Politicians say the darndest things

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc / LMMiami.com

• We have a callous tabloid & trash TV star prone to twitter tirades in the White House and a 30something clueless hipsteress with socialist messianic delusions in the House of Representatives.
• So how are things south of the border?
• Not good.
• Last week, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the possibly senile president of the great nation of México, urged both the king of Spain and the pope to apologize to the indigenous peoples [of México] for their colonialist past.
• Talk about cheap demagoguery.
• Judging the past with the criteria of the present is a usual sign of a lackluster intellect attempting facile manipulation.
• Plus, pointing fingers at an external foe is a usual tactic politicians resort to when they are screwing up and they need a decoy to change the subject.
• It is also a great way to exorcise the ordeal of a society’s own collective failures.
• Said accusation, however, is not new: the Latin American left has been whining for decades, if not centuries, over this issue.
• The premise: the new world was a Shangri-la of pastoral harmony, milk and honey until them damned Spaniards invaded.
• LOL
• This is so not true.
• It is so not true it is laughable.
• See, apart from being mighty advanced in architecture, astronomy and agriculture -demonstrably more so than their contemporary Europeans- the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas were also fiercely adept at building bloody expansionist empires.
• When the Spaniards arrived, the aforementioned civilizations had been oppressing, enslaving, looting, maiming, beheading and raping smaller, weaker peoples and tribes for centuries.
• It just so happened that one day, a handful of ships arrived from yonder the horizon carrying a bunch of shabby, hungry, greedy euros.
• Who happened to have horses, better weapons and better warfare tactics.
• Am I defending or justifying the Eurotrash behavior?
• Hell no.
• Humanity is one evil, vicious species.
• I’m a just saying that the supposedly innocent Aztecs, Mayans and Incas were not as innocent as some lefty historians would want us to believe.
• Moreover, in many instances, the Spaniards received support from local tribes that hated their homegrown bullies.
• In short: they had it coming.
• They got a dose of their own medicine.
• As we say in Spanish: ladrón que roba a ladrón tiene cien años de perdón.
• Why is this a relevant matter in a publication for Hispanic marketers and advertisers, you might ask?
• See, this litany of the evil Spaniard oppressor versus the innocent indigenous oppressed permeates EVERYTHING in Hispanic culture.
• It affects the labor market and the dating scene.
• It is reflected in the storylines and the cast of movies, TV shows and commercials.
• It influences commerce, politics, fashion, cuisine, science, education, medicine.
• It is both a childhood trauma and cultural neurosis.
• It is THE narrative of Latin American life.
• Plus, strictly from a marketing perspective, the decoy-to-change-the-narrative tactic is a textbook political maneuver which, in my humble opinion, we will start witnessing more and more in the marketing world.
• It is the natural next step of the “purpose-driven brand” trend.
• “My product is crap and my sales are down but, hey, the dude who founded the company that makes a better, cheaper product than mine shares his last name with a conquistador who exploited indigenous peoples in the 17th century!”
• Anyhoo.
• Should you want to have a laugh (or get depressed over the level of petty imbecility displayed by our political leaders) click here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/03/26/mexicos-president-wants-spain-apologize-conquistadors-almost-exactly-years-later/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.361c82bbba53
• BTW, this just in.
• AMLO (as many Mexicans call their president Andrés Manuel López Obrador) is the gift that keeps on giving: in another speech last week he said that the poor are like “pets” who should be duly fed by “their master, the government”.
• I kid you not.
• Google it.