The Two Feet of Oñate
By Patrisia Gonzales & Roberto Rodriguez
© 1998 Universal Press Syndicate

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., April 3, 1998 -- A
guerrilla-style war is being waged over how to
commemorate the 400th anniversary of an
expedition that originated in Zacatecas,
Mexico, and ended in the establishment of a
permanent Spanish settlement in Northern New
Mexico and the colonization of the present-day
Southwest.

The war is not actually about this region, nor
the past. It's about how society constructs
cultural and racial identity, how people
interpret history differently, and how we
choose to honor memory.

In El Paso, Texas, the city is celebrating
"the first Thanksgiving in the United States,"
which occurred there as part of the same 1598
expedition. "We shouldn't glorify the
expedition, but we can't pretend it didn't
happen," said Dennis Bixler-Marquez, director
of Chicano Studies at the University of Texas
at El Paso. "The fact is, they were
colonizers," he said, adding that the city's
real interest is in promoting tourism.
Incidentally, most native peoples have been
celebrating thanksgiving meals for thousands
of years.

Back here in Albuquerque, the newly
established (and perhaps misnamed) Hispanic
Anti-Defamation League wants the city's art
board to approve a statue honoring Juan de
Oñate, leader of the expedition. However, the
league is adamant that it can't include the
history of native peoples, nor the subsequent
racial and cultural mixture that produced
today's "mestizos," or Indo-Hispanos.

Millie Santillanes, Oñate's strongest
champion, stated recently: "This 400th
anniversary is not about diversity or about
inclusion or about being politically correct.
It is to mark the arrival of Don Juan de Oñate
and his 500 colonizers."

In response, many people are insisting that if
it goes up, that it shouldn't be done at
taxpayer's expense and that it include the
truth about Oñate's role in the killing of
hundreds of Acoma Pueblo Indians. Oñate
ordered that all Acoma men over 25 years old
have their right foot cut off and had women
and children enslaved. As a reminder, native
people recently cut off a foot from the Oñate
statue in Alcalde, N.M. Though the statue was
repaired, educator Sofia Martinez said the
foot should have stayed off. "It would have
caused people to ask why it's missing," she
said.

Santillanes replied that the atrocities
happened during times of war.

Erwin Parra, a member of the Catholic Church's
400-year commemoration committee, said he's
not sure what point of view the Hispanic
Anti-Defamation League is representing. "The
church has asked for reconciliation and
healing." This isn't conciliatory, he said.
The members of the new league "seem to want to
be the conquistadores of the 21st century."

This conflict -- which has reverberated
nationally and internationally -- has been
mischaracterized as a "Native-Hispanic"
controversy. At least a dozen multiracial
organizations have repudiated the politics of
exclusion and have emphasized that the league
represents only its own members. Many people
have suggested honoring the families that came
rather than focusing on one man.

In addition, Susan Seligman, director of the
New Mexico Anti-Defamation League, told the
new league in Albuquerque that it cannot use
the name and that the actual Anti-Defamation
League does not support policies of exclusion.
Further, she said, "the quadricentennial does
not belong to one group or another, but to all
of us."

Santana Titla, who is an Acoma Pueblo Indian
with the Petroglyph Monument Protection
Coalition here, stated that native peoples are
not opposed to the commemoration. "They have a
right to celebrate," she said. What she's
opposed to is using taxes to erect this
statue, particularly at Albuquerque's Tiguex
Park. "It's hurtful to exclude our history."

Cecilia Aragon, director of La Casa Teatro,
argues that to create an exclusionary statue
is antithetical to the concept of public art.
"Public art has to be truthful, and it can't
be used to promote a private, political
agenda," she said.

This conflict is virtually a replay of the
Columbus controversy of 1992. While some want
to honor the memory of conquistadores such as
Cortez, Pizarro and Oñate -- for introducing
European civilization to the Americas --
indigenous people are repulsed at having to
honor those who brought death, destruction and
slavery. As with the Columbus controversy, the
voices of mestizos are virtually ignored. It
is these voices that have surged forward to
state that to have an exclusionary celebration
is to ignore and negate their existence.

Civil rights leader Vicente Ximenes noted that
different historical perspectives can't be a
reason to poison relations between neighbors,
who throughout the years have struggled
together, sometimes against each other, and
have fallen in love and married each other.

So to promote community healing -- and to set
an example to the world -- we believe that a
day of prayer, reflection and healing
ceremonies among friends, neighbors and people
who disagree with each other is necessary to
begin healing the memories. May the healers
step forward.

Last change: April 3, 1998

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Rodriguez is the author of Justice: A Question
of Race (Cloth ISBN 0-927534-69-X paper ISBN
0-927534-68-1 Bilingual Review Press) and The
X in La Raza II. Both are the authors of
Gonzales/Rodriguez: Uncut & Uncensored (ISBN
0-918520-22-3 UC Berkeley, Ethnic Studies
Library). Rodriguez/Gonzales can be reached at
XColumn@aol.com

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