Onate's Missing Foot

Onate's Missing Foot

Visual Literacy

This is a picture of Renaldo Rivera’s monument to Juan de Onate, sometimes referred to as the ‘the last conquistador’, in Alcalde, New Mexico. This monument is one of a few dispersed around New Mexico and Texas, which were built around 1998 to commemorate 400 years of settlement since 1598 “New Mexico’s Cuarto Centanario”. Historically this monument touches on many socially charged issues although its original intent served to glorify a narrative that often is often skipped over, Spanish settlement specifically. The monuments to Juan de Onate fail to accomplish their intended goals because Hispanic heritage doesn’t rely on conquistadors in the same way that American culture interacts/identifies with pilgirms/thanksgiving. Additionally Onate is a problematic figure to memorialize heroically because his brutal use of fire and sword to control the American southwest in the 16th century had him removed and exiled as a Spanish colonial governor. Juan De Onate killed 800 Acoma and then enslaved the survivors, of what had been a population of 6,000. Men over the age of 25 were to have their right foot cut off as an additional discouragement. This monument is inseparable from the events of the Acoma Massacre and that explains why in Alcalde NM, the group “Friends of Acoma” severed the right foot of the Juan de Onate statue in 1997 to acknowledge what this heroic portrayal conceals.
This photo is of the statue before Rivera replaced the foot. Monuments are a focal point for discussing meaning and visual literacy because of the importance context.

Renaldo Rivera

Mike Schmitt

3/1/20

Still Image

Monument