A few hours before taking the plane to travel to Spain, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has given more details about the summit of progressive governments she will attend on Saturday. The president announced that part of the delegation will include the Secretary of Environment, Alicia Bárcena, to participate in a first meeting with “progressive movements.” Next, the summit of heads of state will be held, to which she has been invited by the host, the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, sealing diplomatic peace after years of tension over the colonial legacy. The summit also represents an alignment with other progressive governments in the region amid the turbulent international scenario marked by attacks and pressure from Donald Trump on the continent. The president avoided any harsh words and during her Thursday morning press conference stated that “this is not an anti-Trump meeting.”
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The president recalled the path taken until the trip this weekend was consolidated. The trigger of the crisis was the letter that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, predecessor and mentor of Sheinbaum, sent in 2019 to King Felipe VI, in which he demanded that he apologize for the abuses against indigenous peoples committed during the Conquest of America. “They got upset,” said the president recalling the beginnings of the crisis, which led to the Spanish king not being invited to Sheinbaum’s inauguration in 2024. In recent months, gestures of rapprochement arrived through culture. The Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, acknowledged “the injustice and pain” caused to the original Mexican peoples.
Finally, on March 16, during his visit to the exhibition Half the World. Women in Indigenous Mexico, organized by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mexican Secretariat of Culture, King Felipe VI acknowledged that “there was much abuse” and “ethical controversies” in the colonization of America by the Spanish conquerors. It was presented as an informal conversation with the Mexican ambassador in Spain, Quirino Ordaz, and other authorities, but it was a very measured and previously agreed gesture. “In his own way, the king acknowledged that there were abuses. These are important actions of recognition of our peoples and origin,” added the president about the reasons that sealed the peace.
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Sheinbaum also announced that she will travel at midnight this Thursday to Madrid and then continue to Barcelona, with arrival expected on Friday night, a day before the summit. She also confirmed that she will hold “bilateral meetings and a general one” with the other heads of state, among whom stand out the presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; Colombia, Gustavo Petro; Uruguay, Yamandú Orsi.
With her usual calm tone, the president avoided clashing with the U.S. president, of whom she said “we respect him even though we do not agree with many of his decisions.” She also insisted that the spirit of the summit “is very positive” and focuses on “working for world peace” and recovering the “spirit of the UN charter.”
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