D
from the beginning of his mandate, AMLO introduced a marked preference in values and priorities different from the above. The distance was seen, suddenly, with the return to the classic principles of traditional Mexican diplomacy. The request to acknowledge mistakes and abuses, committed in the past, was requested, by letter and to the full, but with resonances and political agreement. The letters were addressed to the Vatican due to the many pains and deaths of natives caused by the priests and monks of that flock. The next he directed it to the King of Spain for the many genocidal outrages from the so-called conquest and followed during the viceroyalty. Half and hesitant answers were obtained from Rome. No official word from the so-called mother country.
Internally, the government acted accordingly. Since then, it has been an almost constant position to request various pardons for injuries, forgetfulness and aggressions inflicted on different groups or peoples, sometimes for centuries. The main letter was written to the Spanish Bourbon in its representation of the monarchy that it presides over. There was not the expected response, direct and contrite. But AMLO’s courageous request was registered and opened a difficult to heal gash. Several indirect allegations were heard from characters riddled with well-trodden tails. All of them wrapped in the traditional posture of continuing with their conquering illusion, of exalted adventurers. Now even baptized as civilizers. They were and are, in that heroic narrative, the winners. Ours only manage to appear as defeated servants, the meat of merciless exploitation.
The current environment and understanding in Spain about what happened from the year 1500 of this era is long-standing, decades to say the least. They see themselves as distinguished soldiers, masterful generals of a kingdom that was once a global empire. From there a superb image of noblemen was born and reproduced, which took root strongly in Franco’s fascism to remain entrenched since those terrible times. They have never accepted the excessive looting carried out with rampant cynicism in their territories and colonies. They are also unaware of the genocides perpetrated against the different peoples of these long-suffering lands, experienced in contact with such aggressive behaviors. The excuse of the different times continues to serve to excuse crimes and tragedies. The balances obtained from the historical account leave no corner where to go: more destruction than development, more pain than peace and contentment, more poverty and deep class divisions. Deep-rooted racism was added that subjected the colonized to the actors who came from the metropolis. Racism that, unfortunately, has branched off into countless meanders and slopes today.
Having influenced these struggles of forgiveness and clarity of new stories, at the emergence of a new government, gave body to the external-internal interrelation of foreign policy. Digging in those depths full of folds of supposed inferiorities, courageous resistances and failures, the different version that has penetrated a vital nerve of today is inscribed. But to the consecrated local gathering, already grafted into fierce opposition, such a request seemed like a cry of ignorant of history and good manners. A simple provincial rudeness lacking the meaning and serious lines of a healthy, intelligent and modern foreign policy. There is nothing of that, argue the opponents who classify the petition as nonsense, although it is inserted in the reconstruction of principles and independent efforts. A truly defining policy of sovereign intention to establish itself from the very origins in the defense of the unjustly subjected. An interpretation that tries to cradle itself in a horizon of its own dignity.
From these calls, settled with the internal pardons to Yaquis, Mayan peoples, disappeared and other acts of contrition, concurrent words and acts were woven together. Whether in New York or later in Washington of all the admired powers. AMLO’s unexpected stance, scanning the horizon and the realities of world power, unambiguously postulated a complex alternative of integrated competition, as a continental strategy. And it does so in the face of rivalries, already underway with the East, with the breath capable of avoiding future aggressive confrontations. But the intention of broadening the gaze and relating it to opportunities in a market of capable and available workers, opened doors that, until today, remain clumsily closed to migratory flows. The local chair has been silent in the face of AMLO’s unusual display of ideas and proposals, without recognizing and reconsidering the barrage of epithets and omens of inevitable lawsuits and imminent catastrophes that filled the communicative airs with their voices.
