Mexico was “colonized by the worst of the races,” a lawmaker from Tabasco said yesterday while defending the letter President López Obrador sent to the king of Spain to ask him to apologize for the Spanish conquest.

Speaking in the Congress of the Gulf coast state, Charlie Valentino León Flores Vera, a deputy with López Obrador’s Morena party, said that corruption in Mexico and other Latin American countries is a product of Spanish colonization and that Spaniards should show remorse for the actions of their ancestors.

“. . . Unfortunately, we were colonized by the worst of the races, which is the Spanish . . . I wouldn’t ask them to [just] apologize but rather kneel down before our country because thanks to them we’re living through all this corruption,” he said.

“In Canada, there were French and English colonies. Look at the difference! In the United States, there were English colonies . . . In Belize, there was a colony of black English people and I think that they [the Belizeans] live better than us,” León Flores added.

The lawmaker described the conquering Spanish as a “band of thieves” and charged that they are the reason why “all of Latin America is collapsed.”

León Flores’ outburst earned a rebuke from Ecological Green Party (PVEM) Deputy Carlos Mario Ramos, who called on his colleague not to use discriminatory language in the Congress.

López Obrador published a video Monday in which he advised that he had written both the king of Spain and Pope Francis asking that they apologize for the indignities suffered by the native peoples during the period of the Spanish conquest.

The government of Spain “vigorously” rejected the request, stating that “the arrival 500 years ago of the Spaniards on territory that is now Mexican cannot be judged in the light of contemporary considerations.”

In Mexico, Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Senator and former interior secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong was one of several opposition lawmakers who criticized the president for his apology request.

“President Andrés Manuel López Obrador should be subjected to constant medical evaluation,” Osorio said. “That apology that he requested from the king of Spain and the Vatican about the conquest, that’s out of order.”

Source: Reforma (sp)