By Aaron Miller-
A man was shot on Monday night as protesters in New Mexico’s largest city tried to tear down a bronze statue of a Spanish conquistador outside the Albuquerque Museum.
The shooting followed a confrontation which erupted between protesters and a group of armed men who were trying to protect the statue of Juan de Oñate before protesters wrapped a chain around it and began tugging on it while chanting: “Tear it down,” as one protester repeatedly swung a pickaxe at the base of the statue.
After a second man opened fire to fend off a group of armed men who confronted the protesters outside Albuquerque Museum, the shooting drama began.
Sensitivities over monuments linked to colonialism have been a big issue in the U.S and The U.K since the shooting of George Floyd.
Albuquerque police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said police used teargas and flash bangs to protect the officers who intervened and detained those involved in the shooting.
“The shooting tonight was a tragic, outrageous and unacceptable act of violence and it has no place in our city,” the mayor, Tim Keller, said in a statement. “Our diverse community will not be deterred by acts meant to divide or silence us. Our hearts go out to the victim, his family and witnesses whose lives were needlessly threatened tonight. This sculpture has now become an urgent matter of public safety.”
The Democrat governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, issued a statement criticising the armed individuals, saying they were there to menace protesters. She said no matter who strikes first, there would be no room in New Mexico for any sort of escalation of what she called “reckless, violent rhetoric”.
Hours earlier, activists in northern New Mexico had forced the removal of another likeness of Oñate that was on public display at a cultural centre in the community of Alcalde.
Bystanders celebrated the statute’s removal, a memorial they consider an insult to indigenous people and
County manager Tomas Campos said the statue was placed in storage for its own protection. He expects the three-member county commission to solicit public comment on what to do next with the public works project commissioned by the state in the early 1990s. “This is public property and I’m not going to allow it to be damaged,” Campos said. “Plus, I don’t feel like risking my sheriff’s deputies or state police to defend it.”
The Oñate statues have been criticised for decades.
Oñate arrived in New Mexico in 1598 and is celebrated as a major figure in communities along the Upper Rio Grande, but is also despised for his brutality.
Oñate is known for having ordered the right feet of 24 captive tribal warriors to be cut off after the killing of Oñate’s nephew. In 1998, someone sawed the right foot off the statue.
Luis Peña of Espanola, an artist and computer network engineer, started a public petition last week to remove the statue in Alcalde. He said he was heartened to see it taken off display.
Removal of the statue was followed by a few heated roadside discussions about local colonial history, under the gaze of a half-dozen sheriff’s deputies.
By Monday evening, dozens had joined a celebratory gathering with Native American dancing and drumming outside the cultural centre where demonstrators left hand prints in red paint on the empty statue pedestal.
Monuments to European conquerors and colonists around the world are being pulled down amid an intense re-examination of racial injustices in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police.