Op-Ed: New Mexicans push a Spanish conquistador off his pedestal (via latimesopinion)
On Monday, a 19-year-old Pueblo Native American man named Than Tsídéh jumped up on a pedestal and started dancing. The space had just been vacated by a 3-ton bronze statue of Juan de Oñate, which had stood there for nearly 30 years in the small northern New Mexican town of Alcalde, just outside Espanola.
Furious, Oñate ordered the pueblo destroyed in what became known as the Acoma Massacre; 800 to 1,000 Pueblos died in the siege. The survivors, approximately 500, were put on trial, and Oñate rendered the sentence: All men and women older than 12 would be enslaved for 20 years, and Spanish soldiers were instructed to chop off one foot of every man over 25 years old.In all, 24 men lost one of their feet, condemned to totter on a stump for the remainder of their lives.
County workers remove the statue of Juan de Oñate from its pedestal at the Oñate Monument and Resource Center in Alcalde, N.M.But in the midst of an awakening of the nation’s conscience after the killing of George Floyd on May 25, Oñate’s brutality was once again up for discussion. A petition to remove the Alcalde statue circulated, noting that “Onate perpetuated cruel and inhumane violence against the Pueblos and was prosecuted and exiled by the Spanish for war crimes.
“For the first time in many years, we don’t have to stare at Oñate,” Elena Ortiz, a Red Nation leader, told the Santa Fe New Mexican. “The presence of that statue was an act of violence upon Pueblo people from the moment it was put up and now, finally, it’s gone.”
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