Wed 13 October 2021:
After Pope Francis and Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, expressed themselves along similar lines in recent days, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has stated that Spain must ask for “forgiveness” from the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean for the “crimes” of the conquest of America.
“We join the voices that are raised in America to demand that the King of Spain rectify, reflect and apologize to Latin America and the Caribbean for the 300-year genocide against indigenous peoples,” Maduro said.
The Venezuelan leader criticized Spain’s celebration on Oct. 12 of Dia de la Hispanidad, or Hispanic Day, a national holiday in Spain that commemorates the date when Christopher Columbus first set foot in the Americas in 1492.
According to Maduro, it represents an “immense offense to the memory of the men and women they murdered.”
“Spain must ask forgiveness from the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, all of the Americas, for the terrible crime committed against our grandfathers and grandmothers,” he said during his speech Sunday to take stock of the covid pandemic in Venezuela.
He accused “European colonialism” of “massacring, looting, plundering, robbing, enslaving all America” and stressed the “millions” of slaves who died in these circumstances, as reported by VTV Television. This is not the first time that Maduro has asked Spain to apologize for the conquest of America.
Maduro said he will send a letter to the King of Spain to “reflect” on the events that marked colonialism and genocide in Latin America and stressed that “Spain also has a good, glorious, heroic history of struggle against colonialism, against vassalage,” so it should understand.
People in various Latin American countries including Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Ecuador took to the streets Tuesday to demand the vindication of the rights of indigenous peoples who suffered at the hands of European settlers.
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