Spain refuses to apologise for conquering Mexico five hundred years ago

Spain's government has refused a demand from Mexico's new president that it apologise for conquering the country five hundred years ago.

Firing the first shots in what threatens to become a diplomatic row, the Left-wing Mexican leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on Monday that he had sent letters to Spain’s King Felipe VI and Pope Francis urging them to apologize for crimes committed against the indigenous peoples of what is today Mexico.

“There were massacres and oppression. The so-called conquest was waged with the sword and the cross. They built their churches on top of the temples,” Mr López Obrador said in a video message.

He filmed the clip at a Mayan monument near the site of the first battle in which Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés fought indigenous people 500 years ago this month.

Starting from the Tabasco coast and assisted by some indigenous groups who threw in their lot with the invaders, Cortés led a squadron of soldiers eastwards to victory in Tenochtitlan - today’s Mexico City - two years later in 1521. The Aztec empire was destroyed and the indigenous populations were converted to Catholicism.

At a speech to supporters later on Monday, Mr López Obrador said he wanted to reconcile Mexico, the Spanish crown and the Vatican by “together reviewing the history of that military invasion and three centuries of colonisation”.Mr López Obrador said it was time to bury the Spanish interpretation of the events of 500 years ago as “a meeting of two cultures”, adding that “thousands of indigenous people were murdered”.

Hours after the Mexican leader’s message was posted on social media, the Spanish government issued a statement saying it “deeply regretted” that Mr López Obrador had made public the contents of the letter he had sent to Spain’s king

Time for a History lesson… Excerpts from ‘CINCO DE REALITY’ by Dr. Jack Wheeler

The founder and creator of Mexico was Hernando Cortez (1485-1547). The Aztec Empire he liberated in 1521 was about the size Kansas, some 80,000 square miles. Over the next 200 years, viceroys appointed by the King of Spain expanded the colony of Nueva España or New Spain by twenty times (through appropriating land from Indian tribes) to 1,650,000 square miles. When the French lost the Seven Years’ War, by the Treaty of Paris in 1763 they ceded their territory of Louisianne (named after Louis XIV) west of the Mississippi to England, which awarded it to Spain for being England’s ally in the war. This added another 828,000 square miles to the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

When Napoleon seized power after the French Revolution, he wanted Louisianne back for France. So he made a secret deal in 1800 with King Charles IV of Spain (actually with his wife, Queen Maria Amelia, and her lover, Manuel de Godoy, for Charles was retarded) to trade (a “retrocession”) all of Louisianne for control of Tuscany in Italy. This was called the Treaty of Ildefonso. President Thomas Jefferson’s spies in Paris found out about the secret treaty in 1801, and that Napoleon needed some fast cash. He had lost his cash cow of Haiti—and its sugar exports, in a rebellion, and might be open to a deal. The negotiations were concluded on May 2, 1803: 828,000 square miles for $15 million, or about three cents an acre: The Louisiana Purchase.

Charles IV abdicated his throne in 1808 in favor of his son Ferdinand VII, who was so pro-British/anti-French that Napoleon invaded Spain and replaced him with his older brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as King. The people of Spain rebelled, which left the Spanish government in chaotic breakdown—and which gave the people of New Spain cause to rebel against their colonial rulers in Europe. By the time Ferdinand VII regained the throne in 1814, he needed money to suppress the rebellion in New Spain. His government had challenged the legality of the entire Louisiana Purchase, claiming France had no right to sell it and never owned it anyway, since the secret Ildefonso treaty was invalid. President James Monroe saw the opportunity. By 1819 at Monroe’s instructions, US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams concluded a deal with Ferdinand’s emissary, Spanish Foreign Minister Luis de Onis, called the Adams-Onis Treaty. The US paid Spain $5 million for the 70,000 square miles of Spanish Florida, and Spain recognized the validity of the Louisiana Purchase, thus settling the US-New Spain border. (The area of the Louisiana Purchase is called the Missouri Territory)

Ferdinand could now suppress the New Spain rebellion—but the general in charge of the suppression, who was infamous for his brutality, Augustin de Iturbide (1783-1824), decided to rule New Spain for himself. In 1821, he made a deal with the rebels, who put him in charge of their rebellion. Ferdinand capitulated, and on August 24, 1821, his emissary signed the Treaty of Cordoba recognizing the sovereign independence of New Spain. You would think that August 24 would be Mexico’s Independence Day, but it is not. It is September 16, for in the wee hours of that day, in 1810, a Catholic priest, Father Miguel Hidalgo, called for his flock in the small town of Dolores in Guanajuato state to rebel against their Spanish rulers. His cry or grito of rebellion is what Mexicans celebrate as their July 4th. Iturbide is an embarrassment to Mexicans, for once the independence treaty was signed he betrayed the rebels and declared himself Emperor Augustin I of New Spain, which he renamed—Mexico. He promptly repudiated all treaties made by Spain—Adams-Onis in particular—excepting, of course, the one that put him in power.

Hardly a year passed when a general of Iturbide’s army, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1794-1876) overthrew him. Years of coups, counter-coups and chaos followed, with a dozen Mexican states in open rebellion against the central government in Mexico City: Coahuila, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Durango, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Yucatán, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas, and Tejas. Several of these states formed their own governments. All were brutally suppressed by Santa Anna. One succeeded in gaining independence—Tejas, which became in 1836 the Republic of Texas. Mexico demanded it back, and warned the U.S. if it annexed Texas, there would be war.

When James Polk (1795-1849) became president in March of 1845, he promptly moved to accept Texas into the
Union, December of that year. In 1846, the Mexican government was such a chaotic mess that it had four presidents, six war ministers, and 16 finance ministers—in that one year. Nonetheless, it got what it said it wanted when 2,000 Mexican soldiers attacked 63 US soldiers on a border patrol at the Neuces River, killing 11, and the Mexican-American War was on. By March of 1847, US forces had secured most of northern Mexico. Then General Winfield Scott landed 12,000 soldiers at Veracruz—among them were Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and Thomas Jackson, later to be nicknamed “Stonewall.”

After securing Veracruz, Scott marched to Mexico City to defeat the forces of Santa Anna—who had by now seized the Mexican presidency for the sixth time—at the Battle of Chapultepec on September 13, 1847. The war was over. General Winfield Scott was military governor of Mexico City, the Mexican government existed in name only, and many a U.S. Congressman and Senator was demanding the U.S. annex the entire country of Mexico. Polk turned this demand down. He declared instead that in exchange for the U.S. to uphold Mexican independence and end the U.S. military occupation, that Mexico was to relinquish any claim to the territory of Texas and the Louisiana Purchase, and that Mexico was to cede to the U.S. its territory between the western border of the US (meaning Texas and the “Missouri Territory” of the Purchase) and the Pacific Ocean, an area of over 500,000 square miles. On February 2, 1848 at the basilica of Guadalupe in the village of Hidalgo on the outskirts of Mexico City, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo codified Polk’s deal. Mexico promptly resumed fluctuating between dictators and anarchic bloody chaos.

In 1851, the nephew of Napoleon (the son of Napoleon’s brother, Louis), Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873), seized power in France and declared himself Emperor Napoleon III. After a decade of imperialist adventures from Italy to Algeria to Indochina, he set his sights on Mexico. It was in its usual state of civil war - and by 1861, so was the United States. Colluding with a group of Mexican monarchists who wanted the anarchy to end, he ordered the French Army to invade Mexico. After suffering an initial defeat at a place called Puebla, his forces and the monarchists succeeded in taking over the government, and placing a Hapsburg prince, Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria (1832-1867) as Emperor of Mexico.

Why Maximilian of Austria? Because he was Napoleon III’s secret first cousin. Napoleon’s son, Francois Joseph
Bonaparte (1811-1832, given the courtesy title of Napoleon II when a child by his father) was exiled with his mother, Marie-Louise, to Austria after Waterloo (for she was the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, Francis II). At age 20, Francois had an affair with Princess Sophie of Bavaria (1805-1872), whose husband, Archduke Franz Karl, was retarded—and she became pregnant. Two weeks after she gave birth to Maximilian, Francois/Napoleon II died, and Sophie accused Austria’s Minister of State, Prince von Metternich (1773-1859) of poisoning him to squelch the scandal of Maximilian’s real paternity. Years later, Sophie became deranged with bitterness over Maximilian’s fate.

Once America’s Civil War ended, President Andrew Johnson wasted no time in telling the French he wanted them out of Mexico. He sent arms and money to the leader of the Mexican rebellion against Maximilian, Benito Juarez, and encouraged Americans to volunteer to fight for him. This enabled Juarez to defeat Maximilian’s forces, and capture and execute Maximilian himself in June, 1867. Thus Mexico’s independence, from 1867 onward, is thanks to America. Don’t expect any gratitude. Oh, and that initial defeat of the French at Puebla that didn’t even slow down the French in conquering Mexico? It was on May 5th, 1862. Yep, that’s the vaunted “Cinco de Mayo.” It’s just an excuse for a party in Gringoland. Now you know the history, but you may not know the depth of hatred and bitterness many Mexicans feel over it.

Our history is one of freedom, democracy, political stability (except for the War of Northern Aggression) and incredible prosperity—the greatest success story of any nation ever. Their history is one of bloody anarchy, dictatorship, endless corruption, and grinding poverty. And because they haven’t got the balls to take responsibility for the failure of their history, they blame it on us. It’s all our fault. We stole their land, or some other childish excuse.

Not all Mexicans feel this way, of course. There are plenty of normal decent people in Mexico who bear no grudges; but virtually the entire intelligentsia and ruling elite of Mexico feel this way—and, thanks to the evil synergy of the American Left’s fascist will to power and it’s masochistic fear of the evil eye of envy, Mexican hate and envy is indulged and encouraged.

There is the clearest demonstration of how Mexico’s ruling elite encourages envious hatred towards America in the entrance foyer of the Museo Nacional de Historia, the Museum of National History in Mexico City, where there is an enormous mosaic map depicting Mexico Integral - Greater Mexico, Mexico Integrated and Whole. Every class of students on a field trip from their school to the museum is made to sit down and gaze up at the huge map, while the teacher explains how so much of Los Estados Unidos was stolen from Mexico and really belongs to them. In fact, the teacher explains, what the Norteamericanos call the Louisiana Purchase was illegal—stolen by France, then illegally sold by France. So it, too, should belong to Mexico.

Everywhere in Mexico, every Mexican schoolchild is taught that, just as all the treaties signed by Spain ceding territory to the U.S. are illegal, so is the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Every Mexican national, legally or illegally in the U.S., is told by the Mexican government that his or her allegiance is to Mexico—not America. Thus we have the rise of the Reconquista movement, by such rabidly racist groups as Aztlan, La Raza, and MEChA. Thus we have 20 million illegal aliens in the US from Mexico. The hysterically dishonest depiction of Arizona’s new anti-illegals law by Democrats, moonbats, the so-called “mainstream media,” and RINO politicians, could not be a more explicit expression of their masochistic desire to see their own country destroyed.

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