{"id":53400,"date":"2020-06-12T13:39:37","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T19:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/activists-take-aim-at-conquistador-statues-in-new-mexico\/"},"modified":"2020-06-12T19:39:37","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T19:39:37","slug":"activists-take-aim-at-conquistador-statues-in-new-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/activists-take-aim-at-conquistador-statues-in-new-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Activists take aim at conquistador statues in New Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
A damaged Christopher Columbus statue stands in a waterfront park near the city\u2019s traditionally Italian North End neighborhood in Boston after the statue was found beheaded Wednesday morning. Statues of the 15th-century explorer and the Spanish conquistadors who followed him and colonized much of the Americas have not become targets for demonstrators in Spain and USA. The death of George Floyd at the hands of police and Minneapolis has sparked a re-examination of injustices and inequalities in the fabric of many societies, often symbolized in statues of historical figures have become the focus of protest around the world.<\/span>Steven Senne\/Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A petition drive with more than 1,500 signatures on Friday is calling for the removal of an O\u00f1ate statue on the outskirts of Espa\u00f1ola in northern New Mexico, while activists are calling on Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller to remove another O\u00f1ate likeness from a caravan of Spanish colonists set in bronze outside a city museum.<\/p>\n

Moises Gonzales, a professor of urban planning at the University of New Mexico, has protested the Albuquerque statue as a glorification of white supremacy since its installation in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf NASCAR can do away with Confederate flags at their events, surely our cities can do this,\u201d Gonzales said.<\/p>\n

O\u00f1ate, who arrived in present-day New Mexico in 1598, is celebrated as a cultural father figure in communities along the Upper Rio Grande that trace their ancestry to Spanish settlers. But he\u2019s also reviled for his brutality.<\/p>\n

To Native Americans, O\u00f1ate is known for having ordered the right feet cut off of 24 captive tribal warriors after his soldiers stormed Acoma Pueblo\u2019s mesa-top \u201csky city.\u201d That attack was precipitated by the killing of O\u00f1ate\u2019s nephew.<\/p>\n

In 1998, someone sawed the right foot off the statue of O\u00f1ate near Espa\u00f1ola.<\/p>\n

Tributes to the region\u2019s early European colonists appear to be losing favor among the public and state lawmakers, who last year replaced Columbus Day with Native American Peoples Day.<\/p>\n

Annual costumed tributes to Spanish conquistadors including O\u00f1ate have been scaled back or canceled in recent years in deference to local indigenous communities and new revelations about the subjugation and enslavement of Native American servants and people of mixed ancestry.<\/p>\n

The city of Espa\u00f1ola cut sponsorship ties two years ago with a summer community carnival that includes a costumed pageant of an armored O\u00f1ate on horseback with a coterie of soldiers, royalty, Christian friars and a scout. A nonprofit group now carries on the tradition.<\/p>\n

An online signature petition to remove the stand-alone statue of O\u00f1ate north of Espa\u00f1ola describes the conquistador\u2019s inhumane treatment of indigenous people and invokes solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n

Critics scheduled public protests at the O\u00f1ate statues for Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A damaged Christopher Columbus statue stands in a waterfront park near the city\u2019s traditionally Italian North End neighborhood in Boston after the statue was found beheaded Wednesday morning. Statues of the 15th-century explorer and the Spanish conquistadors who followed him and colonized much of the Americas have not become targets for demonstrators in Spain and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-53400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53400"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=53400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}