By Stephen Gibbs
BBC News, Mexico City
**The Mexican government has been criticised for distributing a history textbook to primary schools which makes no mention of the Spanish conquest.**The chronology of the text neatly avoids the issue by ending before the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s.
Some opposition figures have seized on what they see as a calculated omission.
The arrival of the conquistadors resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people and the colonisation of Mexico.
On the day 25 million children in Mexico start the new school term, the government has found itself in the middle of a controversy it apparently did not see coming.
The new history textbook, published and distributed free by the education ministry, omits what historians agree was one of the most important events in the country’s history.
Some opposition politicians have accused the conservative government of President Felipe Calderon of deliberately discouraging a critical analysis of the conquest.
The government is even accused of being closer to the Spanish conquerors than to Mexico’s indigenous population.
But the country’s education secretary says that such criticism is misinformed.
The issue of the conquest, he says, will and should be studied in depth by secondary school pupils.
The ministry, he adds, is still working on a textbook which will address the topic.