A fight dating back more than five centuries re-emerged on Wednesday as Mexico’s incoming president defended a decision to not invite the Spanish king to her inauguration next week after the monarch declined to apologize for colonial-era abuses.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez also weighed in earlier in the day, describing the snub as “unacceptable,” less than one week before Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday next week.
In a rare rebuke on Tuesday, the Spanish government announced it would not send any representative to the event.
Photo: Reuters
The diplomatic spat threatens to cast a pall over Sheinbaum’s inauguration in Mexico City, once the seat of Spain’s vast colonial holdings in the Americas after Spanish invaders and their native allies toppled the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521.
Mexico City was built over the ruins of the Aztec metropolis.
In a two-page letter posted to social media on Wednesday, Sheinbaum wrote that only Sanchez had been invited, in part because Spanish King Felipe VI did not directly respond to a personal letter that the outgoing Mexican president sent the monarch in 2019.
In that letter, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a close Sheinbaum ally, asked the king to “publicly and officially” recognize the abuses committed during the conquest of Mexico in order to chart a friendlier new course between the countries.
“Unfortunately, that letter did not prompt any direct answer,” Sheinbaum wrote, adding that she spoke with Sanchez a few days earlier.
In 2019, Lopez Obrador was seeking to organize an event in 2021 that would mark the anniversaries of the conquest, Mexico’s 19th century independence from Spain, as well as the founding of Tenochtitlan in the 1300s.
At the time, he also sought a similar apology from Pope Francis for atrocities committed against Mexico’s indigenous population, as well as the repatriation of pre-Hispanic books and other artifacts held in European museums and libraries.
Francis did not respond to Lopez Obrador, but has previously apologized for the “many grave sins [that] were committed against the native people of America in the name of God.”
After Lopez Obrador reiterated his request for a formal apology shortly after his letter was made public, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected it.
The conflict should not be “judged in light of contemporary considerations,” it said.
The outgoing Mexican president has often invoked the Spanish conquest to rally nationalist sentiment, stressing that Mexico is no longer any country’s colony.
Asked by reporters on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday if Spain should apologize, Sanchez sidestepped the question.
“We can’t accept this exclusion, and that’s why we informed the Mexican government that the absence of any diplomatic representative of the Spanish government is a sign of protest,” he said.
“Not only do we consider it unacceptable, its inexplicable,” he added.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
RSS