An apology to Aztecs 500 years too late

Does an apology 500 years too late of any value? This is the question that arises as Mexico’s leftist president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had apologised to the indigenous people while marking the 500th anniversary of Hernan Cortes, leader of the Spanish forces defeating the Aztec emperor Moctezuma at the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in 1521, on which the present-day Mexico City stands.

It was not a case of Spanish forces defeating the Aztecs in a hard-fought war. The Aztecs were outflanked and outnumbered because the Spanish had guns and better weapons. And there was no provocation for a war because Mesoamerica was not a neighbour of France. But then that is the story of colonialism in our times, in Asia, in Africa and in the Americas. The Europeans had better weapons but their apparent cultural and civilisational superiority was shallow and even false going by the manner the Spanish forces destroyed the centuries old Aztec civilisation and culture.

The term which has come into use in recent times to describe this wanton destruction of a culture and a civilisation is cultural genocide. Many of the thoughtful Europeans of the last few decades have grown to realise the destruction that the European colonialists had unleashed against weaker indigenous people. The apology offered by present day descendants of the European colonialists of the past centuries might mean little to the people who had died at that time, and their impoverished descendants today, who live in ghettos on the margins of the modern urban habitations created by the European settlers.

It has been pointed out that President Lopez Obrador’s apology is political because he has been elected from the region where the indigenous population is in a majority. The Mexican leader has also said that the Spanish monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church should apologise too for the centuries of oppression of the indigenous people. The demand is reasonable because it is the religious zeal of the Spanish conquerors that led to the merciless destruction of the culture of the indigenous people.

It is true however that the colonisation of middle and south America by Spain and Portugal (confined to Brazil) ended up with conversion of many of the indigenous people to Catholic Christianity and also to the inter-marriage between the European colonialists and the indigenous people. This has made the society more complicated because the mixed race segment was not fully integrated into the colonial society. This is however in contrast to the colonial enterprise of the English colonialists in present-day United States and Canada, where there was no intermarriage between the English and the native people. But the native Indians were pushed back, evicted from their own lands and finally they were thrown into what have been called reservations, living desolate lives, addicted to alcohol and gambling.

There have been exceptions where a few of the native Indians adopted the colonial life and they have tried to preserve their old cultures and languages. But they have not been too successful.

The debate is on about the two models of dealing with the native people. It would seem that both the approaches were barbaric and culturally intolerant. But there have arisen in the last half-century and more, where conscientious individuals have taken a stand against white atrocities against the native people. One of the famous protests was by Hollywood actor Marlon Brando who sent a native Indian actress Sacheen Littlefeather to read out a letter rejecting the Oscar for best actor in the film, ‘Godfather’ in 1973. Such protests, however symbolic, and cynics would say an empty gesture, had its value because it brought before the people the crimes of their colonial forefathers. And it is the same with the apology of Mexican president Lopez Obrador.