Mexico City (EFE).- Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum lashed out on Tuesday against the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and her defense of the Spanish conquest and the figure of Hernán Cortés during an event held the previous day in Mexico City.
“To those who revive the conquest as salvation, we say: you are destined for defeat. To those who believe the people are fools, you are destined for defeat. Those who seek to vindicate Hernán Cortés and his atrocities are destined for defeat,” the president stated, without directly naming Ayuso, during her speech commemorating the Battle of May 5 in the central state of Puebla.
The declarations come a day after Díaz Ayuso participated in an event in the Mexican capital that paid tribute to figures like Cortés and Queen Isabella I of Castile (Isabel la Católica), defending the conquest and «mestizaje» (racial and cultural mixing) as positive elements of the shared history between Spain and Mexico.
However, the Mexican leader did not directly allude to the Spanish regional president.
The president’s stance arises amid a renewed controversy over the memory of the conquest, reignited after the event led by Díaz Ayuso at the Frontón México, organized together with the producer Nacho Cano, following the cancellation of a planned event at the Metropolitan Cathedral.
At that gathering, the Madrid leader maintained that the conquest is part of a common legacy and questioned narratives that, in her opinion, foster “hatred.”
Díaz Ayuso’s visit also generated protests from Indigenous groups, who denounced the exaltation of the conquistador and demanded an apology for the abuses committed during colonization.
Death of democracy
Later on Tuesday, Ayuso warned students and business leaders in Mexico City that «the chains of socialism» are causing the death of democracy in Mexico and Spain.
«This is how democracies die; this is what is happening in Mexico; this is what is happening in Spain, exactly in the same way,» said Díaz Ayuso, the regional leader, during a conference at the University of Freedom, founded by Mexican tycoon Ricardo Salinas Pliego.
In her speech, Ayuso pointed to the Mexican ruling party, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), as responsible for this decline, recounting her first visit to the North American country, where she witnessed Morena’s first political campaigns. The party was founded by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024).
«The first time I came to Mexico, many years ago, it was Morena’s first campaign, and we had already gone through the same populist experience in Spain,» she argued.
Since then, she stressed, «that is how it has worked, and that is how that decline and that popular democracy was seen coming, which, if it is democracy without law, turns into a den of thieves.» EFE
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