<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, announced this Monday that his Government will present a claim to Spain to “answer for the theft and looting of our lands” and for “the historical crimes committed during slavery.”</strong></h4> “Venezuela wants, together with a group of Latin American countries, to make a profound claim for Spain to pay reparations for the theft, the plundering of our lands and the slavery and suffering suffered by our indigenous and African grandparents,” declared the Venezuelan president in his television program Con Maduro+. “The people seek justice and recognition for the horrors of the past and it represents a joint effort by the Caribbean nations to obtain reparations for the historical crimes committed during slavery,” he continued. Maduro made these statements following a lawsuit filed this week by fifteen Caribbean governments to request the United Kingdom to pay billions of pounds as compensation for the slave trade. For this reason, the Venezuelan president expressed during the interview his support for this demand. “All the Caribbean countries are our friends. We love each other, we love each other deeply,” he said. “We support the Caribbean in its struggle and demand that London recognise and pay the historical reparations to which the people who are heirs of the slaves brought by force through torture and kidnapping from Africa are entitled,” he added. On October 12, Nicolás Maduro harshly criticised the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Day in Spain. “For all of America, especially for our America, October 12 is the day that genocide, extermination, slavery, colonialism began. It is not a day to celebrate, not the Day of Spain, nor the day of anything. It is the day of blood, of death, of slavery,” he declared. Maduro's latest words come after Mexico's president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, excluded King Felipe VI from the list of guests to her inauguration for not having responded to a letter from her predecessor, Andrés López Obrador, in which he was urged to apologize for the Spanish conquest and to agree and draft, between the two countries, "a shared, public and socialized account of their common history in order to begin a new stage in our relations." In response to this decision, Pedro Sánchez's government described the King's exclusion as "unacceptable" and announced its decision "not to participate in said inauguration at any level." The inauguration took place on October 1. The King usually represents Spain at the inaugurations of Ibero-American presidents. In March 2019, Andrés Manuel López Obrador revealed that on the first day of that month he had sent a letter to King Felipe VI in which he proposed that the two countries create a roadmap so that “the Kingdom of Spain expresses in a public and official manner the recognition of the grievances caused” during the conquest of Mexico against the “indigenous peoples.” The Spanish Government “firmly” rejected the content of that letter.
