Claudia Sheinbaum: new Mexican President and the call for Spain’s apology
In just two months, Claudia Sheinbaum will take office as the President of Mexico, scheduled for October 1st. Sheinbaum has already made it clear that one of her key focuses during her term will be urging Spain to apologize for the conquest of Mexico.
This demand is not new; the predecessor of Sheinbaum, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), also sought an apology from Spain. However, despite his efforts, AMLO, who is a descendant of a young man from Ampuero who emigrated to Mexico in 1907, will finish his term without achieving this goal.
AMLO has also fallen short on several major promises. For instance, bringing Mexican healthcare up to Danish standards and reducing homicide rates. During his tenure, which is not yet complete, the number of recorded homicides has approached 195,000. That is a 50% increase from the previous president Enrique Peña Nieto’s term. And almost double that of Felipe Calderón’s presidency.
A continued political strategy
Despite these failures, Mexicans have chosen AMLO’s successor from the same leftist party, Morena. The current head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, has the same confrontation posture with Spain. Like AMLO, Sheinbaum is using the narrative of the ‘evil Spain’ to divert attention from issues of governance and security. This tactic, which has been effective in the past, continues to be employed as Sheinbaum’s parents were involved in the far-left movements.
Historian Miguel León-Portilla’s words contradicts the ones from Sheinbaum: “If a Mexican hates the Spanish, he is hating himself. It is a self-destructive attitude.”
A world power legacy
Beyond the Catholic religion, universities, cathedrals, schools, roads, mines, shipyards, livestock, vaccines, and numerous food products, Sheinbaum must know that Mexicans of inherited a vast country from Spain.
Between 1764 and 1803, the Viceroyalty of New Spain expanded to include Louisiana, ceded by the French king in 1763 and given to Napoleon by Charles IV in 1803. Napoleon sold it to President Jefferson that same year. After the upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars, Spain and the United States established their territorial limits with the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819. Spain ceded Florida and the Mississippi River navigation, but the U.S. recognized Spain’s sovereignty over Texas.
At that time, the Viceroyalty of New Spain extended from the Philippines to Puerto Rico and from Panama in the south to the 42nd parallel north. It was a bicontinental and bioceanic power. The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro stretched between Mexico City and Santa Fe, and the viceroys signed treaties with Apache and Comanche tribes, among others.
Upon declaring independence in 1821 by General Agustín Iturbide, Mexico was the fourth largest sovereign country in the world, following the Russian Empire (then tricontinental, including Alaska), the Chinese Empire, and the U.S. though Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines remained Spanish territories. Mexico spanned over four million square kilometers. The Aztecs controlled around 300,000 square kilometers in the central region alone.
The young Mexican Empire had coasts on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, unlike Russia, whose access was often ice-bound. While Mexico had towns and ports on the Pacific like Los Angeles and San Francisco, the U.S. had only Fort Astoria on the Columbia River, founded in 1811.
The secession of Texas
The monarchy didn’t last long. Once the king was overthrown, the generals from the independence war did not want to obey anyone. In the first 35 years, only one president, Guadalupe Victoria, completed his full term.
In 1823, the former Captaincy General of Guatemala separated from the republic and formed the United Provinces of Central America. But the greatest danger was to the north.
In 1820, Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca accepted the settlement of a few hundred Missourian colonists in Texas under conditions such as conversion to Catholicism. The republic continued to allow this migration to a sparsely populated territory. One of the most curious experiments was the relocation of Canarian colonists to found San Antonio, Texas. The relationship between the colonists and Mexico soured as they maintained their U.S. nationality, rejected the abolition of slavery, and opposed the centralist constitution.
In 1835, the Texans rebelled against Mexico and emerged victorious in 1836. They expanded their southern border to the Rio Grande. A decade later, the Texans considered joining the United States, prompting Mexico to declare war in 1846. An underdeveloped country of 7.5 million faced a rapidly industrializing nation of 20 million.
Lincoln opposed the war
The war was supported by Democrats who wanted more land to expand the country and its slaveholding sector. Slavery was legal in Texas, which joined the Confederacy. Whigs, including Abraham Lincoln, opposed the war as unjust.
The scale of Mexico’s defeat was shocking. Some in the U.S. proposed annexing the entire country, but this was rejected for two reasons. One was racial and racist: it would have introduced too many indigenous and Hispanic people into the country. The other was internal balance: northern states feared that slaveholders would control Congress. Mexico narrowly avoided the fate of Poland.
Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexico lost more than half of its territory: present-day California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Texas, as well as parts of Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The international border was set at the Rio Grande, which had been an internal river during the viceroyalty.
In 1853, President López de Santa Anna, a model of incompetence and corruption, signed the Gadsden Purchase, selling 76,000 square kilometers on the Arizona-New Mexico border to the U.S., bringing it close to gaining access to the Gulf of California.
In 1857, President James Buchanan offered to buy the Baja California Peninsula and parts of Sonora and Chihuahua for 15 million dollars. President Ignacio Comonfort refused.
A nation under foreign powers
While Mexico did not suffer further territorial losses, it declined to the point of becoming an American version of China or Turkey: occupied by foreign powers, economically subordinated, and engulfed in civil wars.
In 1862, Spain, France, and Britain landed troops in Veracruz to demand payment from President Benito Juárez’s government. After negotiations, Madrid and London withdrew their forces, but Emperor Napoleon III installed Archduke Maximilian, brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I, as Mexico’s ruler. Between 1863 and 1867, a civil war claimed over 40,000 lives and devastated the country’s center.
Earlier, between 1838 and 1839, the First French Intervention took place shortly after the U.S. war. The French Navy blockaded ports to secure debts.
General Porfirio Díaz established a long dictatorship (1884-1911) that restored Mexican sovereignty, though not economic independence. His departure in 1911 led to a period of revolutions, with more foreign intervention. President Woodrow Wilson occupied Veracruz and sent troops across the border to chase Pancho Villa.
A revolt in sparsely populated Baja California (1911) sparked fears of a Texas-like scenario: a declaration of independence and subsequent U.S. annexation.
