The President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, insisted this Saturday that apologizing for the “crimes” committed during the conquest, as she asked the Spanish crown, was not shameful, but broadened and united people.
“The arrival of the Spanish more than five centuries ago represented the subjugation and even elimination of indigenous peoples. Apologizing for crimes committed is not shameful; On the contrary, it magnifies and brings people together,” the president reiterated in a post on social networks.
The Mexican leader said October 12 “is not the day of race or Hispanicity” and stressed that Christopher Columbus discovered America for Europeans, but that indigenous populations already existed on the continent American. “In what we call Mexico today, there already existed great civilizations and cultures of which we are proud and proud,” he added.
Sheinbaum continues to insist that the Spanish government apologize for the conquest. He also did this Friday, during a press conference, during which he encouraged Spaniards to celebrate October 12, National Day – the Latin American country now commemorates Resistance Day indigenous – by publicly apologizing to the native Mexican. peoples for the abuses committed under the Spanish crown 500 years ago.
During Friday’s conference, Sheinbaum recalled numerous other examples of countries apologizing for historic events. He recalled that Japan, since 1990, had apologized for the abuses committed in Korea and China, or that in 2000, the German president at the time, Johannes Rau, had asked for forgiveness before the Israeli Parliament for the ‘Jewish Holocaust. He also cited that in 2008 Italy apologized to Libya for colonialism and promised to pay $5 billion, that in 2013 the Netherlands apologized for the executions in Indonesia in the 1940s and that Portugal had accepted its responsibility for slavery in 2024. other cases.
The Latin American country’s demands have been accumulating for several years. The country’s former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, sent a letter to King Felipe VI in 2019, a letter which has not yet received a response and which caused an increase in diplomatic tensions between Mexico and Spain . Faced with the lack of response, Sheinbaum refused to invite the King of Spain to his inauguration last week, and the government did not attend.
