(Originally written and presented in 2018 for TEDxABQ | Featured Image Courtesy Wikipedia Commons: Desembarco de Cortés, de Antonio María Esquivel (Museo de América, Madrid)
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It was a beautiful, late summer afternoon in the little community of Santa Fe, New Mexico. But downtown, the feeling in the air was tense. A heavy police presence ringed the Plaza. Officers stood on nearby rooftops armed with rifles in case violence broke out.
It was September 8th, 2017, and the 325th annual Santa Fe Fiesta was set to begin; but this Fiesta was destined to be unlike any other in its long history. A crowd of over 150 protesters held up signs and shouted “Abolish the Entrada, Abolish the Entrada.”
The Entrada portrayed the peaceful reconquest of Santa Fe in 1692 by the Spanish following the Pueblo Indian revolt twelve years earlier. The protesters demanded that the truth be told. It was not a peaceful reconquest. It was a bloody battle that took place a year later in 1693 and 70 Indian fighters were executed.
Thankfully no one was injured during the protest but eight people were arrested on a variety of charges.
Why did these people care so much about something that happened 325 years ago?
Because history matters:
History isn’t simply a review of past events stored in dusty books, of interest to a handful of historians and school teachers. It affects people’s identity, it affects their status in the present, and it carries the wounds that cultures feel for generations.
Historian Howard Zinn stated that history is too often written by the victors and they are the ones who determine what facts are remembered and how the past is interpreted.
Many times commemorations and monuments represent an idealized version of how a culture sees itself. They can consciously or unconsciously project an attitude of superiority and dominance.
In recent years there’s been a movement in New Mexico and across the United States to look at the past more honestly. In doing so, we begin to heal these wounds that have been ignored for too long.
It seems like every day you see something in the news about this happening in places like Charlottesville and New Orleans. People are coming to terms with their Confederate past and how it’s been portrayed.
Here in New Mexico, the city of Española is no longer sponsoring an annual Fiesta celebrating the exploits of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate. His treatment of Pueblo Indians has been criticized. The public art memorial to Oñate erected in front of the Albuquerque Museum has also been controversial.
Although the process can be painful, the end result of reexamining how we present history can be a greater atmosphere of integrity.
Fast forward to Santa Fe, August of 2018; after nearly a year of negotiations between Pueblo Indian leaders and Fiesta organizers, an agreement was reached to end the Entrada in its prior form. They agreed to create a different kind of event: Something more sensitive and respectful to both cultures, with more historical balance and accuracy.
This is just the beginning and more work needs to be done in the years ahead, but it is a solid start on the road to healing and the transformation of cultural relations.
What if this type of work could be done all across the United States in places like Charlottesville and New Orleans?
Santa Fe is a role model. Digging deep to reach honest consensus can help bridge the gap that lies between people whose past legacies contain denial and oppression. Only by looking at history in a fair and clear-eyed manner, can we come to terms with the present and truly understand the past.
Here in New Mexico we all have more in common than not. Many people are a mixture of Spanish and Pueblo Indian blood. Their ancestors spent centuries living side-by side, surviving in this land of little rain. This is the richness that makes New Mexico so vibrant and unique.
History matters.
But how can we be sure that what we learn and pass on to our children represents the all of the gifts and memories of our shared heritage?
First, it’s important for us to reach a little further, to go beyond the tendency to get our information only from a limited number of sources, the sources that reinforce our own views and beliefs.
Next, we need to open our minds, move past the idea that our own cultural values and mindsets are superior to those of others.
Finally, we need to liberate our attitude and let go of the idea that our viewpoint is the only viewpoint.
History is complex and there are no absolute interpretations. As Czech novelist Milan Banderas stated, “History is the thinnest thread of what’s remembered stretching across an ocean of what’s been forgotten.”
In the end, history is less about chronicles of big events and important dates but more about peoples’ lives and how they adapted and endured the challenges of their times.
By reaching a little further, opening our minds and liberating our attitude, we can create a space where empathy toward others can take root and start to grow.
Gerda Hedwig Lerner, a Jewish, Austrian-born historian was a refugee of Nazi occupation. She wrote, “All human beings are practicing historians, we live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing. It is as important as breathing too.”
History really does matter.