Following in the footsteps of his brother Manuel and so many other Spanish emigrants of the time,
a beardless José Obrador
boarded a ship in Santander to begin the journey of his life.
He left behind his native Ampuero, in Cantabria, taking with him few belongings and a one-way ticket to
a completely unknown destination
.
He was 14 years old and probably never imagined that, almost 100 years after crossing
the pond
, one of his grandsons, Andrés Manuel, was going to become the most voted president in the history of Mexico and one of the most hostile leaders towards Spain. .
Nor that his most advantageous descendant would be able to
claim a "pardon" from the Spanish crown
for the abuses committed during the Conquest or that he was going to strain bilateral relations to the point of requesting "a pause" this week.
López Obrador is a confessed lover of History.
He regularly calls on her in her public speeches, conveying great patriotic fervour.
What is really new, at least since he became president, is
his critical reading of the Conquest of America
and the Spanish colonial past.
Before coming to power, he never had a problem showing off his origins:
"I am a mestizo and with pride,"
he assured during the recording of the documentary
This I am.
The last time AMLO claimed his Spanish roots was in September 2017, when he had already become president-elect, when he decided to retrace the steps of his grandfather José and get to know Ampuero.
The same day that López Obrador landed in Spain, Mexico suffered the most powerful earthquake in almost a century that caused a hundred deaths.
The fatal coincidence did not prevent the future president of Mexico from enjoying the experience of
visiting Cantabria with Miguel Ángel Revilla
as host.
The two immediately hit it off and AMLO ended up inviting the Cantabrian leader to La Chingada, his farm in Tabasco, to spend the last days with him before assuming the Presidency.
Touring the leafy mountains of the Marismas de Santoña National Park, López Obrador confirmed that his grandfather was right:
"He told us that it was the greenest land in the world
". The Mexican president acknowledged that it was "very emotional" to walk through the streets of Ampuero, where he visited the house that José Obrador abandoned almost a century before.
The president of Mexico was very close to his grandfather José.
it was he who taught him to count and with whom he spent a good part of his vacations.FAMILY ALBUM
The grandfather of the Mexican president was the second of the 11 children that Esteban Obrador, a railway employee, and his wife, Felipa Revuelta, had had.
Five of the offspring would end up emigrating to America.
José Obrador was born on March 11, 1893 in a Civil Guard barracks house in Ampuero.
Around 1916, he decided to follow in the footsteps of his brother Manuel de el and
pack his bags to avoid an almost certain call-up
after coming of age.
He sailed from the port of Santander aboard a steamship belonging to the Compañía Transatlántica Española and, as journalist Blanca Gómez revealed in her book ¿And who is AMLO?, he had to hide inside a barrel because
"he had false documentation" .
President Sánchez's visit to Mexico during which he gave López Obrador a copy of his grandfather's birth certificate
The trip lasted at least 20 days and the first destination was Matanzas, in Cuba, where José had to earn a living for months by working as a street sweeper and
shop assistant
.
Already in 1917, he had the necessary savings to travel to Veracruz, where his older brother, Manuel, worked as a salesman in a fabric store.
They would soon be joined by a third brother, Felix.
Esteban and Felipa's three children arrived in Mexico at a transcendental moment in its history, coinciding with the end of the Mexican Revolution and the approval of the Constitution.
The country was exhausted after seven years of internal conflict, and the arrival of
democracy represented an unbeatable opportunity
to prosper far from the Old Continent, devastated by the First World War.
The three brothers decided to settle 550 kilometers to the west of Veracruz, in Frontera, a coastal town through which
Hernán Cortés passed on his first foray into Mexico.
There, Manuel, José and Félix opened a clothing and grocery store called El Palacio and definitively settled their lives.
López Obrador's grandfather married
Úrsula Gertrudis
, adding even more Spanish genes to the Mexican president's DNA: Úrsula's father and AMLO's great-grandfather, José González Viñas, was an Asturian emigrant who is only known to have left Spain in the XIX century.
COMMON ANCESTORS
The brothers had to leave Frontera in a hurry in the mid-thirties.
In those times, the governor of Tabasco, Tomás Garrido, promoted a campaign against the Church and found
strong opposition in the Obradors, fervent Catholics
.
José was even imprisoned for defending his principles, showing that the political commitment of the current Mexican president is due in part to his Cantabrian ancestors.
José and Úrsula chose to move to Tepetitán, a small Tabasco village
located in a jungle region full of rivers.
Of the six children they had, only the youngest, Manuela, decided to stay with them.
According to López Obrador, her mother, Manuelita, as he liked to call her, "boarded
a canoe through the streams and lagoons and sold merchandise on all the shores
, sometimes she would go for a week or even 10 days."
On one of those journeys, Manuela met Ramón López, a seismological company worker who gave up everything to marry her, on October 30, 1952,
in a makeshift straw chapel in humble Tepetitán.
Copy of the birth certificate of grandfather José, used by President Sánchez to ingratiate himself with AMLO, knowing of his great devotion to his grandfather.
The López Obrador couple opened a fabric store and created a large family.
They had seven children, although one of them would tragically die before his time.
In an accident similar to the one experienced by the emeritus king, Jose Ramón died while handling
a pistol that went off and seriously injured him
.
His brother Andrés was the only witness, both were 15 and 14 years old and were inside the family store Novedades Andrés.
It was a very hard blow,
to the point that they sold everything and moved to Villahermosa.
López Obrador's maternal grandparents are buried in the Central Pantheon of Tepetitán.
AMLO himself confirmed it in 2020, while
flying over the areas affected by the floods,
among which was his town.
Knowing the devotion he felt for his Cantabrian grandfather, Pedro Sánchez wanted to have a detail with him during his visit to Mexico: give him
a copy of José Obrador's birth certificate
.
The Spanish president was the first foreign leader to meet with López Obrador since he took office, a declaration of intent that he accompanied with a detail about his Spanish ancestors.
The Mexican leader's reply came in the form of a letter, but it was addressed to Felipe VI and in it he demanded
a "pardon" for acts committed 500 years ago by common ancestors.
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