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Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes led an army of less than 1,000 men to defeat the Aztec empire, the start of 300 years of Spanish rule over Mexico. Photo: Shutterstock

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

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.

Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (R) welcomes Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez at the National Palace in Mexico City in January. Photo: AFP

“The so-called conquest was carried out with the sword and the cross,” Lopez Obrador said.

He asked for an apology to “the original peoples for the violations of what are now known to be human rights”.

The Spanish government issued a statement later Monday regretting that the March 1 letter had been made public and rejecting its content “with all firmness”.

“The arrival, 500 years ago, of Spaniards to what is today Mexican territory cannot be judged in the light of contemporary considerations,” it continued.

“Our sibling peoples have always known how to read our shared past without anger and with a constructive perspective, as free peoples with a common inheritance and an extraordinary projection.”

The statement reiterated the Spanish government’s willingness to work closely with Mexico to strengthen friendly and cooperative relations and tackle future challenges.

Spain is one of Mexico’s biggest sources of foreign direct investment. The Mexican government has yet to ratify a new free trade deal reached with the European Union in April 2018.

The exact text of the letter has not been made public.

Lopez Obrador called for 2021 – the 500-year anniversary of the conquest of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire on what is today Mexico City – to be a year of “historic reconciliation.”

“It is time to say we will reconcile but first let us apologise,” he said.

“I am going to as well because after the colonisation there was much repression of the original peoples.”

In 2015, Pope Francis apologised in Bolivia for crimes of the Roman Catholic Church against indigenous people during the conquest of the Americas.

Additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse

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