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| My mestiza grandmother's immigration card, circa 1920 |
Hundreds of years after the conquest, Mexico’s former president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, as he is affectionately called, said, of Spain's king, Felipe VI's refusal to apologize for injustices committed during the conquest of Mexico, “Spain acted arrogantly…put aside racism,” and take responsibly and apologize for the horrid acts it committed during the conquest.
It started in 2019, when AMLO asked Spain’s king, Filipe VI and Pope Francis to apologize for their past “injustices” during Mexico’s conquest? Spain, one of Mexico’s closest allies, didn’t respond, but later told journalists, "...its current leaders should not be held responsible for the actions of their forebears." Pope Francis said he already apologized, in 2015, in a visit to Bolivia, to all of America’s indigenous for the “sins” committed against them by the Church. So, why now? Why was AMLO ruffling feathers?
Recently, it came up again, Spain's apology, or lack of one, as Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexican by birth but not by blood (her paternal and maternal grandparents, Sephardic Jews, migrated from Bulgaria and Lithuania) decided not to invite Spain to her inauguration, for snubbing AMLO’s demand for an apology.
Mexico's new president has Spanish roots, as do AMLO and millions of Mexican mestizos, many who hail from every corner of Mexico, especially the northern states of Michoacan, Nayarit, Jalisco, Zacatecas, Durango, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Sonora.
When Cortez landed and began his conquest of Mexico in 1519, his army consisted of 600 Spaniards, give or take. Without the alliances of Moctezuma’s enemies, like the Tlascaltecas, and a crucial informant and translator, Malintzin, or Malinche, in Spanish, Cortez never could have conquered Tenochtiltlan, the Azteca capital, and, according to Spanish chroniclers one of the most beautiful cities upon which they’d ever laid eyes.
If AMLO demanded an apology from Spain, shouldn’t he also demand an apology from the indigenous groups who aided Cortez in his conquest of Mexico, and of Malinche's descendents, if any still exist? Shouldn't they also be held responsible?
Maybe AMLO should take a closer look inside, at today’s Mexico. When he heard about AMLO's demand for an apology, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa suggested, after two hundred years of independence, shouldn’t Mexico apologize to its indigenous poor, which the country continues to exploit and abuse? Another way of saying it is: shouldn’t Mexico, also, apologize to itself for the injustices committed against the Mexican people after independence from Spain?
Many Mexican politicians, from opposing parties, claim AMLO’s demand for an apology from Spain and the Church is a strategy to distract the public from his own failed political policies and the promises he hasn’t kept while in office. Some also state this isn’t a time for Mexico to cause distrust among a close ally, like Spain, or any other country in Latin America. A good point, considering more than a few radical conservative U.S. politicians, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, have proposed invading Mexico and destroying its drug cartels, more of an excuse for the U.S. failure to manage its own insatiable appetite for drugs. Still, Mexico might need friends and allies.
Among the working-class Mexicans, and many of the poor, AMLO’s is popular, and his ratings remain high. He's been at it a long time and is a crafty politician, walking the firepit of Mexican politics. He created many social programs to help the poor; though, not nearly enough, to alleviate the country’s poverty or, even, put a dent in the violence many suffer, some on a daily basis.
If AMLO is asking Spain to apologize for “injustices it committed with the sword,” doesn’t this get a bit sticky?
Yes, Spaniards conquered and occupied Mexico, torturing and enslaving Indians for hundreds of years, but not long after the conquest, the Spanish also began blending their blood, so to speak, with the blood of Indians, mulattos, and other Europeans, like the French and German, creating a new ethnicity of people, the Mestizo. After all, doesn’t Mexico proudly proclaim it is a country of mestizos? Without Spain, there would be no mestizo and no Mexico, as we know it, or as educator Jose Vasconcelos proudly proclaimed, la raza cosmica.
What of Mexico’s treatment, historically, of the lower caste Mexicans, including Indians, like the Yaqui, whom Porfirio Diaz kidnapped, enslaved, and forced to work on hemp plantations in the Yucatan jungles far from their homes, in Sonora, or the hundreds of students killed at Tlateloco during the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, or the Tzotzil Maya, in Chiapas, who lost lands after NAFTA was passed, and suffered under the weight of broken promises president Ernesto Zedillo made, which sent them fleeing into the Lacandon jungle, seeking their own justice under the banner of the EZLN, or Zapatista Liberation Army, their livelihoods still threatened under Mexican rule. Then there were the 43 students who disappeared and presumed killed in Iguala, not even considering the scores of women killed in Juarez in the 1990s.
Is Vargas Llosa, correct? Is Mexico culpable of injustices it committed and continues to commit against its own people? Is that where the apology should start? Mexico apologizing to Mexicans?
What will President Claudia Sheinbaum do to address today's injustices? In Mexico’s drug capital, Sinaloa, her husband's homeland, a battle rages, literally, on the streets of Culiacan, people dying every day, businesses closed, parents afraid to send their kids to school, as the sons of El Chapo Guzman, “Los Chapitos,” and El Mayo Zambada, “Los Mayitos,” one-time partners of the Sinaloa cartel, fight it out, as the incarcerated “mero jefes,” El Chapo and El Mayo, sit in U.S. prisons.
Yet, Mexico is not a poor country. Some of the world’s richest people are Mexicans. Go figure. Though President Sheinbaum claims Mexico still has a close relationship with Spain, is an apology worth straining that relationship? Then, I guess one could also ask, what would it cost Spain to say, "We are sorry for the injustices our forebears committed against the Mexican people," even if, at the time, Mexico hadn't yet been formed, completely? A pretty complicated, and rich, history if you ask me. Then again, without the merging of Spain and Mexico, none of my ancestors would have walked the earth, nor would their many descendants, who are now not only Mexican but, also, American.
