On Friday, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares opened a major exhibition titled “Half a World: Indigenous Women of Mexico,” featuring more than 400 works on loan from the Mexican government.
The history between Spain and its former colony of Mexico “like all human history, has a light side and a dark side,” Albarez said, according to a press conference at Madrid’s Instituto Cervantes, one of the exhibition’s four venues. national newspaper.
He continued, “Indigenous people have always suffered pain and injustice. There is injustice, and it is right to acknowledge and lament it. It is part of our shared history; we cannot deny it or forget it.”
However, Albarez, speaking on behalf of Spain, stopped short of issuing a full apology for Spain’s three centuries of colonization of Mexico. It has been a point of contention in relations between the two countries since 2019, when former Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador sent a letter to Spain’s King Felipe VI and Pope Francis demanding an apology and asking for forgiveness for the role Spain and the Catholic Church played in the conquest of the Americas. At the time, Spain rejected the idea of an apology.
“This is not just a meeting of two cultures,” López Obrador was reported to have said at the time. new york times. “It was an invasion. Thousands of people were murdered during that period. One culture, one civilization was imposed on another culture to the point where temples – Catholic churches were built on top of old pre-Hispanic temples.”
Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum said at a press conference earlier this week that diplomatic relations between Mexico and Spain have not broken down since 2019, as some media reported. “The relationship has not broken down,” she reportedly said. Diplomat in Spainciting “economic relations, political relations, tourism relations.”
Scheinbaum, who excluded Felipe VI from last year’s inauguration guest list for not responding to the letter, called her predecessor’s letter “very diplomatic” and said it was “answered in an undiplomatic manner,” adding, “We never agreed with the way they responded, and moreover, we agreed with the letter sent by President López Obrador, and we are still waiting for that response.”
Earlier this month, Scheinbaum wrote a letter praising the “Half a World” exhibit, which is also on display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Casa de España Mexico and the National Archaeological Museum. “Conquest was a brutal process of violence, imposition and dispossession,” she said in the letter. “The aim was not just to destroy territories, but entire cultures, ancient knowledges, languages and ways of life. Indigenous women suffered particularly from such attacks: they were subjugated, displaced and subjected to violence. Despite this, they resisted.” […] Honoring this heritage means acknowledging past and present abuses. “
At a press conference on Friday, Luis García Montero, president of the Cervantes Institute, said: “The participation of both governments is a testament to the two countries’ commitment to culture and their efforts for mutual recognition. Diplomacy is conducted through words, memory and shared expression.”
