There are narratives that are used to create the necessary noise with which to silence other important issues. The stridency unleashed in recent days because the king of Spain was not invited to the inauguration of the first president in the history of Mexico silences important issues about the processes that indigenous peoples and other peoples affected by colonialism are going through. , currently. Through a poor handling of the diplomatic norms to which the countries of the world have voluntarily bound themselves, those responsible explained that the king of Spain, the official representative of that country, did not receive an invitation for having refused to apologize to the indigenous peoples. for everything that happened during what has been called the Conquest of Mexico. The President of the Government of Spain, who did receive an invitation, refused to attend without the king although other Spanish politicians have declared that they will come to witness the inauguration of Claudia Sheinbaum.
Faced with this situation, sound and fury broke out again, there was also no shortage of false news that even said that Infanta Leonor, heir to the throne of Spain, had been invited in place of her father. On the one hand, the voices that once again reminded us that without Spain we would not be civilized were entrenched and on the other those who supplanted the voice of the indigenous peoples who have said little on this matter, because, as always, they are almost never consulted. On the one hand, there are those who claim to be cultural heirs of a Spain without which we would not have universities or hospitals (as if the people of this continent had lacked knowledge transmission systems or health care systems); On the other hand, there are those who demand an apology while ignoring the violence that indigenous peoples are currently experiencing. These are two conflicting nationalist positions. Both are very contrasting but they are not at all radical, neither goes to the root of the situation.
Whenever the Conquest is talked about, an operation generally takes place that immediately equates the current country that is Spain with the Spanish crown of 500 years ago, while Mexico becomes Tenochtitlán; This equivalence has as a consequence three phenomena, the first is that it makes us perceive colonization as something that happened between two countries and not as the beginning of a global process that affected all continents, the second is that it is read that what began to happening more than 500 years ago is something from the past for which we must apologize and not as a current phenomenon with clear current effects both in current Mexico and in current Spain; The third phenomenon is that it creates the effect that both countries correspond to homogeneous societies.
Behind the Governments of Spain and Mexico are a conglomerate of complex and diverse societies. The existence of the Spanish population of African origin and the phenomenon of migration in Spain, for example, cannot be explained without the effects of colonialism. The racism suffered by this part of the Spanish population has to do with what began to happen 500 years ago. . On the other hand, Mexico’s political elites, who use an extractivist nationalism of cultural elements of indigenous peoples, continue to use state mechanisms to deny rights to indigenous peoples such as control of their territory and their natural assets. Colonialism crosses borders and has effects in both territories, that is why I feel more identified with an Afro-descendant Spanish woman affected by colonial racism than with the privileged political elites of Mexico, that same Spanish woman who will surely be wondering, along with many more Spaniards, why the monarchy continues to exist in the 21st century.
Both the spokespersons for the Spanish Government and the spokespersons for the Mexican Government supplant the diverse voices of the citizens of their own territories, especially those whose voices have always been silenced. Without all that noise, other conversations between our peoples could emerge, conversations that are not mediated by the request for a very Catholic and Judeo-Christian forgiveness that the president of Mexico has requested on behalf of others, the native peoples of this country, to a also Catholic Spanish monarch.
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