Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei posted on social media on Saturday (October 12, 2024) that the Italian explorer’s arrival introduced enlightenment to the region.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An Argentine claim that European contact brought civilization to the Americas has provoked rebukes from across Latin America, where heated debates often flare up over the era’s contested historical legacy.

Commemorating Christopher Columbus’ landing in the Americas on October 12, 1492, the office of Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei posted on social media on Saturday (October 12, 2024) that the Italian explorer’s arrival introduced enlightenment to the region.

“It marked the beginning of civilization in the American continent,” the post boasted, accompanied by a slick video set to triumphant music.

The post argues that Columbus “opened a new era of progress,” while many who agreed online pointed to human sacrifice as practiced by some native cultures as a clear example of cruelty European colonizers fought against.

Columbus’ arrival in the present-day Bahamas led to centuries of Spanish and Portuguese domination of a region stretching from much of today’s United States to near Antarctica.

The conquests and subsequent colonial experience have long generated impassioned debate. Many Latin American leaders now embrace a more critical view, acknowledging the abuses committed, including massacres, forced labor and widespread looting.

Columbus, traditionally thought to have been from Genoa, Italy, was a Sephardic Jew from somewhere in Western Europe, Spanish scientists said on Saturday after a 22-year investigation using DNA analysis.

The debates about his legacy often fall along ideological lines, with leftists especially sensitive to suggestions that the region’s Indigenous cultures are inferior.

Mexico’s new leftist leader, President Claudia Sheinbaum, ended a speech on Saturday (October 12, 2024) outside the nation’s capital with a repudiation of the view represented by Milei.

“For many years, they told us that they came from over there to civilize us. No! There were already great cultures here,” said Ms. Sheinbaum, who took office earlier this month, ticking off contributions from the Olmecs and Aztecs, among others.

“It’s more than that, Mexico is great because of its original peoples,” she said, speaking in the working class city of Nezahualcoyotl, named for the 15th century king of Texcoco, famed for his poetry, engineering feats and skill on the battlefield.

In 2020 when she was Mexico City mayor, Sheinbaum ordered the removal of a statue of Columbus that had adorned the capital’s most prominent avenue since 1877.

Ms. Sheinbaum and her like-minded predecessor have urged Spain’s King Felipe VI to apologize for atrocities committed during the 16th century conquest of Mexico, a request that led to a rare royal snub ahead of her inauguration.

The holiday is recognized across Latin America. But it has taken on different names, including in Argentina, where it was changed by a 2010 presidential decree from Day of the Race, a nod to Spanish culture, to Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity.

In the United States, Columbus Day, observed on Monday (October 14, 2024) this year, remains a national holiday. President Joe Biden also commemorated the day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in a proclamation in 2021.

The holiday in Venezuela has been called the Day of Indigenous Resistance for the past couple of decades. On Saturday (October 12, 2024) embattled President Nicolas Maduro accused Mr. Milei of seeking to rewrite history.

“Did you see what he published?” Mr. Maduro scoffed, referring to Milei’s post.

“Remembering Oct. 12 as the great day when they civilized us,” he said. “They want to impose their false narrative.”

Mexico’s Senate.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Mexico’s Senate voted early Wednesday (September 11, 2024) to overhaul the country’s judiciary, clearing the biggest hurdle for a controversial constitutional revision that will make all judges stand for election, a change that critics fear will politicize the judicial branch and threaten Mexico’s democracy.

The approval came in two votes after hundreds of protesters pushed their way into the Senate on Tuesday (September 10, 2024), interrupting the session after it appeared that Morena, the governing party of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had lined up the necessary votes to pass the proposal.

The legislation sailed through the lower chamber, where Morena and its allies hold a supermajority, last week. Approval by the Senate posed the biggest obstacle and required defections from opposition parties.

One came Tuesday from the conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN) after a lawmaker who had previously spoken out against the overhaul took leave for medical reasons and his father, a former governor, suggested he would vote for the proposal. The lawmaker ended up returning to his seat to give the proposal the last vote it needed.

Both of the Senate votes were 86-41, with the second result coming around 4 a.m. The chamber erupted into cheers and chants of “Yes, we could!”

The legislation must now be ratified by the legislatures of at least 17 of Mexico’s 32 States. The governing party is believed to have the necessary support after major gains in recent elections. Oaxaca’s legislature became the first to ratify it just hours after the Senate’s approval.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, congratulated lawmakers on passing the overhaul.

The election of judges “will strengthen the delivery of justice in our country,” Ms. Sheinbaum wrote on the social media platform X. “The regime of corruption and privileges each day is being left farther in the past and a true democracy and true rule of law are being built.”

On Tuesday evening, just hours after the governing party appeared to have wrangled the votes it needed, protesters with pipes and chains broke into the Senate chamber. At least one person fainted.

The protesters said lawmakers were not listening to their demands.

“The judiciary isn’t going to fall,” yelled the protesters, waving Mexican flags and signs opposing the overhaul. They were joined by a number of opposition senators as they chanted in the chamber. Others outside roared when newscasters announced the Senate was taking a recess.

Among them was Alejandro Navarrete, a 30-year-old judicial worker, who said that people like him working in the courts “knowing the danger the reform represents” came to call on the Senate to strike down the proposal.

“They have decided to sell out the nation and sell out for political capital they were offered. We felt obligated to enter the Senate,” he said, carrying a Mexican flag. “Our intention is not violent, we didn’t intend to hurt them, but we intend to make it clear that the Mexican people won’t allow them to lead us into a dictatorship.”

But a short time later the Senate reconvened in another location and resumed debate on the proposal. An initial vote in favor came shortly after midnight.

The approval came after weeks of protests by judicial employees and law students.

Critics and observers say the plan, under which all judges would be elected, could threaten judicial independence and undermine the system of checks and balances.

López Obrador, a populist long averse to independent regulatory bodies who has ignored courts and attacked judges, says the plan would crack down on corruption by making it easier to punish judges. Critics say it would handicap the judiciary, stack courts with judges favoring the president’s party, allow anyone with a law degree to become a judge and even make it easier for politicians and criminals to influence courts.

It has spooked investors and prompted U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar to call it a “risk” to democracy and an economic threat.