A good article!
>Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 12:52:06 -0700
>From: "Brian W. Kenny" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: not possible to commemorate history or honor anything
>Cc: [log in to unmask]
>
>[ AzTeC / SWA SASIG ] :
>
>From: Maurice Brill <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Political Correctness
>
>There is a very insightful article in the Santa Fe New Mexican as a result
>of the chopping off of Onate's foot on his statue by the Acoma Indians. The
>article is for January 11, 1998. The very same problem is reflected in the
>Squaw Peak nonsense.
>
>http://www.sfnewmexican.com/news/news_january/jan11_onate.html
>
>Hero or villain: How should we remember Don Juan de Oņate?
>As New Mexico commemorates its 400th anniversary, some historians wonder if
>political correctness is dividing our state
>
>By RAY RIVERA
>The New Mexican
>
>The recent vandalism of a bronze sculpture of conquistador Don Juan de
>Oņate at a public visitors center north of Espaņola was just another
>reminder that few of those we honor come without some sinister baggage.
>
>Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson and Kit Carson are just a few
>members in a growing pantheon of historical figures who have been cast in
>unfavorable light by revisionist historians.
>
>Does that mean we shouldn't honor them?
>
>As New Mexicans this year celebrate the cuartocentenario, the 400th
>anniversary of Oņate's arrival here, the question is especially acute.
>Because while no Indian groups have claimed credit for sawing off the right
>foot of the Oņate sculpture, the act illustrates how differently many
>Indians, Hispanics and other New Mexicans view their common regional
history.
>
>"It's time to remember there are two stories to every conquest," Navajo
>Nation president Albert Hale wrote in a letter to The New Mexican last
>week. "Until now, only one story has been told. This year, it is time to
>tell the other story."
>
>The issue of sensitivity regarding historical figures has popped in and out
>of the national spotlight over the years. In 1992, the celebration of the
>quincentennial of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the new world was marked
>by indignation from many Indian leaders, who said Indians celebrating
>Columbus was the equivalent of Jews commemorating Hitler.
>
>Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, has been
>criticized for his ownership of slaves and trysts with slave women. Kit
>Carson has been both celebrated for his bravery and reviled for his
>military campaign against the Navajo Nation.
>
>And more recently, New Orleans gained national attention when, keeping with
>a policy of dropping slave-owners' names from public schools, the city
>changed the name of George Washington Elementary to Dr. Charles Richard
>Drew Elementary, after the black surgeon who pioneered blood plasma
>preservation.
>
>"We're riding a trend of pan-Indianism," said historian Tom Chávez,
>director of the Palace of the Governors museum in Santa Fe. "We're
>suffering the fallout of political correctness and the ethnic chauvinism of
>the '60s, And in my mind, rather than allowing us to take a look back
>clearly, these things are tending to divide society."
>
>New Mexico historian Marc Simmons agrees.
>
>"Given the nature of sensitivity, it's not possible to commemorate anybody
>in history or honor anything," said Simmons, who has written a biography of
>Oņate, the man who colonized New Mexico for Spain in 1598 and became its
>first governor. "You could only honor angels, and there are no angels."
>
>For Simmons, dishonoring the father of our nation by removing his name from
>an elementary school was no less a disservice than the defacing - or in
>this case defooting - of the man he calls the "Father of New Mexico."
>
>"(Oņate) was the George Washington of New Mexico," Simmons said. "It was
>because of him and his courage and his perseverance that we have New
Mexico."
>
>A letter sent to newspaper columnists claiming responsibility for the
>vandalism of the sculpture at the Oņate Center in Alcalde said the damage
>was inflicted "on behalf of our brothers and sisters at Acoma pueblo."
>Oņate is believed to have ordered Spanish troops to cut off the right foot
>of warriors from Acoma Pueblo after an uprising there claimed his nephew's
>life.
>
>"This was done in commemoration of his 400th year anniversary acknowledging
>his unasked for exploration of our land," the letter said.
>
>The act was not isolated. Statues of conquistadors installed in Santa Fe in
>recent years have been spray-painted with epitaphs such as "murderer" and
>"killer."
>
>Hale of the Navajo Nation said in his letter that the Spaniards "raided our
>people to capture slaves." And "Spanish greed launched 250 years of warfare
>as we defended our people, our lands, our culture and our ways."
>
>But Simmons and Chávez say figures such as Oņate and Carson have to be
>viewed in historical perspective, without today's mores placed upon them.
>
>"It is very ignorant of us to take a person and make him a god," Chávez
>said. "It is equally as stupid to turn around and say - with a couple of
>exceptions like Hitler - that they were completely bad people. These were
>human beings in a certain place and time that had something to do and did
>it."
>
>"Chopping off the feet (of the Acoma warriors), in context, was a small
>part of Oņate's life," Simmons said. "These days people want to focus on
>one thing and use it to discredit the entire individual."
>
>The issue of sensitivity has become a frustration to many scholars, Simmons
>and Chávez said.
>
>"People are completely immobilized now," Simmons said. "You can't get
>anything done."
>
>Simmons says he left a job teaching history at the University of New Mexico
>in 1984 because of what he viewed as an oncoming wave of political
>correctness, and this year he has declined speaking offers at
>cuartocentenario festivals.
>
>"It wasn't called political correctness then, but there were signs of it,"
>he said. "I'd been noticing it since the mid-1960s, so I abandoned
>(teaching)."
>
>Recently, the authors of the Atlas of the New West - a book that chronicles
>the changes in the West through maps, graphs, illustrations and essays -
>declined to include a map of Western heroes.
>
>"We had debates, arguments, and we couldn't do it," said University of
>Colorado geographer William Riebsame, the book's general editor. "The only
>way we could finally decide who was a hero was if I put my foot down and
>said that person is a hero. So we nixed it."
>
>Even the football teams of the University of New Mexico and the University
>of Arizona this year stopped passing the Kit Carson rifle as a trophy
>between them because of the belief that it had been used to kill Indians.
>
>Hale of the Navajo Nation said he wasn't against Oņate being commemorated,
>but said New Mexico's original inhabitants should be commemorated as well.
>
>"It is time to remember the cost of conquest," Hale said. "Courage is
>measured by the valor of the opponents; if the daring of Spanish conquerors
>is honored, so should the courage of the original habitants."
>
>Said Simmons: "If we fail to honor Oņate this year because we're
>intimidated by crackpots, we not only disgrace Oņate, we disgrace
ourselves."
>
>Published in The New Mexican on 01/11/1998
>
>
Anita Cohen-Williams
Listowner of HISTARCH, SUB-ARCH, and SPANBORD
Co-listowner/manager of ANTHRO-L
Contributing Editor, Anthropology, Suite101 <http://www.suite101.com>
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