–OpEd–
BARCELONA — On Oct. 1, 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum became the first female president of Mexico. This historic event, highly symbolic in a country that is associated, from the outside, with machismo and femicides, was accompanied by a minor but also unusual detail: the absence of Spanish representation at her inauguration.
The Spanish government did not send any official representative due to the Mexican authorities’ “inexplicable and unacceptable” decision, in the words of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, not to invite King Felipe VI.
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The exclusion of the head of state, in charge of Spanish representation at all presidential investitures in Latin America and the Caribbean, was perceived as an offense by Madrid. Therefore, the Spanish Foreign Affairs Ministry decided not to participate in the inauguration “at any level.”
The diplomatic disagreement dates back to a letter that former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent to the Spanish Crown in March 2019. In it, López Obrador proposed to the current monarchy, as heir of the one that conquered America, an exercise of reflection “before facts that decisively marked the history of our nations and that still generate heated controversies on both sides of the ocean.”
After describing the main milestones of Spain’s conquest and subsequent colonization of Mexican lands, López Obrador made it clear that he was not seeking financial or legal reparation for the offenses, but that “Mexico wants the Spanish State to admit its historical responsibility for those offenses and offer the apologies or political reparations that may be appropriate.”
Joint responsibility
The ardent defenders of Spain have come out to close ranks with the Crown. As always, they justify the Spanish Empire and its crimes with the alleged existence of a “black legend” spread by the “Perfidious Albion” — the native peoples of Abya Yala should even thank Spain for its “civilizing mission.” But they have omitted important elements in their attacks on Mexico’s position.
For example, that in that same letter, López Obrador proposed to establish Sept. 21 as “Historical Reconciliation Day,” making it coincide with the bicentennial of Mexico’s independence, the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan and the beginning of the colony.
This anniversary, in fact, was to be used as an opportunity for the Mexican state to ask “forgiveness from the native peoples for having persisted, once Independence had been achieved, in the aggression, discrimination and plundering of the indigenous communities that characterized the colonial period.”
Mexico was asking Spain to assume joint responsibility for a situation of discrimination.
To this end, it asked the Crown to join in working on a “joint road map” to overcome the previous disagreements and grievances that had marked their shared history.
In other words, Mexico was not making a unilateral request to try to hide its own guilt in the continued marginalization of the indigenous peoples from independence onwards, as has been heard profusely these days. The Mexican government was asking Spain to assume joint responsibility for a situation of discrimination rooted in a colonial logic that persists in the mentality of a large part of Mexicans and in their institutions.
The objective was to draw up, on the part of both countries, “a shared, public and socialized account of their common history,” with a view to the future: “In order to initiate a new stage in our relations, fully in line with the principles that currently guide our respective states.”
Missed opportunity
López Obrador’s request was symbolic, respectful and thoughtful. Even so, he never got an answer.
Moreover, the he accused, in one of his final morning addresses as president, the Spanish government of leaking the letter and unleashing a Spanish media campaign to ridicule the Mexican position — with the help of some Latin American intellectuals, who are always ready to help the Spanish cause, like good colonized people.
Josep Borrell, then foreign minister of Spain, said in a recent interview that he was the one who considered that the Crown should not respond to the letter. Not surprisingly, it was also Borrell who years ago dismissed the extermination of the native peoples of North America with the flippant expression “they killed four Indians.”
The origin of the crisis between the two states lies in the disdain conveyed by this — very undiplomatic — silence. Discrepancies that, as López Obrador made clear, are not with the people of Spain but with the Spanish monarchy.
The Spanish authorities chose to entrench themselves in their imperial past.
Amidst the paternalism that characterizes Spain’s approach to relations with Latin America, one element that is underestimated is that Mexico is actually giving Spain the opportunity to critically reflect on its historical responsibilities in the conquest and colonization of the Americas. López Obrador’s letter could have been the perfect opportunity for Spain to join the group of colonial powers that, in recent times, have acknowledged the abuses of their past imperial action.
But the Spanish authorities, imbued with arrogance and superiority, chose to entrench themselves in their imperial past without making even a slight effort of minimal self-criticism.
Five years after that letter, the Spanish government’s inability to respond to Mexico’s refusal to invite Felipe shows that it still has not learned. It prefers to continue clinging to a reading of the past that reveals an anachronistic imperial nostalgia.
Reading history
It is clear that the debate raised by López Obrador is not about the past but about how our views of the past determine our present and condition our future. It is not, then, a matter of reviewing historical facts with an extemporaneous look, but of reflecting on how a government’s position on imperial invasions, genocides and past human rights abuses can influence how we respond to the same type of abuses in our current time.
In today’s world, we are witnessing in real time war crimes perpetrated by a colonial state, Israel, against a Palestinian population denied even its right to resist. The same logic of the past is at work in the present, and the same people who deny the crimes of the past are relativizing or justifying the current ones.
Hiding behind a simplistic idea that the history of humanity has been a series of military expansions, wars and colonizations — and thus avoiding condemning their effects, which are still visible in today’s Latin American societies — is the equivalent of someone in the future claiming that nothing else could have been done to stop Israel’s crimes in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon because that was the way conflicts were solved in the past. But we know that this is not the case.
Why no gesture?
Why is it so difficult for the Spanish state to see the injustice of the atrocities committed during the conquest and colonization of the Americas? Why does it refuse to respond with a simple gesture of empathy and sensitivity?
As Sheinbaum put it, “Public apologies for a crime against humanity make people greater.” She said this while announcing an official apology to the families of the students murdered by the Mexican State on Oct. 2, 1968 in the Tlatelolco massacre — her first public act. It is a question of political will that also serves to say “never again.”
With its request for forgiveness, Mexico has exposed a narrow-minded Spain.
With its request for forgiveness, Mexico has exposed a narrow-minded Spain that refuses to undertake an exercise of memory, justice and reparation — not even at a symbolic level — with the victims of its imperial past. Something that, curiously, Spain did do with the Sephardic Jews, expelled from the peninsula the same year of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in America. But is incapable of doing with the native peoples of the American continent.
The same exercise is denied to those who were driven out of Spain, pushed into exile for their anti-fascist political ideas, persecuted, imprisoned and murdered, during the Franco dictatorship.
To the list of thanks that Spain owes to Mexico for its generous welcome to those who fled the dictatorship, we must now add the opportunity for reflection that López Obrador has given to the Spanish people with his letter, and Sheinbaum with her veto to the Felipe’s presence. For all this, and much more: Thank you, Mexico.
