Monumental Discourses: Sculpting Juan de Oñate from the Collected Memories of the American Southwest Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät IV – Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften – der Universität Regensburg wieder vorgelegt von Juliane Schwarz-Bierschenk aus Freudenstadt Freiburg, Juni 2014 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Udo Hebel Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Volker Depkat CONTENTS PROLOGUE I PROSPECT 2 II CONCEPTS FOR READING THE SOUTHWEST: MEMORY, SPATIALITY, SIGNIFICATION 7 II.1 CULTURE: TIME (MEMORY) 8 II.1.1 MEMORY IN AMERICAN STUDIES 9 II.2 CULTURE: SPATIALITY (LANDSCAPE) 13 II.2.1 SPATIALITY IN AMERICAN STUDIES 14 II.3 CULTURE: SIGNIFICATION (LANDSCAPE AS TEXT) 16 II.4 CONCEPTUAL CONVERGENCE: THE SPATIAL TURN 18 III.1 UNITS OF INVESTIGATION: PLACE – SPACE – LANDSCAPE III.1.1 PLACE 21 III.1.2 SPACE 22 III.1.3 LANDSCAPE 23 III.2 EMPLACEMENT AND EMPLOTMENT 25 III.3 UNITS OF INVESTIGATION: SITE – MONUMENT – LANDSCAPE III.3.1 SITES OF MEMORY 27 III.3.2 MONUMENTS 30 III.3.3 LANDSCAPES OF MEMORY 32 IV SPATIALIZING AMERICAN MEMORIES: FRONTIERS, BORDERS, BORDERLANDS 34 IV.1 LANDSCAPES OF MEMORY I: THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT 39 IV.1.1 THE TRI-ETHNIC MYTH 41 IV.2 LANDSCAPES OF MEMORY II: HOMELANDS 43 IV.2.1 HISPANO HOMELAND 44 IV.2.2 CHICANO AZTLÁN 46 IV.3 LANDSCAPES OF MEMORY III: BORDER-LANDS 48 V FROM THE SOUTHWEST TO THE BORDERLANDS: LANDSCAPES OF AMERICAN MEMORIES 52 MONOLOGUE: EL PASO AND THE TWELVE TRAVELERS 57 I COMING TO TERMS WITH EL PASO 60 I.1 PLANNING ‘THE CITY OF THE NEW OLD WEST’ 61 I.2 FOUNDATIONAL MYTHS: OÑATE CROSSING THE RIO GRANDE 63 I.2.1 NARRATORS: MAKING EL PASO HISTORY 64 I.2.2 PROTAGONIST: DON JUAN DE OÑATE 66 I.2.3 KEY EVENT: LA TOMA DE POSESION 67 II I.2.4 REENACTMENT: MIXING MEMORIES IN ‘THE FIRST THANKSGIVING’ 70 I.3.1 SURVIVING ON THE RIO GRANDE: COLONIAL SETBACKS 72 I.3.2 REDEFINING THE RIO GRANDE: NINETEENTH-CENTURY TRANSFORMATIONS 74 I.3.3 RE-MEMBERING EL PASO: FACING DECLINE 76 II THE XII TRAVELERS MEMORIAL OF THE SOUTHWEST: A DISCOURSE ON RENEWAL THROUGH PUBLIC ART 79 II.1.1 1982-1988: URBAN RENEWAL THROUGH PUBLIC ART? 80 II.1.2 1988-1990: FROM ENTHUSIASM TO CONTROVERSY 84 II.1.3 1988-1992: CONTROVERSY WITHIN THE ARTS COMMUNITY 88 II.1.4 1990-1992: COLUMBUS APPROACHING 91 II.2.1 1992-1998: “PICK THE RIGHT TWELVE TRAVELERS TO STAND DOWNTOWN” 92 II.2.2 OÑATE APPROACHING 96 II.3.1 1998-2007: NO PLACE FOR OÑATE? 98 II.3.2 2003: THE EQUESTRIAN – IN ORDER TO TELL THE FULL STORY? 103 III SIZES OF MEMORY: THE ART AND POLITICS OF JOHN HOUSER 106 III.1 TWELVE/XII TRAVELERS 107 III.2.1 AN ARTIST’S FORMATION: JOHN HOUSER’S FIGURAL WESTERN NEO-REALISM 110 III.2.2 AN ARTIST’S VISION: JOHN HOUSER’S MONUMENTALISM AND ‘ICONICITY’ 112 III.2.3 AN ARTIST’S AESTHETIC: SIZE OF MEMORY 114 III.2.4 AN ARTIST’S PERSONA: REENACTING GUTZON BORGLUM 117 IV TOWARDS A DIALOGIC PERSPECTIVE? 120 DIALOGUE: ALCALDE AND A MISSING FOOT 123 I.1.1 HISTORICAL PRELIMINARIES: SETTING THE STAGE FOR OÑATE 125 I.1.2 OÑATE IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO: CREATING A NEW-WORLD LANDSCAPE OF MEMORY 126 I.1.3 ARRIVAL AND CONFLICT 127 I.1.4 OÑATE’S DEMISE 129 I.2.1 OÑATE IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO: END OF A JOURNEY? 131 I.2.2 OÑATE IN RIO ARRIBA COUNTY: LOCATING MEMORIES IN THE LANDSCAPE 132 II BETWEEN RE-ENACTMENT AND RESISTANCE: THE ONATE MONUMENT AND VISITORS CENTER 135 II.1 HISTORY OF PROTEST: RESORTING TO DIFFERENT INSTRUMENTS OF POWER 139 II.2 THE OMVC AS A USABLE SPACE 143 II.3 FROM PLACELESSNESS TO LANDSCAPES OF HOME 146 II.4 HISPANO HOMELAND 147 III III RE-DEFINING ‘HERITAGE’ AT OMVC: LANDSCAPES OF RESISTANCE AND REDEMPTION 151 III.1 LANDSCAPE OF REDEMPTION: COMMEMORATING THE CAMINO REAL 152 III.2 LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE: COMMEMORATING HISPANIC LAND GRANTS 153 IV SEARCHING FOR DIALOGUE WITH THE PAST: AUTHENTICITY AND AMBIVALENCE IN THE OÑATE CUARTOCENTENARIO 156 IV.1.1 HISPANIC PRECEDENCE 157 IV.1.2 ANCESTRAL TIES 158 IV.1.3 HISTORIC EVIDENCE 159 IV.1.4 SYMBOLIC REPLICATION 161 IV.1.5 AUTHENTICITY AT OMVC 165 IV.2 AMBIVALENCE AT OMVC 166 IV.2.1 OÑATE’S AMBIVALENCE 166 IV.2.2 “IT’S TIME TO TELL THE OTHER STORY” 169 IV.2.3 COMPLICATING THE OTHER STORY: HISPANICS’ AMBIVALENCE 171 IV.3 FROM MONOLOGUE TO DIALOGUE IN OÑATE COMMEMORATION 174 IV.4 FROM EVENT TO PROCESS 175 IV.5 FROM EXCEPTIONALIST SPACE TO COMMON GROUND 176 TRIALOGUE: ALBUQUERQUE AND THREE ARTISTS 180 I ENCIRCLING THE MEMORIES OF THREE CULTURES 181 I.1 1997-1998: MILLIE SANTILLANES PROPOSES A MONUMENT 184 I.2 1998: THE ARTS BOARD COMMISSIONS A MEMORIAL 185 I.3 1998: THE OÑATE CONTROVERSY ARRIVES IN ALBUQUERQUE 189 I.4 1999: NEW MEXICO WITHOUT OÑATE? 190 I.5 1999: DESIGN COMPROMISE 192 I.6 2000: TOWARDS RESOLUTION 195 II POSITIONING HISTORY AND MEMORY IN ALBUQUERQUE: BETWEEN OLD TOWN AND BARRIO 197 II.2 COLLIDING CONCEPTS OF SPACE 200 III SEEKING THE TRIALOGIC: THE ENDS OF (NOT) COMMEMORATING OÑATE 202 III.1 PERSONAL CRUSADES FOR SPANISH HERITAGE 203 III.2 THE STAKES OF IDENTITY 208 III.2.1 HISPANIC AGAINST PUEBLO? 211 III.3 THE CUARTOCENTENARIO AS MONUMENT/MEMORIAL 214 III.4 THE CUARTOCENTENARIO AS PUBLIC ART 218 IV III.5 RETURNING MEMORY: PUBLIC ART FOR ALL NEW MEXICANS 219 EPILOGUE 223 TRAJECTORIES: TOWARDS COMMON GROUND ON CONTESTED TERRAIN 230 ILLUSTRATIONS 234 REFERENCES 248 ABBREVIATIONS Organizations and Institutions: NM HCPL New Mexico Hispanic Culture Preservation League OMVC Oñate Monument and Visitors Center, Alcalde, NM UTEP University of Texas at El Paso PDNG Paso del Norte Group XII TVC XII Travelers Volunteer Committee SWOP Southwest Organizing Project TIF Tax Increment Financing Newspapers: AJ Albuquerque Journal AT Albuquerque Tribune CRM Cultural Resource Management EPT El Paso Times EPHP El Paso Herald-Post LJN La Jicarita News: A Community Advocacy Newspaper for Northern NM NYT New York Times SFNM Santa Fe New Mexican V PROLOGUE I PROSPECT Think of the past as space expanding infinitely beyond our vision … Then we choose a prospect. […] Now we map what we see, marking some features, ignoring others, altering an unknown territory … into a finite collection of landmarks made meaningful through their connections. History is not the past, but a map of the past drawn from a particular point of view to be useful to the modern traveler. (Henry Glassie, epigraph to Meinig 1998) The present study maps the New Mexican past by drawing meaningful connections between three monument projects dedicated to the commemoration of ‘Spanish’ conquistador don Juan de Oñate. During the Cuartocentenario of 1998, when the state of New Mexico celebrated the 400th anniversary of the ‘arrival’ of Spanish colonists in 1598 with reenactments, community celebrations, cultural and academic events, the Oñate monuments emerged as symbolic landmarks of regional history, encasing four hundred years of the Hispanic experience in New Mexico in the memorable image of the conquistador. The monuments are physical landmarks in the territory of present-day New Mexican society, they connect the border metropolis of El Paso, TX, with the city of Albuquerque in central New Mexico and with the village of Alcalde in New Mexico’s rural north along the axis of the historic Camino Real. First and foremost, they promote a Hispanic revision of New Mexican history which – considering their setting in the multiethnic spaces of lived experience in New Mexico – provoked enduring controversy about commemorating Oñate. As much as the historical revision threatened to silence further regional memories, the controversy about it tended to distract from the complexities of the New Mexican past. As a matter of fact, the monuments evoke the spatial and socio-cultural transformations following Spanish conquest, U.S. American annexation, and Anglo American cultural reinvention of New Mexico. Owing to these evocations, on the surface New Mexico’s Oñate monuments display perspectives on the past embraced by the Hispanic community and represent their attempts at constructing a shared identity. Yet at second sight, the various interpretations of the regional past that crystallize and compete with each other at New Mexico’s Oñate sites reveal a collection of (conflicting) memories that originate in different, yet overlapping spatial imaginations that inform the perception of New Mexico as a (part of a larger) cultural region. Monumental Discourses: Sculpting Juan de Oñate from the Collected Memories of the American Southwest looks at the establishment of the sites and investigates the so-called Oñate controversy for the various motivations of the monument makers. It argues that the commemoration and monumentalization of Oñate 2 together with the controversy about his historic merit contribute to remaking the landscapes of memory that constitute regional and ethnic identities in New Mexico today, irrespective of state lines and national boundaries. It investigates the monuments as localized representations of American identities, intended to function as sites of memory in geographical spaces which have become topoi of Anglo, Hispanic and Native American discourse. Owing to the subject matter of the sites under investigation, colonial Spanish history, and the eloquent advocacy for the projects on the part of Oñate proponents, the Hispanic voice will emerge as dominant in this study. Yet the analysis of the controversies surrounding Oñate demonstrates that the Hispanic voice has been under challenge from many positions within the complex, contested terrain of histories and identities in New Mexico. ‘Hispanic’ is used as U.S. census terminology since 1980, an outside ascription commensurate with my own position as an outside observer.