La Jornada: They cancel the Paseo del Pendón, parade that commemorates the Conquest

The Paseo del Pendón, a commemoration that was born in New Spain to celebrate the Conquest and that resurfaced in 2021 in Mexico City, was canceled for this year, its organizing committee announced.

After The Day published yesterday that far-right groups joined the call, the activities originally planned for August 14 and 15 were suspended.

The promoters of the so-called Paseo del Pendón Cultural Festival explained in a statement that the decision is due to the “climate of polarization and intolerance generated by actors outside the event who apparently seek to distort or appropriate the initiative.”

They highlighted the “strictly cultural, citizen, free, voluntary, self-managed character and the total political independence of the festival and distances itself from any attempt at censorship and manipulation.”

However, in 2021, when the 500 years of the Mexico-Tenochtitlan resistance were commemorated, this parade, which had not been held for 200 years, was re-presented through the streets of the Historic Center. In videos that circulate about these processions, only about twenty participants are shown.

Carlos Cervantes Godoy, general coordinator of the Historic Center Authority (ACH), told The Day that the department in charge does not have any request or notification of the next edition of this Walk, nor of those that were carried out in recent years.

He reported that to carry out an activity like this, authorization from the capital’s Government Secretariat is required and, if it occurs in the Historic Center, the ACH must also be notified so that that body gives approval and coordinates “the authorities responsible for accompanying and caring for” the parade.

He argued that they published the invitation to Paseo del Pendón on their social media billboard “as support for cultural activities,” the same thing they do with others sent to them by museums, theaters, etc. “When we learned what this was about and, above all, that it was generating some controversy, we decided to lower the publication of our ACH digital networks until the issue was clarified.”

He stressed that “although we have our own vision, and it is the one that the Head of Government, Clara Brugada, has maintained regarding this issue, we are respectful of any political or religious expression or position, as long as it is carried out in a scenario of order.”

Two of the far-right organizations that joined the call are the National Sinarquista Union and the Círculo Tradicionalista Celedonio de Jarauta. Linked to the latter, the “Catholic-Monarchist” newspaper Hope At the time it spread chronicles of the previous editions of the Paseo del Pendón.

In 2022, that Spanish media presented its position regarding the history of Mexico: “last Saturday, August 13, the 501 years of Hispanidad and, therefore, of the arrival of Christianity to our Homeland were celebrated with all pomp.”

Then they boasted that “neither modernism with its lackey clericalist stance, nor the black legend proposed by the government in power or the nostalgic folkloric ravings of others prevented the good spirits of those gathered at an hour before midnight outside the City Hall Palace.”

The same media, regarding the 2024 procession, reported that a rosary was prayed that included “five intentions of restoration”, among which is that of returning to “the authentic traditional monarchy, legitimate in origin and exercise.”

The above contrasts with the research of the historian María José Garrido, who explained to The Day that the viceregal Paseo del Pendón “commemorates the Conquest of Mexico City, with which colonial society was founded, but it is the only festival of the time in which the religious authorities did not participate. The town hall is the one that stood out in this celebration. The archbishop or any cleric did not attend. It was civic.”