- In the United States, anti-state movements dedicated to white colonizers continue to open up a critical perspective on history in both. On Monday, protesters tried to tear down the bronze statue that adored the conqueror Juan Oñate in the city of Albuquerque, in the state of New Mexico. An armed militia of supremacist whites, however, shot and injured two people. The Police arrested the aggressor and fired tear gas at the protesters, who were dispersed by the Police.
One of the Protestants was transferred in a serious state to a hospital with a reserved prognosis. Juan de Oñate is expected to be removed by the destruction of his people of origin 400 years ago, and on the same day, in the city of Mayor of New Mexico, another statue of him was removed.
"The shooting of Oñati's sculpture was an act of absolutely intolerable violence," said the city's mayor, Tim Keller, who announced that the state will be removed from the sculpture. "Last night, more than a symbol of sculpture, it has become a matter of public safety," he told CNN.
Who was Juan Oñate?
Oñate was a conqueror of Gipuzkoan origin born in Mexico, as can be read in the Basque Wikipedia. His father was the conqueror Christopher Oñate (born in Vitoria or Oñati) and his mother, Catalina Salazar and the Chain. At that time, New Spain was called one of the administrative districts that Spain created in 1535 to manage its colonies in America.
In 1595, Juan Oñate organized an expedition to conquer New Mexico. Wikipedia has the most comprehensive article about Juan Oñate in the free encyclopedia. It can be read that it had "a hard hand" and that it wreaked havoc in several villages of origin until the conquest of America. A passage reads as follows:
"Today Oñate is known for the Acoma massacre in 1599. Following a dispute over land ownership, the members of the people of Acoma killed 11 Spaniards, including the nephew of Oñate, Juan de Zaldivar. Oñate then ordered a brutal response against the people of Acoma. They destroyed the people of Acoma and killed between 800 and 1000 inhabitants of Acoma." To destroy the town, he ordered Vicente de Zaldibar, the brother of his nephew.
This other passage can also be read in Wikipedia in English:
"Oñate is also known for the case of about 500 survivors: In Ohkay Owingeh's trial, Oñate sentenced the majority to 20 years of slavery service, and also ordered all men over the age of 25 to cut a foot. Acoma was tried by the Spanish Government for a crime of "gender-based violence" against local neighbors.
Today the figure of Oñate is very controversial in the history of New Mexico: In 1998, someone cut off his left foot from the state he had in the city of Mayor. For years it was not known who and why he did this action until in 2017 the New York Times published that a native citizen cut his foot, as he repulsed the figure of the massacres and conquerors he committed.