This article by Reyes Martínez Torrijos originally appeared in the November 9, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
Mexico. The allusion to the suffering caused by the Spanish Conquest and Colonization of ancient Mexico, made a few days ago by a Spanish official, “is very important,” even though it was a long time coming. “It would be better if it were bigger, more explicit, and formal from the Spanish government,” said historian Felipe Ávila, head of the National Institute of Historical Studies and Revolutions of Mexico (INEHRM).
In an interview with La Jornada, the researcher highlighted that “finally a Spanish representative (José Manuel Albares, Minister of Foreign Affairs) dared to make that public acknowledgment, a request that the Mexican government had made since the previous administration.”
For Ávila, such an action “does not mean that the current rulers are directly responsible, but it does mean that they are heirs to those processes of conquest from which their societies enjoyed the benefits of those acts of conquest, dispossession, and subjugation of the native populations carried out by their ancestors for centuries.”
Felipe Ávila, Director of INERHM
In this case, the message “does not diminish any government nor take away its dignity; on the contrary, it enhances it. It is commendable that it is done,” added the academic. “Other governments, institutions, and figures at different times—the Vatican did it—asked for forgiveness for the genocide, destruction, violence, and deaths caused by previous generations.”
The sociologist also highlighted that there is currently greater social awareness and knowledge of history; therefore, the “indigenous communities of America, Africa, and Asia that were colonized by the main European powers from the end of the 15th century have been able to make their voices heard more loudly.”
He noted that since the fifth centenary of the encounter between America and Spain in 1992, large protest movements, mainly in countries with large indigenous or Afro-descendant populations, made it known that the Conquest and colonization “had been a historical tragedy for all those peoples.”
These processes meant for them “extermination, mass murder, dispossession of their lands, deportation, the establishment of concentration camps, the destruction of their cultures and colonial exploitation that subjected them to a regime of forced labor that caused many deaths.”
Ávila summarized: “The Spanish and Portuguese Conquest of America was the greatest demographic catastrophe in the history of humanity. As a direct result of that Conquest and colonization, 90 percent of the original American population died, and there were regions like the Caribbean islands where not a single Indigenous person survived.”
He pointed out that “for Indigenous peoples, these acts of forgiveness are accompanied by demands for justice.
“The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador began with acts of justice for the Yaqui, Maya, and other Indigenous communities, in which the recognition of the long-standing injustices committed against them was accompanied by government programs and provisions for economic, agricultural, educational, and infrastructure development.”
Ávila concluded that it is a “reaffirmation of the legitimacy of the resistance that, after so much time, had not subdued the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, who are one of the greatest riches of today’s pluricultural, multireligious, and multiethnic Mexico. It is a recognition of the legacy and the contribution they have made and continue to make in building this diverse country.”
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