Manuel Roberto and Fernando Farías Laguna were high-ranking officers in the Mexican Navy. Although they were brothers, within the Navy, they were referred to as “Los Primos” — The Cousins. This was perhaps because they were nephews by marriage of Rafael Ojeda Durán, who served as secretary of the navy under former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Their connection to such a powerful figure helped propel their rapid rise: despite their youth, Manuel Roberto reached the rank of vice admiral and Fernando became a rear admiral.

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At the start of her term, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum gave members of her financial team a copy of the book Mission Economy by the Italian academic Mariana Mazzucato. In it, the author argues that rebuilding capitalism requires considering social benefit and placing the state at the center, as the executor and main investor in innovation, the economy, and the markets. Roberto Lazzeri, chosen by the president to lead relations with the United States, Mexico’s main — and most demanding — trade partner, also received a copy.

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Some of the legacies of former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador are weighing heavily on her successor, and Claudia Sheinbaum has begun to shed some of them. The strained relationship with Spain, with whom Mexico shares strong historical and present-day ties, was one of them. Sheinbaum has gradually shifted toward a conciliatory stance, at the same pace that the European country has abandoned its stubborn refusal to acknowledge any atrocities during the Conquest of the Americas, at the origin of the bilateral tension. The two countries are now experiencing their closest moment in seven years. Sheinbaum has acknowledged the steps taken by Spanish authorities and she has reciprocated: at least for now, the calls for the Spanish monarchy to assume any responsibility for that historical period have ceased. The strategy now is more educational. “It is important that we continue sending many exhibitions, that Mexican anthropologists go to Spain to explain what the great civilizations were like, and that people hear about the arrival of the Spanish,” she said on Monday. Culture restored broken ties, and culture will be the way to deepen understanding.

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