What in the world could Juan de Onate, Spaniard colonizer in New Mexico, have in common with Elon Musk, entrepreneur behind the Tesla, new owner of Twitter now named “X,” and space project Spacelink billionaire?
Perhaps it’s found in Walter Isaacson’s newly released book on Musk, simply titled:” Elon Musk.”
“As Shakespeare teaches us,” he writes, “all heroes have flaws, some tragic, some conquered, and those we cast as villains can be complex.”
The Onate story is nothing if not complex.
His statue is back in public view at the Rio Arriba County Courthouse as of tomorrow, Thursday, September 27,2023. It was removed in June 2020 amid threats of vandalism including destruction. Rio Arriba County had commissioned the statue between 1989 and 1999.
At one point in the Onate statue history, the left foot of the statue had been cut off. Onate has been accused of cutting off the left foot of some Native Americans during his reign as colonial governor of the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico.
Many in New Mexico would not describe de Onate as a hero. Some might. His time in New Mexico was one of upheaval and violence and as our columnist, Dr. Jose Z. Garcia, points out on this page he was ultimately confronted and punished for his alleged abuses.
As Garcia has pointed out, “The nature of Oñate’s interaction with natives after he declared the region to be part of the Spanish empire is an integral part of the story of 1598. His behavior was, incidentally, addressed officially in the accusations and conviction of the Spanish crown against him in 1606. “
Much of the controversy surrounding Onate centers on the 1599 Acoma Massacre which resulted in the deaths of 13 Spanish soldiers, one of whom was Onate’s nephew. Onate struck back, the Acoma Pueblo was destroyed, and the Acoma death toll was estimated to be between 800 to 1,000 persons.
Violence, sometimes of an unthinkable nature, was prevalent and widespread during that time. Onate was not alone provoking atrocities. Virtually everyone was fighting everyone in those days and that included Native Americans from opposing tribes fighting each other and doing so in an ugly fashion.
Isolating the violence of one man, on a variety of levels, misses the point about the vicious atmosphere at that time.
Defining who is a hero and who is not is far from scientific or often accurate. Over the last decade it has become almost commonplace to desecrate, vandalize, and destroy statues built in the memory of someone who had been deemed a “hero.” Statues of General Robert E. Lee, the confederate soldiers’ leader of the south in the Civil War, have been subjected to almost more violence in parks than he was as a solider on the battlefield.
There is no simple definition of a hero. Joseph Cambell’s book “The Heroes Journey,” is aimed primarily at writer’s showing how to approach their craft. But in a broader sense the book highlights that with all of us change is possible. We can succeed one day;fail the next.
We can appear heroic and in an instant appear otherwise.
The attention to these people deemed heroes, mostly men, paid to them as a homage to history in the form of a statue should be frozen in time and then used for reflection and debate on both their good and bad qualities. Their examples should be instructive to us as we try to overcome adversities and the challenges of life.
The restoration of the Onate statue should be seen and used as a starting point for teaching all of us, old and young alike, lessons about our history. There should be lectures and discussions for our knowledge. Once civil discourse takes place, we can decide for ourselves, make up our own minds, about who is hero and who is not. All men and women have strong, admirable qualities and then also embody weaknesses, human frailty, and other foibles which render us nothing more than “human.”
The restoration of the Onate statue as a place to rest should offer a time for thoughtful debate and reflection on ourselves and on the course of history and the fate of heroes. We cannot rewrite the history, but we also do not have to repeat it.