500-year-old wound ripped open as Mexico’s president asks Spain to apologise for conquest. Spain says no
- Mexico’s president urged Spain and the Vatican to apologise for their colonial ‘abuses’
- Spain’s rejection was immediate and blunt
Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he has asked Spain and the Vatican to apologise for the conquest of the Americas five centuries ago.
Lopez Obrador said he sent a letter to King Felipe VI of Spain and Pope Francis over what he called an “invasion” and the “many misdeeds that were committed”.
“There were killings, impositions,” the president said in a video that was filmed at Mayan ruins in the southeastern state of Tabasco and posted on social media.
He later visited the nearby city of Centla, the scene of the first battle between Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and the indigenous peoples of the land now known as Mexico, on March 14, 1519.
With the help of horses, swords, guns and smallpox – all unknown in the New World at the time -Cortes led an army of fewer than 1,000 men to defeat the Aztec empire, the start of 300 years of Spanish rule over Mexico.
