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This paper is part of an ongoing research project whose purpose is to analyse both policy and the discursive sphere of person'sright to education from the voice of the actors (government and international agencies, trade unions, parliamentarian, grass roots and academic organizations, among others), in order to account for the stances and the meanings that are built around people's right to education and to document some experiences of requesting it as an exigency and in the recorded case, as a demand for fairness. To that end, in this paper the voice of a grass roots organization is presented that from 1980 onward struggles for the defence of public and gratuitous education, thus putting a political brake to limit the government's institutions responsible for the polity and administration of public education in Mexico, on the grounds of the Third Article of the Political Constitution of the Mexican United States that explicitly proclaims the gratuitousness and mandatory character of attendance to public school, which is recognized as a right of all Mexicans. The theoretical-methodological perspective is framed within the political analysis of educational discourse and empirically grounded on national and international documents on people's right to education. Furthermore, the empirical basis is reinforced by interviews in depth with key informants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]