{"id":63239,"date":"2015-07-01T01:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=63239"},"modified":"2015-07-30T20:52:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T02:52:21","slug":"lets-put-onate-in-a-museum-with-the-confederate-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2015\/07\/lets-put-onate-in-a-museum-with-the-confederate-flag\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s put O\u00f1ate in a museum with the Confederate flag"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:<\/strong> While Americans debated whether the Confederate flag belongs atop a statehouse or in a museum last week, I pondered another controversial symbol.<\/p>\n

In El Paso, Texas, I drove past a massive statue<\/a> of Spanish conquistador Don Juan de O\u00f1ate atop his horse. O\u00f1ate greets airport visitors holding the 1598 document proclaiming that Spain was taking possession of this region.<\/p>\n

\"Heath

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

Two outside cultures conquered our area \u2013 first the Spanish, later the Americans. Both committed unconscionable atrocities against Native Americans, who are still feeling the effects.<\/p>\n

For example, the Navajo Nation\u2019s poverty rate, 43 percent<\/a>, dwarfs New Mexico\u2019s rate of 20.4 percent. New Mexico\u2019s Native youth die by suicide at a rate at least twice as high as others<\/a>. Native people nationwide are more likely to be killed by police<\/a> than others, including blacks.<\/p>\n

O\u00f1ate<\/a>, who ushered in this region\u2019s era of conquest, was especially brutal. His army slaughtered hundreds of people at Acoma Pueblo in 1599<\/a> after a skirmish left about a dozen Spaniards dead, including his nephew.<\/p>\n

The Spaniards cut the right feet off surviving men 25 and over. They enslaved many women.<\/p>\n

More recently, so-called peonage kept some Natives indebted to and essentially owned by Spaniards. The U.S. Congress targeted New Mexico by outlawing peonage in 1867, when an estimated 1,500-3,000 Natives remained in bondage here<\/a>. Still, the practice continued into the 20th Century<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today New Mexico, like El Paso, memorializes O\u00f1ate, who was eventually banished from the New Mexico territory for crimes including using excessive force. For example, public schools in Las Cruces<\/a> and Gallup<\/a> bear his name. A second statue<\/a> stands in Rio Arriba County.<\/p>\n

Espa\u00f1ola celebrates our Spanish heritage with fiestas that include portrayal of O\u00f1ate by a young man<\/a> in ceremonies. The Fiesta Council\u2019s offices are located on Paseo de O\u00f1ate.<\/p>\n

In a conversation on Facebook<\/a>, Chris Kientz, an Eastern Cherokee who grew up in New Mexico, explained the effect on Natives:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis may be a stretch, but imagine you are Jewish. Now imagine you live in a state that has statutes of Hitler and schools named after him, and textbooks etc. that glorify his modernization of Germany and virtually ignore the millions he had killed or enslaved,\u201d Kientz said. \u201cThat’s how it feels to be an American Indian in New Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fiestas aren\u2019t about celebrating O\u00f1ate, said Marlo Martinez of Espa\u00f1ola.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is about paying homage to a culture so rich, so alive, and so important to the history of much of the United States that it deserves to thrive \u2013 and to be known \u2013 even after 500 years,\u201d Martinez wrote on Facebook.<\/p>\n

Statues, schools and roads, a man portraying O\u00f1ate during fiestas. To me, this isn\u2019t equivalent to preserving the Confederate flag in a museum. It\u2019s more like flying the flag atop the statehouse in South Carolina.<\/p>\n

The South is recognizing that the Confederate flag is a barrier to racial healing and societal progress because many see it as a celebration of slavery. Similarly, all of us who have roots in the bicultural conquest of New Mexico need to acknowledge the pain of Native people.<\/p>\n

That includes me. As a kid I joined Santa Fe\u2019s annual celebration<\/a> of Spanish reoccupation after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. My tax dollars \u2013 and yours \u2013 have funded systemic oppression of Natives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We should memorialize O\u00f1ate in museums \u2013 not with statues, school and road names, and fiestas. Spanish culture is vital to our area. Let\u2019s celebrate it, but without glorifying a man who slaughtered Native people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spanish culture is vital to our area. Let\u2019s celebrate it, but without glorifying a man who slaughtered Native people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[709,143],"class_list":["post-63239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-native-americans","tag-race-and-ethnicity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63239","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=63239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}