Mexico City.- The President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, proposed this Sunday to change the name of the historic Paso de Cortés, located between the Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl volcanoes (in the center of the country), to “Paso de los Pueblos Indígenas” (Pass of the Indigenous Peoples), within the framework of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
“Today I propose that we stop calling this territory Paso de Cortés, because the (indigenous) peoples passed through here long before,” said Sheinbaum.
During a public event in the state of Puebla, Sheinbaum recalled that Hernán Cortés crossed that pass on his way to Tenochtitlan after the Cholula massacre, which occurred in 1519, almost two years before the fall of the Aztec capital and the consummation of the conquest in 1521.
“Let’s call this step the Indigenous Peoples’ Step,” remarked the Mexican president.
The proposal joins a series of actions by the Mexican government to vindicate the memory of indigenous communities and review some symbols of the Spanish conquest.
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In 2023, the then-president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), urged leaving behind the popular name “Sea of Cortez” to call it the “Gulf of California,” in the Pacific Ocean.
The reclamation of the memory of indigenous communities
In 2021, when she was Head of Government of Mexico City, Sheinbaum promoted the renaming of Puente de Alvarado Avenue to Calzada México-Tenochtitlan and supported the renaming of the Plaza and the Tree of the Sad Night (Noche Triste) to the Victorious Night (Noche Victoriosa), in recognition of indigenous resistance against what the Spanish invasion signified.
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Already as president, Sheinbaum has maintained the vindication of the historical memory of indigenous peoples in the face of the conquest.
In 2024, the head of state maintained that October 12 should not be commemorated as the Day of the Race or Hispanic Day, but rather as a date of indigenous resistance, and stated that the arrival of the Spanish meant the subjugation and even the elimination of native communities.
In February 2025, the president reiterated that Spain should apologize for the “atrocities” committed during the conquest and linked that historical revision to the need to eradicate the racism that, as she stated, persists since the colonial era.
Although more recently, in June 2026, Sheinbaum received King Felipe VI in Mexico, in a meeting that marked a new step in the normalization of the bilateral relationship, after several years of diplomatic tensions following the request made by the Mexican government in 2019 for the Spanish Crown to offer apologies for the grievances committed during the conquest.
