Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
‘This Stupidity of Historical Revisionism’
Mexico’s socialist president is on a quest. He’s demanding apologies from Spain, and he’s being met with more than silence, he’s being met with scorn. From Catholic World Report:
Mexico’s socialist president Andrés Manuel López Óbrador is on a crusade, or perhaps better put, an anti-crusade, to obtain an apology from Spain and the Catholic Church for the conquest and colonization of the Americas. He has insisted on this now for the three years of his presidency, and isn’t letting up, despite rejection and mockery from almost all quarters, including the indigenous he claims to be defending.
Historical grievances are not confined to Mexico, but at a certain point demanding the world stop until everyone generations removed from the past are punished impedes progress to make the world a better place.
In his first foray in this ongoing campaign, López Obrador sent letters to the King of Spain and to Pope Francis in early 2019, “requesting them to give an account of offenses and to ask the indigenous peoples for forgiveness for violations of what today are known as human rights,” according to the president’s own summary.
“There were massacres, impositions. The so-called conquest was carried out with the sword and the cross,” the president said.
The response of Spain’s socialist government, and Spanish society in general, was not what López Obrador he had hoped for, but may be gratifying to Americans (and particularly Catholics) who are tired of seeing their institutions surrender to the “woke” excesses of socialist ideology, particularly the history-destroying antics of the advocates of “critical race theory.”
After the text of the letter to the Spanish king was leaked to the Spanish press in 2019, the government of Spain responded not with an apology, but by blasting López Obrador and unequivocally refusing his request, stating that it “profoundly laments” the content of the letter, which “we reject with all firmness,” and adding that “the arrival, 500 years ago, of the Spanish to what is currently Mexican territory cannot be judged in the light of contemporary considerations.”
Obviously Spain isn’t going to make these untimely apologies for the same reason that we are not going to ask the French Republic to apologize for what the soldiers of Napoleon did when they invaded Spain. Nor are the French going to ask the Italians for an apology for the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar,” said Spain’s then Minister of the Exterior, Josep Borrell.
It’s all well and good for Scots to have fevered dreams of retrieving basket-hilt broadswords from the heather to drive out the British, but those days are over. There is any number of ethnic groups that have been wronged in the past, and in many cases wronged those that came before them.
We should certainly study history with an eye to avoid repeating the brutality that has occurred in the past.
This year López Obrador brought up the issue again, now in the context of the impending celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mexican independence, only to receive additional scorn from a former Spanish president, José María Aznar, who notes the irony of the Mexican president’s very Spanish name.
“In this age in which people ask for forgiveness for everything I’m not going to fill up the lines of those who ask for forgiveness,” said the ex-president, who added that he was proud of his country’s history. Addressing López Obrador, Aznar quipped, “It’s the two hundredth anniversary of the independence of Mexico, congratulations. And now you change everything around and say that Spain has to ask for forgiveness. And you, what is your name? ‘My name is Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “Andres” for the Aztecs; “Manuel” for the Maya. “López” is a mixture.’”
Aznar lamented that the “new communism over there (in Latin America) is called ‘indigenism’” and pointed out that under Spanish rule the indigenous of the region were protected by the Law of the Indies.
The leader of Spain’s conservative opposition Popular Party, Pablo Casado, had even stronger words for López Obrador. “Hispanicity should be a cause of pride, despite this black legend of cancel culture, of this current stupidity of historical revisionism.”
Pope Francis waffled a bit, but did offer a reminder to the Mexican president:
So in should be of little surprise that, in contrast to the rebuff of the Spanish, Pope Francis has responded to López Obrador’s request by offering something of an apology. However, he was also careful to add to it a reference to the government of Mexico’s persecution of the Catholic Church during the 1920s and 1930s, when hundreds of thousands died in the Cristiada, a struggle to protect Catholic religious practices from being virtually eliminated by government restrictions.
On various occasions, both my predecessors and I myself, have asked for forgiveness for the personal and social sins, for all actions or omissions that did not contribute to evangelization,” wrote Francis to Cardinal Rogelio Cabrera, President of the Mexican Episcopal Conference, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Mexican independence in September. “In that same perspective, we also cannot ignore that actions that in more recent times were committed against the Christian religious sentiments of a great part of the Mexican people, which caused profound suffering.”
Forward into the past will just increase tribalism, which in turn will yield more atrocities.
Published in History
Yay, King of Spain! Or whatever.
Spain to López Óbrador: golpear arena.
(That’s as close as I can get to “pound sand.”)
Huh, expecting Spain to apologise for something that happened over 500 years ago – why would anybody think that was a feasible expectation?
Well played.
Muchas graçias, señor. But I actually don’t think it’s a feasible expectation – from a political POV no country’s politicians are eager to apologise for centuries of historical crimes, especially if admitting guilt might lead to a request for reparations the country can’t afford. Clearly Amlo doesn’t really expect an apology, so why is he taking up (I assume mostly Mexican) screen time demanding one?
Distraction perhaps? And playing to a new generation more attuned to modern grievance-mongering.
They are no longer a Spanish colony, so why not bring back the old ways?
France is the most recent conqueror and ruler of Mexico. Why didn’t he start with them?
Shouldn’t President Lopez be thanking Spain for their conquest of this portion of the New World? Otherwise, he wouldn’t be president of a free and independent Mexico. Talk about a lack of gratitude.
I am sorry. Is Andrés Manuel López Óbrador not a descendant of the people who committed the crimes he is complaining about? Seems to me that if anyone should be apologizing it should be him.
I suppose he could be a descendant of one of the tribes present when the Spanish arrived but his Wikipedia page sure doesn’t mention it. Nor is he a particularly swarthy fellow…
My understanding is that the vast majority of the Mexican elite today are mainly of European descent.
He did apologise to them:
fwiw. Australia similarly apologised to Aboriginal people:
But I don’t know that it translated into practical outcomes.
Symbolism is important, taking responsibility is important, but without follow through it’s like faith without work.
A big part of it might be that, as you note, the higher you go in the Latin American elite the whiter you get, the lower you go the more indigenous. And that didn’t change in Mexico after Amlo’s apology – he said sorry but the power and wealth stayed where it was the day before. Amlo may be sincere in his apology, but he’s also a politician who wants the indigenous and mestizo vote.
I’m not sure that Amlo is being revisionist, however. That would be claiming that the Spanish Conquest of Mexico was actually an improvement for most indigenous Mexicans, or the nonsense about settlement or the stolen generations this clown Windschuttle tried to do in Australia. I don’t think Spain is claiming the conquest was good for the indigenous people?
Perhaps he is guided by Elizabeth Warren’s example.
Cheekbon-es for El Win-O! Eee-Pah!
Might be something to that…
Put the drug cartels in charge of the revised old religion and we’re back!
That’s like punching a sissy. Too easy.
What’s a good follow through look like?
They could apologize for having a top down dictatorship wrapped in phony elections which Indian dependents, in and out of office, passively supported pretty much the whole time, but that won’t happen.
The accounting should be pretty complicated. It is likely that most of the living descendants of Spaniards who did bad things are Mexicans who must presumably apologize for their own existence, as would the current President of Mexico. If after fifteen generations or more, descendants of New World conquistadors are culpable, why is the fact of living in Spain morally different?
A further challenge would be identifying members of the tribes subjugated by the Aztecs and whose young people were murdered on the altar. Shouldn’t woke youngsters be demanding tearing down temples, those monuments to genocide?
The lefties seem oblivious to the inherent racism here. Early sixteenth century Spaniards operating under the same political values as most of the world (including Islamic empires and the Aztecs themselves) are somehow nevertheless subject to 21st century sensibilities because white people should know better than that in every era.
I dream of a Gaia where everyone apologizes for their existence.
The Free Beacon has a good review of Edward Shawcross’ The Last Emperor of Mexico. Perhaps Lopez Obrador’s should read the book so that he can enlarge his list.
https://freebeacon.com/culture/review-the-last-emperor-of-mexico/
In Australia it includes taking land rights seriously, though that started before Sorry Day.
Their military just beat our military in a war game in the Mohave desert, in half the days allotted for the exercise. I say let the French have at it.