Claudia Sheinbaum gave her first official press conference as president of Mexico this Wednesday. In a sweetened version of what Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Mañaneras used to be, his successor has used that space to pay tribute to the victims of the massacre of October 2, 1968. The first decree that she will sign, as she has announced, It will be precisely to ask for forgiveness from the State for those crimes against humanity carried out by the Mexican Armed Forces. In a correlation made between the student massacre of Tlatelolco and the Conquest, Sheinbaum has justified the insistence on the request for a public apology to the king of Spain. “We believe that he has to reconsider,” he said.
The new Government does not want to let go of the mission inherited from López Obrador. In March 2019, the now former president sent a letter to the Spanish head of state, Felipe VI, asking him to recognize the crimes of the Spanish Conquest. The King did not respond and the letter came to light, which generated the anger of the former president and his entourage of followers. “Not only does he not answer, but that letter is made public and a tremendous campaign against López Obrador comes,” Sheinbaum said this Wednesday. The president has complained to Felipe VI that he did not comply with even “the most basic” of a diplomatic relationship by not responding. “A public apology is magnifying,” he added.
The dispute with the King of Spain escalated in the last month after it became known that Sheinbaum had excluded Felipe VI from the list of international guests at her inauguration as president. “He not only offended López Obrador, but also the people of Mexico,” he justified then. The snub provoked the reaction of Pedro Sánchez’s Government, which decided not to send any representative to the inauguration ceremony. Despite these disagreements, the Mexican president has now assured that the relationship between Spain and Mexico currently “is good” and “does not have to change” based on these differences. “We have commercial, tourism, and cultural relations. “Mexico and Spain are united by the exile that occurred from the Republic, there are many Spaniards who live in Mexico.”
Sheinbaum’s first morning conference has been loaded with symbolism. During her way to the National Palace, her admirers often brought out that the new president had been a very politically active girl. And they told endlessly the anecdote that her mother took her to visit the political prisoners in the Lecumberri prison. Those prisoners have come out again in the Mañanera del Pueblo, as he called his press conference to distinguish it from those of López Obrador. Sheinbaum has spoken of her awareness of the October 2 massacre, as a former activist who came out of the university ranks and as a girl with a mother in social mobilization. “For us it was something we experienced personally,” he said about that time.
That piece of national history that in some way forged Sheinbaum’s personal history is now the protagonist of the first presidential measure. Accompanied by some members of the Cabinet, the president has reported that the first decree she will sign this Wednesday is a public apology on behalf of the Mexican State to all those who lost someone in the Tlatelolco massacre. “It is recognized that the acts of violence,” read Ernestina Godoy, the legal advisor to the Presidency, “were constitutive of a crime against humanity.” He later offered a public apology, and added with the decree in hand: “The Executive is committed to guaranteeing the non-repetition of the atrocities to which the document refers.”
#Sheinbaum #letter #King #Spain #reconsider