{"id":64542,"date":"2015-07-07T10:16:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T16:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=64542"},"modified":"2015-07-08T08:22:09","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T14:22:09","slug":"consider-onates-legacy-thoughtfully-and-in-proper-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2015\/07\/consider-onates-legacy-thoughtfully-and-in-proper-context\/","title":{"rendered":"Consider O\u00f1ate’s legacy thoughtfully and in proper context"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Editor’s note: This is in response to Heath Haussamen’s column, “Let’s put O\u00f1ate in a museum with the Confederate flag<\/a>.”)<\/em><\/p>\n

COMMENTARY:<\/strong> I\u2019ve mulled over the legacy of the conquest from time to time, but have never framed that legacy alongside the historical memory of the Confederacy. While on the surface this might seem like a valid and a timely comparison, it doesn\u2019t adequately account for the complexity and the context of these respective eras.<\/p>\n

\"Andy

Courtesy photo<\/p>

Andy Hern\u00e1ndez<\/p><\/div>\n

On the eve of the Civil War, the Southern states were facing an emerging consensus, both in the United States and abroad, that slavery was no longer acceptable. Even within the Confederacy, there were misgivings and outright fractures over the legitimacy of treating other human beings as property.<\/p>\n

Stonewall Jackson couldn\u2019t move beyond the biblical justifications for slavery to embrace abolition, yet he ignored laws forbidding education for slaves, taught Sunday School classes<\/a> so that slaves could learn how to read and study the Bible, and continued to fund those classes once he accepted a commission from the Confederacy. Elsewhere, farmers in Eastern Tennessee<\/a> and German immigrants in the Texas Hill Country<\/a> remained pro-Union and pro-abolition.<\/p>\n

These contradictions and fissures, however, would not steer the Southern states away from secession and the defense of slavery.<\/p>\n

The Spanish tried to learn<\/h3>\n

In the case of Don Juan de O\u00f1ate, I don\u2019t want to try to sum up his life in a paragraph and claim that the question is resolved. The evaluation of O\u00f1ate\u2019s legacy needs to continue in a thoughtful manner. What I would like to do instead is call attention to the events that shaped him and those who came after him.<\/p>\n

O\u00f1ate was acting under a much more defined set of instructions<\/a> than many of the other conquistadores who had preceded him. It was within that framework of greater scrutiny that O\u00f1ate was convicted<\/a> of offenses ranging from unjustly hanging two Natives to the use of excessive force in suppressing the Acoma Revolt \u2014 convictions made possible under a system that had tried to learn from the worst excesses of more than a century of conquests in the Americas.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the reversal of most of these convictions came under this very system. In essence, Spanish colonial society was capable of a degree of self-reflection that we can\u2019t appreciate if we dismiss it as solely a framework for avarice and conquest.<\/p>\n

O\u00f1ate would not be the only royal official from New Mexico to be prosecuted for crimes, though the threat of punishment was not enough to prevent a level of exploitation that, when combined with disease and famine, would ultimately contribute to the Pueblo Revolt.<\/p>\n

When Diego de Vargas reconquered<\/a> New Mexico 12 years later, he did so in strict adherence to the instructions given him, and would further begin to create an environment in which his successors would have a healthy respect for the need for diplomacy and building relationships with the Pueblos<\/a>. They didn\u2019t create a utopia, but with very few exceptions they were able to leave behind a better world than had been bequeathed them.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Po’pay statue in Washington<\/h3>\n

If we judge the past solely in terms of our modern standards, then we\u2019ve done nothing more than create a straw man that can\u2019t offer much of value. It has the same analytical flavor as dismissing our parents as clueless anachronisms instead of seeing that they have their own stories to tell and that we must learn from them.<\/p>\n

Instead, when we\u2019re looking at the Confederacy, or O\u00f1ate, or anything else worth taking the time to study, we must necessarily also understand them within the context of their times.<\/p>\n

In the end, O\u00f1ate does indeed have statues and schools named in his honor. It is Po\u2019pay<\/a>, however, who is one of New Mexico\u2019s two contributions to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol. Interestingly enough, he can count Virginia\u2019s contribution of Robert E. Lee<\/a> and Mississippi\u2019s contribution of Jefferson Davis<\/a> as companions among the notable historical figures immortalized there.<\/p>\n

Andy Hern\u00e1ndez is an associate professor of history at Western New Mexico University. He teaches classes on the borderlands and inter-American relations.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we\u2019re looking at the Confederacy, or O\u00f1ate, or anything else worth taking the time to study, we must necessarily also understand them within the context of their times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[709,143],"class_list":["post-64542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-native-americans","tag-race-and-ethnicity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64542","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=64542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}