100th Anniversary of the Birth of Armando López Fonseca, Co-Creator of the IPN Coat of Arms

During Dr. Manuel Sandoval Vallarta’s tenure as General Director of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) (1944-1947), the National Federation of Technical Students (FNET), a group comprised of Polytechnic students, issued a call for entries. Signed by representatives David Talavera Martínez and Héctor Mayagoitia Domínguez, this call aimed to integrate the emblems of the schools that then constituted the IPN into a single image, creating a symbol to represent the Institute.

Nearly ten proposals were submitted to a jury of three distinguished professors from the Escuela Superior de Ingeniería y Arquitectura (ESIA). They selected the design conceptualized by Armando López Fonseca and graphically executed by his colleague Jorge Grajales, both final-year students at Pre-Vocational School No. 5. This emblem was notable for highlighting the letters on the entrance gate to the Santo Tomás campus.

Over time, the engineer Alejandro Guillot Schiaffino, Director General of the IPN, revived López Fonseca’s design due to the lack of an institutional emblem. Preserving the main elements, he had it stylized into the form we recognize today.

On the 100th anniversary of Armando López Fonseca's birth, we share an image of him walking through the Politécnico corridors, accompanied by then General Director Gustavo Alvarado Pier, the first IPN graduate to hold this position.

López Fonseca was born on May 28, 1924, in Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua. He pursued higher education at ESIA within the IPN and is considered one of the first industrial engineers in the country. For over 12 years, he served as Executive Manager of the Mexican Association of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers (AMIME). During the construction of the Pemex Tower, he was an industrial safety advisor. He was also a founding teacher at the Chihuahua Institute of Technology, where he held various administrative positions, and worked at the Industrial and Services Technological Baccalaureate Center No. 22 in Chihuahua. He passed away on January 22, 2004.

The images displayed can be consulted in digital format at the IPN Historical Archive. For more information: Office of the Dean of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, phone 5729 6000, extensions 63054 and 63057; email consultaah@ipn.mx.

Gaceta Politécnica #1792. (May 15th, 2024). IPN Imagen Institucional: Read the full magazine in Spanish here.