Mexican President Apologizes for 1911 Massacre of over 300 Chinese
19 May 2021
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador traveled Monday to Torreón to ask for forgiveness for the May 1911 slaughter of over 300 Chinese by revolutionary troops and thousands of locals in the northern Mexican city, reportedly fired up by racist slurs.
The apology is part of a year-long series of ceremonies during which the president, known as AMLO, has sought to make amends for some of the darker chapters in Mexico’s history, namely the mistreatment of indigenous and minority people in past centuries.
AMLO declared the point of the apology was to ensure “that this never, ever happens again,” acknowledging that during the period, Chinese were mutilated or hung from telegraph poles, the Associated Press (AP) reported Monday.
In Torreón that silence is still so absolute that no monuments mark the massacre, which killed half the city’s Chinese population at the time.
A commemorative plaque was swiftly stolen. A statue erected in a public park in 2007 was vandalized and later removed, but will be restored to a public plaza for the commemoration.
Victims of the massacre were buried in common graves, including one which is now covered by a roadway and small playground.
“Local historians considered this just an anecdote: ‘One day in Torreón they killed some Chinese people’,” said Castañón, who has combed through archives in an attempt to learn more details of the massacre, including the victims’ names.