It's not forgiveness, it's a change of cycle against Spain
I did not vote for MORENA and I have never voted for López Obrador and neither did I vote for Sheinbaum, whom I have never met in person. A very different case from López Obrador, who was one of my ex-husband's closest friends and used to have breakfast, or lunch, every Friday at my house in Mexico City when he was head of the Mexico City government.
I was never enthusiastic about it. I said it at the time, as I still say it now: ‘López Obrador was born of the PRI and learned the worst of its expression, which is populism, and sought his own political path. When he realised that the PRI would not support him in his aspirations and ambitions, he sought revenge for that contempt and he succeeded’.
In 2002, I interviewed him when he was head of the Federal District Government, and he received me in his office, in the Regency, right on the esplanade of the Zócalo, in the Historic Centre. After the interview, we approached the balcony to take in the breathtaking view: the historic cathedral in front, the National Palace to the right, and on the horizon, the bustling esplanade of the Zócalo. I remember telling him about this privileged view and López Obrador pointed his hand towards the National Palace and said: ‘One day I will be governing Mexico from there’. And so he has done so, from the same place where viceroys, emperors and presidents who seemed more like dictators were installed to govern: Agustín de Iturbide, Benito Juárez and Porfirio Díaz, and, of course, that is where López Obrador has been installed for the last six years as president.
Unlike Claudia Sheinbaum, who has been a communist since the age of 16, AMLO is a populist in the style of the rulers of Mexico from 1970 to 1980.
With him we could already see what his government would be like. With Sheinbaum there will be a six-year continuity in AMLO's programmes and she will do the same in foreign policy, keeping a low profile in international affairs and will not leave aside the reproaches against Spain for everything that happened a little more than five centuries ago. Let's face it, 505 years is nothing to forget.
In March 2019, on the advice of his wife Beatriz Muller, AMLO asked that a letter be sent to King Felipe VI requesting that Spain, on the occasion in 2021 of the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Mexica Empire, offer Mexico a historical apology for the Conquest at a ceremony they were preparing in Mexico City. No response was ever received, and this silence turned into a bitter reproach that opened an institutional rift, first with the King and then with the government of President Pedro Sánchez.
The rift, after three years of cooling of institutional relations between Mexico and Spain, will now become a monolith in the freezer, because the new president of Mexico, who will take office on 1 October, has already reiterated that she will continue to demand a historic pardon from Spain: reason enough to snub King Felipe VI and not invite him directly to the inauguration, but rather his daughter, the heir to the throne, the Infanta Leonor. It was a rude snub. Leonor is not the head of state, Felipe VI is.
For Mexicans it was no surprise, but it was a surprise for Spaniards, who were somewhat hopeful that the first woman to hold the presidency of Mexico might be able to put institutional and governmental relations between Mexico and Spain back on track. Let us hope that it is finally clear to them: without forgiveness, the institutional freeze will prevail.
And this will not affect investment or money, but it will affect understanding between the governments of Mexico and Spain. Personally, I am against historical revisionism used to entertain the populace. But textbooks, streets, roundabouts, mausoleums and the names of avenues in Mexico are the same as in Spain or Venezuela.
What I am most interested in emphasising, and what I have not read in any analysis in the various opinion columns by pseudo-intellectuals of the most rancid right (in fact, there was one who only spouted arrogant insults with an air of smugness and superiority) is the loss of strategic space in Latin America that Spain is suffering.
Beyond the quarrels with Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela and the pluses and minuses with Brazil and the remoteness of Nicaragua and other countries in the Latin American region, what is happening is a change of cycle in which Spain has lost its position of leadership and respect for Latin America. It is losing its influence in the region and is being taken over by Russia and China.
It is not forgiveness, it is not the reproaches, nor the insults of Milei or the accusations of Maduro or the accusations of Ortega in Nicaragua speaking of Spanish imperialism or that Sheinbaum is once again endorsing historical forgiveness as essential. The fact is that Spain is at its lowest ebb in its Latin American influence and runs the risk of no longer recovering it.
There is no need for historians to point out that this demand for forgiveness is absurd, because it is: Mexico did not exist with the Mesoamerican Indians, it is the fruit of a marvellous mestizaje, of the brave and tenacious Spanish explorers and the indigenous mystics and sages. That fusion created the Mexican, the natural child of love, not of violence, not of plunder, but of creativity.
Whenever I talk about this subject, I always like to bring up Octavio Paz, with his book ‘The Labyrinth of Solitude’, where he tackles the whole series of complexes that drag down the way of being of the popular Mexican, the vulgar. That Mexican who swells what is called the people and to whom AMLO, like Sheinbaum, sweeten their ears with this kind of actions. I would love it if AMLO, like Sheinbaum, as well as demanding historical forgiveness from Spain, would also demand forgiveness from the Porfiriato, from all the PRI and PAN governments and from López Obrador's own MORENA for the abandonment of the indigenous peoples, for their hunger, for their illiteracy; for letting them die in the mountains without hospitals... for not supporting them and for using them vilely.