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Juan de Oñate and the legacy of white supremacy in New Mexico
The controversy surrounding Española’s celebration of Juan de Oñate recently boiled over when a coalition of community activists and Indigenous rights groups demanded that representations of Oñate be removed from the city’s annual parade. This demand prompted an outcry from a small, but vocal segment of New Mexico’s white hispano community, who saw it as an existential threat to their cherished fiestas.
The thing is, very few people have a problem with commemorating the events that led to the establishment of communities in northern New Mexico. The history is well documented of how these communities were settled by a handful of Spaniards accompanied by a large number of Indios Mexicanos. It is the insistence that these fiestas serve as a platform for celebrating Juan de Oñate that people take issue with. Hell, the majority of people who live in Española don’t seem to have a problem with working out some sort of compromise.
So…why would anyone be opposed to celebrating Juan de Oñate, you might ask?
For starters, he was a career criminal who was tried and convicted of rape, murder, and theft — crimes for which he was exiled from the state of New Mexico for life. In fact, Oñate was such a shitty leader that 2/3 of the Spanish colonists he led to New Mexico deserted his settlement and fled…
