La Paz Mayor Milena Quiroga Romero opened the city’s sixth Abrapalabra children’s library on March 25, located next to the Centro de Desarrollo Comunitario (community development center) in the Colonia Vista Hermosa neighborhood. The free library offers interactive reading, puppetry, painting, and other educational activities for children on weekday afternoons.
Six Libraries Built During Quiroga Administration
The Vista Hermosa location joins five other Abrapalabra libraries opened during Quiroga’s time as mayor. Previous locations went up in the Ampliación Navarro Rubio, La Pasión, and El Carrizal neighborhoods, among others. Each operates Monday through Friday during afternoon hours, providing after-school programming in colonias across the Baja California Sur capital.
Abrapalabra A.C., the nonprofit behind the library model, was founded in La Paz in 2010. The organization’s goal is to bring children closer to reading through play. Before partnering with the municipal government, Abrapalabra had already built its own network of children’s libraries in the city, including a science-focused branch on Calle Miguel Legaspi that offers Lego robotics workshops.
A Nonprofit Model Expanding Across Mexico
The organization focuses on placing libraries in underserved neighborhoods. Its Fanlap branch, for example, operates in the Laguna Azul colonia in partnership with the Foundation for Helping Children in La Paz. Abrapalabra also replicated its model outside Baja California Sur, opening a library inside a SEDESOL (Mexico’s social development ministry) community center in La Piedad, Michoacán.
Erika Rodríguez Galbraith, a founding member of Abrapalabra, has said the organization aims to reduce school dropout rates by improving children’s academic performance through early literacy. The nonprofit offers workshops in public schools and runs a reading program in the state’s boarding schools, in addition to its library branches.
La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur and home to roughly 300,000 people, has seen a steady expansion of community infrastructure under the current administration. The city’s next steps for the Abrapalabra partnership have not been announced, according to the La Paz municipal government news office.