Don Juan de Oñate is one of the early explorers/ conquerers of New Mexico. He was one of the most brutal. Wikipedia:
Today Oñate is known for the 1599 Acoma Massacre. Following a dispute that led to the death of thirteen Spaniards at the hands of the Ácoma, including Oñate’s nephew, Juan de Zaldívar, Oñate ordered a brutal retaliation against Acoma Pueblo. The Pueblo was destroyed. Around 800-1000 Ácoma were killed.
Of the 500 or so survivors, at a trial at Ohkay Owingeh, Oñate sentenced most to twenty years of forced “personal servitude” and additionally mandated that all men over the age of twenty-five have a foot cut off.[3] He was eventually banished from New Mexico and exiled from Mexico City for five years, convicted by the Spanish government of using “excessive force” against the Acoma people.
In the past, Native American protesters have cut off the feet of the statue of Oñate at a state park just outside Española. Today, Rio Arriba County is removing the statue.
Update: A little more to the story. It was this statue that had its foot cut off, though.
Further Update: A man was shot during a protest against an Onate statue in Albuquerque tonight. Surprising amount of detail in this New York Times article.
Open Thread!
Baud
I’m starting to worry about my statues once people realize what I’ve done.
Craigie
Maybe 2020 is feeling guilty, and the second half of the year will be better.
Betty
Cheryl, do you know what group was responsible for putting the statue up and who has wanted to keep it?
Cheryl Rofer
@Betty: I don’t know that history.
sdhays
@Betty: That was my question too. Since even his contemporaries thought he was criminally monstrous (as opposed to “acceptably” monstrous), and his atrocities happened long before that territory was annexed by the US, who thought he was a good subject for a statue?
Was he just “first” and people didn’t bother digging any further before erecting a statue to his “greatness”?
Kelly
At the University of Oregon discussion of the “pioneers in an empty land” and latter KKK role in the state is ongoing.
registerguard.com/news/20200613/activists-topple-pioneer-statues-on-university-of-oregon-campus
BruceFromOhio
Who puts these thing UP? This, and the bridge named for the Jared Dunce Of The Confederacy. Who the heck thinks this stuff is worthy of memorial? I get that history is written by the winners, we clearly need better winners.
Roger Fox
Thanks for this info. I live in another part of the planet and did not know about this story.
jeffreyw
@Baud:
The one I have erected in my back yard will never fall to those who would deny your greatness. Never fear!
RAM
Wrote this two and a half years ago concerning the controversy of traitors’ statues polluting public spaces all over the South. It’s worn pretty well, I think. The idea could be expanded to eliminate the hundreds of homages to traitors, thugs, and murderers all over the country. You’d think it would be the least we could do.
Baud
He seems to have been a local hero to some in the area.
frosty
@Baud: I wouldn’t worry. Once they realize you’ve done nothing they’ll probably put up more statues in your honor for not making anything worse!
Cheryl Rofer
@Baud: There’s a statue of him in Albuquerque too
Mary G
Lots of good news today!
Baud
@frosty:
I like the idea of people looking at my statue and contemplating how much worse things could have been.
Thanks!
MagdaInBlack
@RAM:
Well, I just bookmarked your blog, since I grew up on a farm along the Fox north of Sheridan. Family first arrived in 1853.
Looking forward to reading through your posts. ☺
Raven
thruppence
A quick search:
The Oñate statue was erected in the early ‘90s as part of the County’s Oñate Monument Resource and Visitors’ Center, which, according to the County website, “promotes the Hispanic heritage of the Española Valley and Rio Arriba County.”
from the article: riograndesun.com/news/hundreds-petition-county-to-remove-o-ate-monument/article_2863c708-ab80-11ea-9…
Baud
@Raven:
Ah, so he’s like the Columbus of the Southwest.
Calouste
@sdhays: Yes, there is an argument made by some people that we shouldn’t judge historical figures by the standards of today (that I don’t agree with), but this guy was banished from New Mexico for life for the atrocities he committed. He was terrible even by the standards of his time. The statue btw only went up in 1997 according to Wikipedia.
Btw, I also think the argument that statues shouldn’t be removed because “we don’t want to erase history “ is bullshit. Statues aren’t put up as historical markers, statues are put up in reverence of that person. Stalin is not going to be erased from history no matter how many statues of him have been taken down.
sdhays
This article gives some more information:
Well, he imposed Christianity on the people he murdered, raped, and maimed, and brought wine and pigs while tearing up the landscape. So you take the good with the bad.
ETA: It seems there are several of these, and this article is talking about a different statue. But still interesting.
hueyplong
OT, but even the liberal Rasmussen apparently has Trump down 12 nationally (48-36).
Mary G
Major Major Major Major
Had not heard of him before, but now I have, so, good for NM!
Mary G
@Mary G:
Dems in array!
A Ghost to Most
Cool. What time is the candlelight vigil?
Cheryl Rofer
I am more excited and pleased about this than I thought I would be. I was talking about this to a friend a few nights ago.
trollhattan
I’d celebrate with some carne adobada if only some place around here did it Santa Fe style. {sadface}
Geoboy
@Calouste: Trevor Noah had a nice piece the other day about the “If you remove statues you erase history” thing. He pointed out that the bubonic plague was a major historical event, but we don’t raise statues of giant rats all over the place.
Kent
More like the Cortez of the Southwest.
trollhattan
O/T Golden State killer may plead guilty to 88(!) charges later this month.
If so, that will preclude what would be the county’s largest, longest, most complex and expensive trial.
Kay
I saw a temperature check come back “high” today on the way into court for a mediation. I have wondered what happens when it comes back high, because for a while in this same court judge was asking the Ohio “list of questions’ and one honest person answered that she had treated a Covid patient (nurse) and we all just looked at one another and carried on. We didn’t anticipate a “yes”! :)
Anyhoo! If it comes back high you can’t go to mediation that day, is the answer. I think it’s important that we not treat the temperature checks as themselves preventing anything. You have to bring the hammer down or it’s all theater.
Emma from FL
I can’t even imagine how bad he must have been that the Spanish government of the day, which had all the sensitivity and kindness of a komodo dragon with a sore tooth, ended up kicking him out.
Baud
@Mary G: I just wish Biden were more inspirational.
sdhays
@Kay: Are masks mandatory/allowed?
MagdaInBlack
@Geoboy:
White folks worrying about erasing history is pretty silly, considering the only history I was ever taught was white history.
Was not til college (at the ripe age of 35) that I had “African American” ( as they called it then) history options. And oh boy, did I learn a lot.
Kay
Interesting how some people get such extraordinary protections in their workplace, isn’t it?
Special safety rules for Donald Trump and his wealthy donors. Duh. They’re better than you!
cmorenc
Native southerner here (NC). I get that monuments to figures from the Confederacy are an abrasively irritating symbol to many people of color, both for the core Confederate cause of maintaining enslavement of their ancestors, and the fact that many of them were created not soon after the Civil War, but a few decades later roughly contemporaneously with the establishment of Jim Crow segregation. That can be reason enough for rethinking and removing them.
HOWEVER, another significant part of the reasoning for removal seems to be that their continued presence reinforces bigoted attitudes among white southerners. For the overwhelming majority of whites, the symbolic weight of the Confederate monuments is negligible on their racial attitudes. To the extent they stimulated any thought at all, they were regarded as nothing more than interesting relics of long-bygone history receding into obscurity, which receive almost no attention beyond being familiar background objects on the courthouse lawn. The only whites to which they have contemporary symbolic resonance are the small (and diminishing) fraction of “Sons of the Confederacy” types who will continue to be just as stubbornly bigoted (but more determinedly enraged) by their removal.
If we’re going to insist on removal the statutes – do so for the right reason, because to people of color, they symbolize a time when their oppression was celebrated. But not because their removal will have any meaningful effect on racial attitudes of the overwhelmingly vast majority of whites, whether for better or worse. But you will provoke resentment some among many whites who are otherwise well along the path to non-bigoted racial attitudes and who had heretofore given the monuments scant attention, simply because it’s a forced change from the familiar in the interest of pure political correctness (in their eyes). Bottom line: removal of the statues will have some counter-productive effects on racial normalization among many southern whites, hopefully very temporary – nonetheless perhaps worthwhile in the interest of removing a profound abrasive irritant to non-whites.
Baud
@Kay: The wealthy donors will be getting physically close to Trump. The rubes will be kept at a distance.
sdhays
@Kay: I’m rather interested to see how they protect old Donny Dump from the ‘rona getting sprayed at him by his adoring hordes. Will he be behind glass, like the Pope Mobile? Or are those rules you quoted actually just to protect the donors, not Preznit Dump himself?
John Revolta
Man! You gotta be some kind of special guy to be “convicted by the Spanish government of using excessive force” against a Native population back then. I don’t remember another instance of this ever happening!
In conclusion, fuck this guy.
ETA: Or, what Emma said.
Booger
@Baud: I have a statue of limitations.
trollhattan
@cmorenc:
I once worked with somebody who grew up in Tennessee and was taught in school about “The Wowah of Nawthern Aggression” as he said it. Suspect in tandem with The Glorious Cause. How does the South tackle its own history these days?
sdhays
@cmorenc: I think their removal will have an impact on future white generations. Not having public celebrations of the Confederacy will help move it to its appropriate place in history – the dustbin.
J R in WV
@Geoboy:
Speak for yerself — I see statues of Giant Republicans all over the place!! Look at Mt Rushmore ~!! ;-)
More seriously, Cheryl, thanks for sharing this good news with everyone. Today is shaping up to be a really good day for liberals like us!
Kay
@sdhays:
Masks are mandatory in that court but not in all courts. I’m a mask enthusiast. I think it makes the most sense of all the interventions. I use it as a kind of measure of bad faith, too. I’ll listen to complaints about lockdowns (and I share some of those concerns) but if you’re bitching about a mask you’re just a malcontent. SOME effort. TRY. That’s all I ask.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: How about a statue of me smacking you? Would you find that inspiring? :)
trollhattan
Donny’s probably too preoccupied to fire somebody over this.
kindness
Pulling down the statues is really kicking the racists in the nads because you know this sticks in their craw more than anything any one of us could say.
I say kick ’em again!
John Revolta
@sdhays: Before this is over they’ll have him in a little glass booth like the Mysterious Gypsy robot at the old arcades. For ten bucks he’ll probably even tell your fortune!
dexwood
When I told my Pueblo wife the news about the statue she cheered then suggested Onate’s foot be left in place as a reminder of his cruelty.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Saw a duffer today at Costco wearing a full-on dual-cartridge particulate mask, like you’d wear in a paint booth or somesuch. Now that’s commitment to the craft! (And if you’re immunocompromised, a good insurance policy.) BTW, toilet paper and bottled water for everybody! (Still don’t get the bottled water mania.)
cmorenc
@sdhays:
There aren’t really any more than a vanishingly small number of active celebrations of the Confederacy across most of the south any more – my point was that the statues had become inert ancient relics to the vastly overwhelming majority of southerners when the removal movement began. They were a relatively insignificant contributor to any contemporary southern bigotry. Live contemporary southern politicians and non-southern bigots like Donald Trump are vastly more important as a force continuing racial bigotry and discrimination than the statues, which had receded to relative insignificance (except as an abrasive irritant to non-whites). The latter is reason enough for their removal – but don’t fool yourself into thinking their removal will forward further constructive change among whites. The basis for continuing bigotry is rooted in factors other than the statues.
Betty Cracker
America needs fewer statues and more gargoyles, IMO.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
‘Politco: We’re thinking landslide’: Beyond D.C., GOP officials see Trump on glide path to reelection
Should we be worried. That poll stuff as well as Biden getting swiftboated with “Defund the Police” has me very concerned. I get that polls this far out don’t mean much, but are there enough people out there deliberately giving false answers to pollsters and skewing the results? Are these people just delusional? Or is there some truth to this?
dmsilev
@John Revolta: Perhaps the Vatican would be willing to lease out the Popemobile? Paid in advance, of course.
Mary G
Moar good stuff:
Dorothy A. Winsor
@trollhattan:
As I recall, De Santis bought a ton of the drug. They’re all deranged, but they want to please the Big Lunatic.
Mary G
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): In my experience, the more political campaigns go on about how confident they are in winning, the less confident they actually feel. This is standard Republican whistling past the graveyard. Nobody really believes this.
dmsilev
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The polls in 2016 weren’t all that far off. The swing states were all pretty close and then there was a break towards Trump in the last week or so (rot in Hell, James Comey) that was too late to show up on most of the public polls.
2018, the polls were pretty good, and all of the GOP talk of a Red Wave proved to be nonsense.
I would say that the polls are fine. They are however a snapshot of where things are now, not where they will be in early November. Worry about Swiftboating, worry about voter suppression, etc., but don’t worry about unskewing the polls.
Kay
@trollhattan:
The sheriff’s deputies at the courthouse have cool black masks, which I want.
When I was in elementary school they lined us all up and had us thread thru the principal’s office to get a shot. I don’t even know what the shots were. I think a tine test? For all I know we had a TB outbreak. We ALL went. I can’t imagine that happening today.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Make them like those on the Chrysler Building and I’m in.
Kay
@trollhattan:
Labor unions are sending the masks in the mail. I’ve seen IBEW and Ironworkers so far. I hope some historian is collecting these. I am in love with this whole idea. So easy and cheap!
trollhattan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I swear to heaven, we’ve just uncovered the identity of our BRINKS TRUCKS guy.
They live in a parallel universe. Don’t let them worry you. Eyes on the prize.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mary G:
@dmsilev:
@trollhattan:
Thanks! That makes me feel a little relieved. Occasionally I worry I’m living in a bubble, but what you said makes a ton of sense
trollhattan
@Kay:
It’s smart. And quite welcome! The supply in stores is still very sketchy.
BruceFromOhio
@cmorenc:
Gee, that’s tough. How will they get by.
Origuy
You have to look at the state polls. I go to electoral-vote.com/ which does state polls and also looks at the Senate. They have 352 EV for Biden, 142 for Trump, and 44 tied (TX and IA). Even if all the “Barely Dem” states and the ties go to Trump, Biden is still over 270. They also have the Senate as 52-46-2, although not all of the Senate candidates are determined yet.
Ken
@trollhattan: In the Balloon Juice comments about two weeks ago, someone described the hydroxychloroquine story as “peak Fox News”. IIRC they said “Fox is now warning viewers of the danger of taking the drug they were touting two weeks ago as a cure for the disease they were calling a hoax six weeks ago”.
Ken
I could see it if I were going somewhere where the only other option was a drinking fountain.
Or do you mean the pre-COVID bottled water mania? That I don’t understand, especially since 90% of it is just municipal tap water.
BruceFromOhio
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Excellent, that means they can kick back and take it easy. I encourage this!
Kent
My kids went through history fairly recently in Texas. The Civil War stuff was pretty mainstream stuff from Pearson Publishing textbooks that are used everywhere. Nothing that would really raise eyebrows.
Where Texas really gets away with false historical narratives is in the teaching of TEXAS history. They still teach lots of glorious shit about the Alamo and Texas Revolution that provides not ONE WORD about the real reason why white settlers from the south were unhappy with Mexican rule. And that was because Mexico had outlawed slavery.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: Gargoyles
Kay
@trollhattan:
I don’t know of course and maybe the county chairs are right, but I can say that Democratic county chairs say the same things when they have a weak candidate. The idea is you don’t want your base dispirited, so you do a lot of happy talk. I get it – I might do the same thing.
We’ll know if they say “the only poll that matters is the one on election day!” :)
That’s the kiss of fucking death.
planetjanet
@cmorenc: The discussion of the removal of statues does make the racists come out of the woodwork. That is a benefit in its own right. Now you can fight the attitude when it is in daylight. You may not turn the outright bigots, but those in earshot may learn.
Kent
I suspect also they know Trump and his people are reading and listening to what they say. This could just be the latest version of “unskewing” polls and people telling him what they want to hear. Who the hell wants to get out and be the one to tell Trump he is slipping? No good will come to your career as Ohio GOP chair if you are the one to do that. I’m sure this woman doesn’t want to find herself on the wrong end of a Trump tweet-storm temper trantrum.
They only tell the real truth on deep background, not on the record.
mrmoshpotato
And then there’s Dasani which tastes like shit, because they add shit to it.
tokyokie
@Kay: I man the door at the nursing facility where I work, and if people had been sitting in their air-conditioned cars right before I opened the door, they’ll register temperatures of < 97.0, which isn’t too likely. Conversely, if they’ve been baking on the hot sidewalk in the Texas heat, they’ll register temperatures of >99.0, which also isn’t likely. In the former case, I have them rub the heel of a hand briskly on the forehead to cause a bit of friction; in the latter, I’ll have them step inside for a half minute and try again. The correct response to an unacceptably high temperature is to retake to make sure.
Kay
@BruceFromOhio:
People really did tell them they were going to lose in 2016 and they didn’t, so I can see how they would dismiss all the warnings now.
Democrats here are terrified. They’re superstitious as a rule but now they’re in some woo-woo territory that gets on my nerves. I’m not superstitious. I don’t think my being optimistic has a negative effect on the universe or whatever. Any effect. But I understand it. They’re traumatized.
tokyokie
@sdhays: Yes, but he did bring horses, enabling the Comanche to rule that corner of the Earth up until the late 19th century, which is longer than the Spaniards stuck around.
Kay
@tokyokie:
Interesting. I took my families temp for a while but then they got annoyed so I stopped. My husband is better about the masks than I am, which surprised me. He has a lot of “you’re not the boss of me”. My son has his hanging from the mirror in his car- I feel like that’s “normalized”, if people treat them like that.
hueyplong
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’ve been through the county in question a few times, and have no doubt that Trump would be, is, and ever shall be popular there. And, yes, he’ll be more popular if he somehow manages to become an even more perfect asshole.
Sure, it will be a landslide for Trump in Robeson County. But that could also happen in what would otherwise be a national or even a NC blue wave.
We’re not looking to win Robeson County
This story is the “political pro” equivalent of a Cletus safari in diners.
tokyokie
@Kay: What were you using to take your family members’ temperatures? I don’t like oral thermometers because they take too long and too many people won’t keep them under their tongues. Temporal thermometers are difficult to operate, as you’re supposed to drag the probe across the forehead and around to the temple, and that’s difficult to do without losing contact with the skin for a fraction of a second. Tympanic thermometers are quick and accurate, but a lot of people don’t like getting a probe shoved in an ear, and the probe covers have become scarce and expensive. So now I use an infrared thermometer; it provides a quick reading, and you don’t even have to touch the person whose temperature you’re taking. But with them, you sometimes need to make allowances for the ambient temperature.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: No, one Mitch McConnell is enough.
Aleta
As far as I know, only one foot was sawed off (to symbolize Onate’s same atrocity against real people), and the people who removed the statue’s foot are still anonymous. A couple of years ago someone poured red paint on the left foot. The director Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals, Edge of America, Skins) may bring out a documentary that talks about the foot and historical issues.
TheOBP
@trollhattan: I don’t get the bottled water thing, either. If things get so bad that we’re not getting tap water, shyt has really hit the fan in so many other ways, too. Then again, my partner and I regularly hike and camp and are well supplied with water purification options, so maybe that’s why it mystified me
The Moar You Know
@trollhattan: I worked for five years in a spray booth. Really wish I’d kept all my old N95 masks. Even more so, my old PAPR.
But I gotta share a nasty bit of info about those cartridge respirators; there is NO filtration on the outflow side. So if you’re the one who’s sick, you’re spraying virus everywhere.
Mike in NC
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): These very fine GOP operatives at the state and county level are the same wonderful people who shared photoshopped pictures of Obama eating watermelon with a bone through his nose, and thought it was the cleverest thing in the world. They are MAGA scum who would lay down their lives for their Orange God-Emperor. Fuck ’em!
Subsole
@BruceFromOhio:
But that’s the thing. History is not always written by the winners.
The Confederacy largely wrote its own postbellum history.
Imperial Japan did, too – albeit to a somewhat lesser extent. Some of the revisionism there is every bit as appalling as anything you’ll hear from Shelby Foote.
Hell, part of the reason Hitler took over was because Getmany wrote it’s own post-WW1 history. Dolchstosselegende, etc.
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
That’s what I wear to the store! I wore a disposable mask once, hated it. The 3M has two giant lavender filters, one on each side. It isn’t really comfortable, but you know it’s working.
I can’t smell the blue smoke from the old Suburban next to me, spitting blue smoke on my feet while I load provisions into my vehicle. Even with a beard, I pull that thing tight, it works great, in spite of what Uncle Cosmo says about shaving. Also doesn’t cause my glasses to fog up!
Which Costco was I at, anyways? ;-) hehe!
Subsole
@Baud: That’s why you cast them sans pants – one less part to vandalize.
And, also, historical accuracy.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Bernie would have raised more! [Too soon?]
Kay
@tokyokie:
it’s an oral thermometer with a digital read. I bought a new one because I hadn’t used the one I had in probably ten years. My own temp came back high in April once but then it went back down in a day or so.
Subsole
@Emma from FL:
Were they repulsed, or just angry that he was decimating the potential labor force? Or do the docs give any indication?
Like, Genghis Khan spared a city he was set to raze, after one of his advisors pointed out that they couldn’t tax the inhabitants if they were all turned to ash inside their walls.
Don’t know if I would call that morally upright…though I doubt the city pushed the matter either.
J R in WV
@Kay:
I remember in the 1950s we went to Dad’s work, and the Health Department was there with a big cooler and a thousand glass needles, to vaccinate EVERYONE against Polio with the Salk vaccine.
My little brother was a babe in arms, and it took 4 grownups to hold him still so the 5th person, the nurse, could shoot him up. EVERYONE, all employees, all their relatives, even their friends could come in and be saved from that horrible plague.
Years later on, I remember the whole family going to a local school for sugar cubes with a drop of pink oral Sabin on it. We stood in line and they checked us off a neighborhood list, there were hundreds of people getting vaccinated AGAIN against Polio, which compared to Covid-19 was a horrible disease, Iron Lungs to keep paralysed people alive, immobile in an iron tube, but alive.
I had classmates in elementary school who were deformed from their polio infection. And no one NO ONE made fun of them, it wasn’t done, ever!
As far as I’m concerned, no one has to have a vaccination against Covid-19 — but if they don’t, they have to STAY HOME UNTIL THEY DO!!! Their choice…
Subsole
@Kay:
Y’know, maybe I’m just fed up after the arguments I’ve had lately, but I honestly am done caring. If those folks wanna die for the privilege of tugging their damn forelock for the absolute fucking inbred Habsburgian dregs of the global elite, hell with it. Good luck, don’t fucking breathe on me or mine. Assholes.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
All those monuments to the administrative and leadership skills of Reinhard Heydrich throughout Moravia are testaments to history, and the people of Lidice are just pacifier-sucking libtards who should get over it….
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
That is true. But by staying home A LOT, going to town rarely, wearing a kick-ass respirator, the odds that I have the ‘Rona to spread are really minimal.
Plus wife has little immune system left after her septic shock episode — if it’s in our house, she’s got it, doomed. So i wear my best filtration to go out every 2-3 weeks.
People don’t do a double take, or even look hard any more. I’m not the only person with an industrial strength respirator out there. Anyone says anything, I’m gonna be all over them with “I’m trying to save my wife’s life, what’s your problem with that!?!?!?”
With the mask on it will be pretty easy to appear more hostile than I normally can pull off! Hostile AND from MARS!!!
Subsole
@trollhattan:
In Texas our history books were pretty much The Alamo! and Intelligent Design.
Just kidding.
It didn’t actually matter what was in the book, because Coach (and it is almost always Coach) wasn’t gonna dwell on it. Hell, half the time he’d hand out answers so he could go focus on his primary job – which is keeping the school open by fielding a kickass football team that keeps money coming in from the community. Can’t fault him for it, honestly. The community wants a football field with a school attached, and that’s what it gets. Take it up with the school board if little Harley Quyler Bisquick IV thinks Dinesh d’Souza is a reputable source.
That is of course hyperbolic snark. As with all things, it depends. The upscale places had it very good, the rest had it very bad.
I was lucky, tho. I had a teacher who actually specialized in History and Philosophy, and cared deeply about his subject for its own sake. Sucked hard that he only taught sophmore and senior year.
NotMax
@J R in WV
Ad agency I was working during early 80s occupied 4 (or maybe 5, can’t remember exactly) floors of an office building.
Every person there had to line up to get a shot of gamma globulin after one person employed there came down with hepatitis.
Plus they ripped out every single telephone on the floor where she worked and replaced them with pristine devices.
Subsole
@Betty Cracker: No thanks. One Giuliani is too many.
Jess
@tokyokie: So maybe they should just keep the horse part of the statue…
I’m really curious to see how this “salt the fields” approach to the culture wars is going to play out over time. I think I prefer the contextual info plaques that some places were adding to the monuments, but perhaps those were just creating more roadblocks to a better future.
Ruckus
I’ve been reading today, someone on twitter who is worried about being killed before shitforbrains is out of office, I’m assuming from his moniker and his speech that it’s a he and he’s mad as hell and scared and about right up to his limit. I responded to him and gave him a series of responses. And another person has joined in, both of them sound about done with the system. I can not say I really blame them at this moment. But I’ve seen revolutions and conflict and lots of people get killed, and what with the weapons of today, which in this country we have a massive overabundance of, any conflict will be bloody and deadly, with lots of innocent bystanders. And likely won’t accomplish their goals anyway.
I wish there was something to say, but I’m not a person who can know what they are feeling, their frustration, their need to feel that survival requires them to risk everything.
Anybody?
Subsole
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Also bear in mind anyone who does not say that Trumpism is guaranteed a bigly luxurious victory is gonna catch mondo shit from the rubes and from the cult clergy for breaking ranks. They might even risk the wrath of the cult father.
Nah, these guys know they’re fucked. They just don’t want people bolting on them.
Also, too, they were batshit crazy before they got high on their supply.
Subsole
@Kent:
I could write VOLUMES about the shit they fed us re: the Texas Rangers. And I went to a comparatively good school.
Ruckus
@Jess:
Those statues keep alive the concept that racism, slavery is OK, that some are less than others. They glorify the hate and bigotry. That is not a good thing. We have a more wide spread level of confederate style bigotry among our population of today than we did during the civil war. Not necessarily a bigger number, but it is in every state and city. Some of that is the republican party of today, but there is that sub conscious part that the statues can play, that the men depicted are heroes rather than traitors. Notice that it’s republicans/conservative areas that overwhelmingly want to keep them.
Kent
When we moved to Waco for my wife’s residency, one of the first things we noticed was the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame and Museum which is in downtown Waco texasranger.org/
I remember my wife saying: “But the Rangers suck. What did they do to deserve a museum??”
“Ummm, it’s the other Texas Rangers honey.”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Subsole:
I went to a blue collar Catholic boys high school in a less prosperous part of the city. We got some real liberation theology stuff from the priests and brothers, along with a healthy appreciation of organized labor AND a kickass football team.
My sophomore year, we had an unusual cat for that time and place – he had been a Vatican scholar, sniffed talcum snuff (complete with sneeze) and spoke a multitude of languages fluently. Taught French and European History prior to 1800, and boy, did he talk about it like he knew where every damned body was buried. I wish I’d appreciated the opportunity more – even though I was kind of interested, I should have been moreso.
Sadly, I’ll never know who he pissed off in the Vatican.
Senior year, the priest who taught English was all about Lillian Hellman, Dash Hammett and HUAC.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
We stood in line at a bank one evening for our sugar cube, I was 5 I think. I grew up with a girl in my class who has polio, 2 of my friends moms had it and both had iron lungs in their houses. And yes I was in the houses and saw them. One of my current neighbors has polio, she said she, like my school chum, got rid of her braces in her early 20s and but she now uses a wheel chair and somedays wears a brace on one leg. We grew up within 4-5 miles of each other, we are the same age, 70. A horrible disease, but I’m not sure it’s far worse than COVID. I’ll wait till I see that people are actually fully recovered and what that’s like.
Barney
@Baud: It seems El Paso City Council was to blame for that – said to be the largest equestrian statue in the USA, or maybe even the world: web.archive.org/web/20160305234518/http://visitelpaso.com/visitors/to_do/1-attractions/sections/4-hi…
Calouste
@Jess: Contextual info plaques make sense if the reason why the statue is put up is positive, but the person depicted had some negative qualities that need to be put in context.
The Confederate statues however are of traitors who lost a war, who were not just not great generals, but often fairly incompetent, and the reason they were put up was to intimidate the local African-American population. Sell the bronzes for scrap and grind down the stone ones for use on travel roads.
cintibud"
As usual, by the time I come to a post that I would like to comment on it is dead. I hope at least Cheryl sees this as I would be very interested in hearing more of the entire situation.
First, let me get this out of the way. Fuck Ornate. In the range of brutal conquistadors he was among the worst. Fuck fuck fuck him.
Now some additional context from an Ohio born Hispano. Our family traces our ancestry to a member of the Ornate expedition. I didn’t know that the technical name for our ancestry was Hispano until this year when I looked it up for the Census. I also didn’t know how bad Ornate was even for a conquistador until very recently as well.
My parents grew up in the impoverished San Luis Valley, in Colorado just across the line from New Mexico. My father’s family was poor, my mothers well off but only in relative terms. The Hispanos of the SLV faced a lot of discrimination. My own parents have stories as well. That oddly went away when my father accepted a job at the University of Dayton (Ohio – go Flyers!). Apparently there was no checkbox for “dirty Mexican” on the port of entry form so after holding up the family guy meme color scale, we were deemed “white enough by cracky! Here’s your white privilege card.” Perhaps that why that, unlike many white people around here, we realize that white privilege is really a big thing.
I knew from an early age that the conquistadors were terrible. Their atrocities were drilled into my head in school. Spaniards were brutal and sanctimonious and just plain awful. Of course it wasn’t until I was taught by radical nuns and priests in high school (no longer there unfortunately) that I heard in school that there was such a thing as the trail of tears and outright genocide as well as events in Greenwood and Tulsa and people like Emmett Till and songs like “Strange Fruit” and so on.
So I guess I’m not sure what to think about this. I of course agree that Ornate (Fuck him) was a terrible person and the rule he instituted was brutal and horrendous but I remember as a school kid being very upset about what terrible people WE were. My parents consoled me by telling me that while it was true about the early Spanish rule, our people were poor farmers who lived in harmony with the land and while not friendly with the native Americans they mostly practiced a live and let live attitude with the Utes. It was the (white) American government in Denver who decided the Utes had to go once silver was discovered in the mountains. It was my parents who told me how the American government gave smallpox infected blankest to the Native Americans and never attempted to share the land but had to have everything. I guess that might be considered moral relativism, but consider that my teachers and classmates, without even knowing or understanding the connection I had to Hispanic culture taught me to hate my culture.
That culture is NOT represented by statue of a brutal killer and I have no problem with it coming down. I do feel a little under attack by some of comments that I’ve seen here and elsewhere. Are New Mexico and Colorado Hispanos the same as confederates?
I don’t know where I want to go with this, I’m afraid to attempt any more will only get me labeled as a racist or racist apologist. I guess I’ll just see if anyone else sees this
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
Wait until the middle of next November — because many important states won’t have final numbers for a week or two. If the evil doers win, then consider tearing things up. But wait for that to actually happen.
After all, we didn’t expect a LBGTQ favorable ruling today, did we?
Cheryl Rofer
@cintibud: You bring up some issues that I decided not to address in the post, partly to keep it simple and partly because I don’t know enough of the details to raise them and then defend them.
The statues of Oñate are part of the Hispanic colonization of the American Southwest, which had much in common with the northern European colonization of the northeastern US. Both depended on conquering and killing Native Americans. The defense of slavery in the Civil War is somewhat different, but the monuments that are coming down are of men who were guilty of heinous crimes.
Although New Mexico once presented itself as the state of the three cultures – Native American, Hispano, and Anglo – those three cultures had conflicts stemming from different varieties of colonialism. As more Anglos moved into northern New Mexico, the Hispanos wanted to assert themselves, which would inevitably bring that assertion into conflict with the Native American population. That’s what happened with the statue.
It sounds like you were taught about the Hispanic colonization in the way that people are now learning about the northern European colonization, with some prejudice toward Hispanos as well.
Colorado has always been different from New Mexico – your ancestors in the San Luis Valley were there before the Anglos who treated them badly. In northern New Mexico, the Hispanos have had a stronger political presence.
Does this help?
Aleta
@cintibud: Good comment. Thanks.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Thanks!
I responded on twitter after I posted the comment you responded to and I see this person is rather scared that he’s not going to make it and that basically he thinks we are at war with trump and his minions (my description not his) and in a way I suppose we are. TBH I don’t think shitforbrains has it in him to call for a war on anyone, he’s way too chickenshit for that, I think. But he’s also deranged and not all that bright and seemingly in a noticeable stage of dementia so who the hell knows what he’s thinking or will actually do, especially if he feels backed into a corner. And the police will obviously of little help, the bigger departments seem to have little care about responsible actions/reactions. NYPD seems to be getting torn apart piece by piece, the undercover street crime unit is gone or going soon. Our country seems to be changing a lot, rather rapidly. Hopefully it will be a better place.
Brantl
@Betty Cracker: why do we need more gargoyles, we’ve got Dump! Biggest gargoyle I’ve ever seen!
cintibud
@Cheryl Rofer: Thank you Cheryl, yes it does help. My parents have been gone a long time now and we were separated from the rest of the Colorado family for much of my life so the folks I would really like to discuss this with are gone. The cousins I do keep in touch with are pretty out of touch with the culture as well. I understand some of the Hispano anger now but am shocked by some of the extreme reactions I am seeing on FB. But I have no context. Your comment helps.
One final story that I will try to repeat on a non-dead thread sometime. I give my parents great credit for modeling tolerance to their children. They gave my siblings and me a great example. However there was one somewhat blind spot, from my mother at least. As kids, growing up in the Cowboys and Indians romanticization of the early 60’s we asked her if we had any “Indian” ancestry. She told us no, we were mostly Spanish with some French and Scot. The Indians and the valley dwellers did not intermingle. It was only in the past few years two of my siblings discovered via Ancestory.com that they (as well as me I suppose) were over 20% native American! I’m sure she didn’t lie, it was probably hidden from her. I feel great pride in that!
cintibud
@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks Cheryl! I wrote a longer comment but it got eaten. I’ll come back to it if this topic reappears in a new post
WaterGirl
@cintibud: It appears that all of your comments are going to spam because of the email address you have listed – which has the word SPAM in it.
At balloon juice, we DO NOT share your email with anyone – the email address paired with the IP address merely identifies you as being distinct from other names/nyms.
If you plan to continue posting, I suggest you come up with a different email address to use with your nym on balloon juice.
Cheryl Rofer
@cintibud: One of the ways that the Hispanic colonization of North America was different from the northern European colonization was that most of the Hispano arrivals were men – mainly soldiers and priests. There were few women, but some. Many of those men took Native American women as wives. And yes, there was rape.
Up until recently, it was customary for Hispanos in northern New Mexico to claim that they had no Native American ancestry. But, as you have found, the genetic analyses are undercutting that. I don’t think anyone’s done a study of how Hispanos and Native Americans mixed, and then separated. Or perhaps Hispano families accepted a Native American spouse and continued to call themselves Hispano.
I saw an exhibit in the New Mexico Museum of History from, I think, the 18th century, about the different mixtures – analogous to the way Southeasterners differentiated between quadroon, octaroon, etc. So people were quite aware of this at one time. I know when I came to New Mexico in the 1960s, the story was that the Hispanic families had no Native ancestry. I think you would find the history museum very interesting if you ever get to Santa Fe.
They are taking down the Oñate monument in Albuquerque today, where a rightwing “militia” member shot a protester last night. “For protection,” with discussion supposedly to come. I will be surprised if this and the Alcalde monument ever see the light of day again.