Isabel Díaz Ayuso has landed in Mexico like a meteorite, relentless and unafraid of backlash. The president of the Community of Madrid has made provocation her most effective political weapon and has arrived in the North American country ready to use it. She had been heating up the atmosphere for months, equating Claudia Sheinbaum’s government with the Cuban dictatorship, and with comments about the Conquest period that ignite tensions in both countries, whose governments struggle to smooth over differences. However, the moment of deployment came this Monday afternoon, at an event honoring the colonizer Hernán Cortés in Mexico City. Attending were the mayor of the Cuauhtémoc delegation, Alessandra Rojo de la Vega, from the conservative PAN, and other cultural figures, such as writer Juan Miguel Zunzunegui and former Mecano member Nacho Cano, who opened the event with a performance of his musical Malinche performed by a youth choir. The props from the play itself, currently showing in the same venue as the event, did the rest.
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“Mestizaje is the message of hope and joy. In the face of hate speeches that divide, those of us who see life around these alliances have to find ways to speak freely,” Díaz Ayuso declared from Frontón México, a venue especially symbolic for the PAN members, as it is where they founded their party a century ago and where they relaunched their image just a few months ago. “Hopefully one day, sooner rather than later, there will be many more events like this held in every corner of Spain, Mexico, and that they will never have to be moved. May freedom never apologize for being freedom,” she added, referring to the cancellation of the religious ceremony that was scheduled in the capital’s cathedral and was to serve as a warm-up for the meeting at the theater.
The expansive effect of Ayuso’s provocation had been taking shape even before the event took place. Past noon, the commotion was such that, with barely an hour’s notice, the Archdiocese announced its cancellation and distanced itself from the homage to the conqueror. “The Eucharist is not a symbolic act to exalt people or historical events,” the church authorities stated in a communiqué, also informing that artist Nacho Cano had not obtained the necessary permits for his recording. “At no time was a celebration proposed that would give rise to political or ideological positions,” they added in the statement. Shortly before the event was canceled, several dozen representatives of indigenous peoples had already gathered at the temple’s doors to read a statement against the recognition of Hernán Cortés, whom they accused of being the representative of “crimes against humanity” committed against indigenous communities.
The cancellation of the rite, which was read as an act of prudence in the face of the reactions the event was generating, set the tone for several of the interventions from the start, beginning with Cano himself, who addressed the issue directly as soon as he opened the right-wing forum: “Mestizaje is the product of evangelization. Since it comes from there, it was very interesting for us to celebrate it in the Mexico Zócalo cathedral, a church that Cortés ordered to be built,” he stated. “Without Christ, there would be no Christianity. Without Cortés, there would be no Mexico, that is so,” he added.
Soon after, the mayor of the central capital district appeared, clearly in tune with the Madrilenian ―including black and shiny suits― to claim the figure of Malinche. “She did not let her origin decide her destiny,” she said. “For many years, in Mexico, calling a woman Malinche was an insult: the traitor, the guilty one, the one who handed over,” she criticized: “Continuing to talk about the past will not solve the present. I stopped looking for villains in history a long time ago. I prefer roots, because roots do not divide, they support.”
The interventions were closed by an extensive Zunzunegui, on whom Ayuso has relied on other occasions to support the thesis that Spain should not apologize for the Conquest, as demanded by the former president and mentor of Sheinbaum, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “I love it when they say genocide, so why did we build hospitals? Ah, it’s because the Church came to subjugate us. So why did we build universities?” he claimed: “We are children of the greatest encounter in humanity.”
After seven years of cultural diplomacy between the governments of both countries to move past disagreements over the Conquest, Ayuso has returned to the charge with the topic that caused the unusual freezing of political relations. Despite attempts to poke at the wound, for the Mexican president, who mentioned the event in passing and with irony in her morning conference, the Spanish right’s refusal to make concessions only adds value to the gestures of the Monarchy and Pedro Sánchez’s government.
However, Ayuso’s arrival has not found much resonance in the Mexican right. Beyond the reception and participation in the event of Rojo de la Vega, who is pleased to be called “the Mexican Ayuso” and was honored in Madrid in March for her “defense of women’s rights,” the PAN remains silent. The Morena parliamentary group in the capital, on the other hand, has launched attacks against the Madrilenian, whom they have labeled “fascist” and “the heir of the Spanish Falange.” Agitated by the meeting, one of the intellectual references of morenismo, Pedro Miguel, has submitted a formal request to the Institute of Fine Arts (INBAL) to exhume the remains of Hernán Cortés, currently in Mexico, “and deliver them to Díaz Ayuso or any entity or person of the Spanish State that expresses interest in receiving them.”
Resistance and criticism have not mattered much; the meteorite Ayuso has advanced impassively with her agenda, which began in the morning at the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, before a more friendly audience. The president, Antonio Basagoiti, joked about the increasingly large community of Mexicans who have landed with their investments in Madrid’s wealthy neighborhoods, such as Salamanca. “It’s easier to find a Mexican friend there than in Polanco [the equivalent in Mexico City],” he laughed. Ayuso joked back and was forced to clarify: “Not only in the Salamanca neighborhood, in all of them.”
The inclusion of the extensive and exceptional 10-day tour of the Madrilenian president in her institutional agenda has also stirred up dust in Spain. The opposition has reproached her for abandoning her responsibilities in the Community for so long, without being able to answer questions from the local Parliament and using the money from Madrilenians’ taxes. Monday afternoon’s event, with a marked political content, is the only one that has not yet appeared officially in her schedule, although it is unclear who is covering the expenses.
Mexico, important in itself due to its geographic and economic weight, is shaping up as a key stage for international political alliances. Sheinbaum is raising her external profile and a few weeks ago attended a forum to seek a progressive alliance alternative to the interventionism of U.S. President Donald Trump, with whom tensions have reached their peak. After the thaw with Spain, Pedro Sánchez has become one of her natural allies, along with Colombian Gustavo Pedro and Brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Mexico is too juicy a country to give up on biting into, and the right-wing orbiting around Trumpism is doing just that. The tapping to break the Mexican dam against the far right is constant, and Ayuso’s visit, ambassador of the ultra leader in Spain, only confirms it. This time, the Madrilenian president avoided making any explicit mention of Sheinbaum or the “narco-states” governed by her party, a label borrowed from the internal opposition to the leader. The controversy, in any case, has not been minor, and only 24 hours have passed since her arrival. Nine days remain, an eternity: enough time to change one’s mind.
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