dangerous and the pedagogical discussion is subordinated to consumer logic.
Educating is not selling a package “suitable for all audiences”; It is forming criteria to deal with what is precisely not. Turning critical thinking into a procedure is the most elegant way to empty education of content.
The list used in Peru repeats the same biases: black or LGBTQ+ authors such as Morrison, Johnson or Callender, and works about identity, sexuality or violence. But it is precisely these texts that, read with teaching support, help prevent risks and expand empathy. If this is happening with foreign books, will national novels that address similar situations also be in the spotlight, such as A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce o The Goat Festival from our own Nobel Prize winner, Mario Vargas Llosa?
Regarding this censorship, the Peruvian researcher and editor Gracia Angulo clarified: let’s not confuse professional selection with censorship. A school library must offer diversity of perspectives and be a space for collective learning and the right to information. In a country with a chronic deficit of libraries, updated collections and infrastructure, the urgent thing is to invest and professionalize, not criminalize the collection.
And yes: this wave of censorship imported from the United States—with echoes of McCarthyism—is already infiltrating parent associations and political agendas. We can’t let a handful of moral crusaders decide what schoolchildren can read.
In its guidelines, the National Library of Peru remembers that the school library must be “the heart of the school”, a space to form critical citizenship and information skills. That ideal is incompatible with mass banning or “inappropriate content” as a catch-all label. If the problem was procedural, solve it with procedures; let’s not sacrifice access to complex ideas.
Because if we start censoring Nobel Prize winners like Toni Morrison, what are we left with? A school without questions or thought? Reading judiciously is safer than not reading.
And every time a country decides to ban books, its education becomes more fragile, its debate poorer, and its democracy more fearful.
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