Above: President Higgins receives key to Mexico City from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto
In a diverse keynote address in Mexico’s department of Foreign Affairs, President Higgins illuminated a number of little-known links between Ireland and Mexico throughout the last few centuries.
Speaking in fluent Spanish and English and at times quoting in Irish, Mr. Higgins celebrated 17th century Irish freedom fighter Guillem de Lamport; born in Wexford in 1616, who lived “an adventurous life” in Spain and eventually Mexico, and then died “at the hands of the inquisition here in Mexico City 1659”
“And though sentenced for heresy he real crime being to author the first declaration of independence in what was then the Spanish Indies”.
Civil rights
Mr Higgins praised this early attempt at a civil right charter, acknowledged also by the Mexican state which honoured de Lamport at the column of independence in Mexico City.
“It was a remarkable document that promised: land reform, racial equality, equal of opportunity and a democratically elected monarch”.
“All of this a whole century before the French Revolution”.
Strong Irish links
The President spoke about the strong Irish thread that is “visible so visible of many fateful moments” in Mexican history.
“Exiles and immigrants: the Wild Geese who perhaps fled Ireland after military defeat in the 17th century wars of conquest and religion, who went to find new lives in what was then ‘new Spain’”.
He lamented the Irish and Mexican experience with colonisation yet praised the peoples of both countries for ‘sufficiently adapting’.
“The people of Ireland – the country of which the language of English was imposed – in a very short period and as a result of colonisation was sufficiently resilient and adaptive that they used that imposition to release the creative genius among a gallery of writers – 4 Nobel laureates in 50 years: Seamus Heaney, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw and William Butler Yeats”
“And that is one of the most interesting parallels with Latin America – the masks that we have had to put on, to seemingly entertain the coloniser but to write at 3 or 4 higher levels so that you can appear to give deference but you can also mock and encourage subversion”
Unemployment - "The Greatest Challenge of All"
Moving on to more current traditions, president Higgins referred to the less auspicious migrant culture that both countries share, remarking that both communities are proud of and “feel a great sense of solidarity” with their migrants.
“Our exiles and our migrants and those who had to learn another language have been modernising for years again and again”.
Speaking of Ireland’s current status, he reinstated his commitment to the European project. “We in Ireland are old Europeans. We joined the European Union and are proud members of that. We take our European Union responsibilities very seriously”.
On the widespread issue of youth unemployment which he noted as “the greatest challenge of all”, he said the European Union was now tackling this but admitted that emigration will still remain an only option for young people, whom he gave this advice:
“The greatest single problem is the echo of the loneliness of the world that is coming; students must discover the importance of caring for each other. They must take up Aristotle’s advice to his son when he said, ‘the ethics of friendship are more important than the ethics of justice; one can be measured the other knows no end.
When you go abroad, you need these supports; friendships are important; they are the things at the end of the day that will fill your life.”
Finishing to a rapturous applause “We are not in this world to scratch out an existence at the dictates of others; but to love others and to be involved with them”.
