{"id":408863,"date":"2017-08-18T12:02:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T18:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=408863"},"modified":"2017-08-21T06:58:40","modified_gmt":"2017-08-21T12:58:40","slug":"we-must-face-the-truth-about-spanish-colonization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/08\/we-must-face-the-truth-about-spanish-colonization\/","title":{"rendered":"We must face the truth about Spanish colonization"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>New Mexico\u2019s deep wounds were exposed last year when protesters disrupted the annual re-enactment of Spanish conquistador Don Diego de Vargas\u2019 retaking of Santa Fe in 1692.<\/p>\n

\"Heath

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cSlay! Slay! Slay like Po\u2019Pay!\u201d protesters chanted, according to The Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a>. Ohkay Owingeh\u2019s Po\u2019Pay led the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, when Native Americans kicked the colonizing Spaniards out of New Mexico.<\/p>\n

The Spanish returned from El Paso, Texas 12 years later and seized Santa Fe. To this day, the annual Entrada<\/em> celebration calls that event peaceful<\/a>. That\u2019s a lie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s protest elicited dismissive responses from some. \u201cYou\u2019re lucky that what happened back East didn\u2019t happen here,\u201d Leroy Vigil was quoted by The New Mexican as saying. \u201cWe took your gold, and we gave you religion, and we took your women. That\u2019s why you\u2019re Vigil and Martinez and Gonzales and Gallegos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vigil\u2019s adult daughter Jamie was quoted as saying Native Americans could change their names if they wanted.<\/p>\n

The protest came from \u201coutside people,\u201d Gloria Mendoza alleged. She pointed to Natives selling jewelry nearby and said they weren\u2019t protesting.<\/p>\n

That image \u2013 of Natives selling jewelry on the sidewalk, an attraction to draw tourists into others\u2019 stores on the Santa Fe plaza \u2013 is evidence that colonization still impacts Native people today.<\/p>\n

My Montes ancestors were among the Spanish colonizers. They came from Zacatecas three years after de Vargas retook Santa Fe to help solidify Spanish presence in northern New Mexico.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of the words<\/a> of James Baldwin, a prophet during the civil rights era, writing about racism against black people: \u201cI have always been struck, in America, by an emotional poverty so bottomless, and a terror of human life, of human touch, so deep that virtually no American appears able to achieve any viable, organic connection between his public stance and his private life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026If Americans were not so terrified of their private selves, they were never have become so dependent on what they call the \u2018Negro problem,\u2019 \u201d Baldwin wrote. \u201cThis problem, which they invented in order to safeguard their purity, has made of them criminals and monsters, and it is destroying them.\u201d He blamed \u201cthe role of a guilty and constricted white imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cemotional poverty\u201d Baldwin described plagues our region today. Natives should be glad Spaniards got to them before Americans? They can change their names if they don\u2019t like it? These deflections are symptoms of guilt that has been buried over generations so people can sleep at night.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s encouraging to see New Mexicans peacefully demonstrating<\/a> in response to the recent racism and violence at the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Virginia, and to see the City of El Paso removing Confederate general Robert E. Lee\u2019s name from landmarks<\/a>. That helps address pain caused by America\u2019s history of racism.<\/p>\n

But our region\u2019s pain predates America. What about statues celebrating Spanish conquistador Don Juan de O\u00f1ate<\/a> forcefully taking this land in 1598? There\u2019s one at the El Paso International Airport<\/a> and another in Rio Arriba County<\/a>. Celebration of Spanish colonization surrounds us.<\/p>\n

Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales, who portrayed de Vargas in the 1989 Entrada<\/em>, says<\/a> it\u2019s time \u201cto have an honest narrative of what happened in 1692.\u201d He has not called for an end of the celebration.<\/p>\n

Honesty isn\u2019t enough. We, the descendants of colonizers, need to let ourselves feel Native Americans\u2019 pain \u2013 and our own. With Santa Fe\u2019s Entrada<\/em> coming up next month<\/a>, it\u2019s time to face the truth and find a way to respect our brutal history without glorifying it.<\/p>\n

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Heath Haussamen<\/a>\u00a0is NMPolitics.net\u2019s editor and publisher. Agree with his opinion? Disagree? We welcome your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Santa Fe\u2019s Entrada coming up next month, it\u2019s time to face the truth and find a way to respect our brutal history without glorifying it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":383420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[143,179],"class_list":["post-408863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-santa-fe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}