Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday welcomed Spanish King Felipe VI’s acknowledgement that abuses were committed during Spain’s conquest of the Americas.
Diplomatic relations between Mexico and Spain have been strained since 2019, when the Mexican government demanded that the Spanish crown apologize for the abuses committed during the conquest and subsequent colonisation in 16th century.
The king on Monday acknowledged “much abuse” during Spain’s conquest of the Americas during a visit to an exhibition titled “Women in Indigenous Mexico,” held at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid.
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It was the latest attempt by a top Spanish official to address Mexico’s historical grievances. Spain’s foreign minister last year acknowledged the “pain and injustice” inflicted on Indigenous peoples during the Spanish conquest.
Sheinbaum told a news conference on Tuesday: “It really is a gesture of rapprochement by the king, in the spirit of what we have been discussing: a recognition of the excesses and acts of extermination that took place during the arrival of the Spaniards.”
“I believe this should be acknowledged, and that we should continue to move forward in our dialogue,” she added.
Mesoamerica, a region that comprised parts of Mexico and Central America, had an estimated population of 15 million to 30 million people when Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes arrived with an army of several hundred men, bringing horses, swords, guns — and smallpox — in 1519.
After a century of battles, massacres, and plagues, only an estimated one million to two million Indigenous inhabitants remained.
In a video edited and published by the Royal Household on X, King Felipe said Catholic monarchs had demonstrated “a desire to protect” Indigenous peoples but “in reality, these intentions were not fulfilled as intended, and significant abuses occurred.”
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