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Mexico Needs More Than an Apology From Spain

Mexico Needs More Than an Apology From Spain

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When should one nation or people apologize to another? The question is receiving renewed attention in light of Mexico’s recent demand that Spain and the Vatican apologize for their early colonization of the country. This is no trivial matter; if recent world politics shows anything, it is that symbolic questions really can make a difference.

Often one side or the other takes absolutist stands on such issues, and in fact many Spaniards are upset by the demand, which their government has firmly rejected. But history shows some pretty diverse results for how to effectively and justly remedy past wrongs.

The United States is especially bad at apologies. As the global hegemon, America can bring both great benefits and great costs to the rest of the world. For the most part, it has decided that apologies would only slow it down, and perhaps sow the seeds of doubt among the public about such an activist foreign policy.

The U.S. has never apologized to Mexico, even though it took almost half of its southern neighbor’s territory in a 19th-century war. And when the U.S. government does apologize, it often seems forced and overly politicized. The 2008-2009 apology for slavery was certainly proper, but it is far from obvious that, in the years since, race relations have improved. Furthermore, some argued that an apology without a call for reparations was problematic.

One of the more effective U.S. apologies was for interning Japanese-Americans during World War II. It was sincere, it settled something, it was combined with reparations, and it helped the nation as well as the victims and their descendants to move on.

Some features of good apologies are sincerity, overall compatibility with what the apologizer now stands for in other contexts, and a broad social willingness to accept that something indeed has been settled for the better.

New Zealand is relatively good at apologies, perhaps because it is not used to playing the role of bully on the global stage. The government has been open about apologizing for various historical injustices against the Maori, and there was even a coordinated apology with the queen in 1995. In contrast, the Australian government apologized in 2008, with an emphasis on the child abductions from indigenous Australians, but the historical injustices were greater, and the child abductions lasted as late as 1970.

Thus to many observers the Australian apology seemed incomplete, and arguably too many Australians saw it as a way to simply be done with the matter. Overall, race relations have been more progressive in New Zealand, both a cause and an effect of that nation’s more effective approach to apologies.

You might think Rwanda is a case where a profound governmental apology, for a genocide, is obviously in order. But the politics of apologies can be tricky. While the genocide was Hutu to Tutsi, there is disagreement about how much some Tutsi forces were partially at fault, and furthermore Paul Kagame, the country’s president and undisputed leader, is himself a Tutsi and thus not the proper carrier of an apology. There have been apologies from some Hutus, and also from the Catholic Church, but the current strategy has been one of social repression of both the tensions and the discourse, perhaps to wait until a later time. It is possible that Rwanda still is too fragile to support any better solution.

OK, so how about Spain and Mexico? I am skeptical of this proposed apology, partly because it seems like a political maneuver by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to garner political support and distract from his likely failure to successfully reform Mexico’s economy. The current Spanish government also is not a close descendant of the conquistadors, as it is a full-blown democracy and the conquest was almost 500 years ago. One can acknowledge the massive injustices of the history without thinking that current Spanish citizens necessarily should feel so guilty. And (until recently) Spain-Mexico relations have not been problematic, so it is not clear exactly what problem this apology is supposed to solve.

Perhaps most important, a lot of the damage was done by Spaniards who took up residence in Mexico (albeit with support from their home government). The bigger and more important apologies are probably those internal to Mexico, such as from Mexican elites to various indigenous Mexican groups. López Obrador says he himself will apologize to Mexico’s indigenous groups, which is appropriate, but the real shortcomings here are on the side of concrete political and social action, not rhetoric.

The current demand for an apology is a distraction from the enduring injustice of Mexico’s segregation. If Spaniards found their own reasons for wishing to apologize, that would be a good result. But on this demand, they are correct to give it a pass.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include "Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero."

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