New Mexico Grapples with Its Version of Confederate Tributes: A Celebration of Spanish Conquest

For as long as nearly anyone here can remember, Hispanic residents have donned the garb of conquistadors and European nobility once a year to celebrate the 1692 reconquest of New Mexico from Native Americans who submitted to the Spanish Empire after a grisly revolt.

But after escalating protests by Native Americans who saw the re-enactment as a racist attempt to gloss over atrocities carried out by Spanish colonizers, the annual tradition known as the Entrada officially came to an end on Friday, replaced by a multidenominational prayer gathering to begin the annual Fiesta de Santa Fe.

The move, aimed at forging reconciliation in the 411-year-old city, was an attempt to avoid the kind of turmoil that authorities elsewhere in the country are grappling with over Confederate monuments and other symbols of historic brutality, including statues honoring European conquerors.

The end of the Entrada is rekindling debate over how to portray New Mexico’s complex history, marked by centuries of enslavement of Native Americans, military conquest by Spain and the United States and attempts to depict the state as a place where Hispanics, Native Americans and Anglos, or non-Hispanic whites, peacefully coexist.

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The Entrada, which translates roughly to “entry,” portrayed the reassertion of Spanish control in 1692 over New Mexico by the conquistador Don Diego de Vargas as a harmonious feat of colonial rule, in which Native peoples agreed to cease hostilities and yield to European rulers.

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The struggle for control of what was then one of the Spanish Empire’s most remote colonies still resonates in Santa Fe, where Hispanics account for 54 percent of a population of 84,000. Anglos comprise 40 percent of the population and Native Americans 2 percent, according to census figures.

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“We can’t forget our Spanish ancestors but we also need to understand the reaction that some traditions generate,” said Mr. Baca, 35, a school bus driver who portrayed De Vargas in the 2014 Entrada.

Mr. Baca contended that issues of ethnicity in New Mexico were often far more complex than outsiders understand, pointing to long traditions of intermarriage between different peoples. This applies to his own family: Mr. Baca is Hispanic but his wife and children are members of Pojoaque Pueblo, one of New Mexico’s six Tewa-speaking peoples, and they live on the pueblo’s lands.

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During Friday’s observances, Native American leaders recited prayers in the Santa Fe Plaza in the Keres and Tewa languages. A Roman Catholic priest spoke in Spanish and Latin, while Rabbi Neil Amswych, president of Santa Fe’s Interfaith Leadership Alliance, spoke in English about the need for reconciliation.

A handful of observers in the crowd quietly voiced opposition to the change. A local historian, Richard Polese, held aloft a sign proclaiming, “De Vargas Protected Pueblos’ Kiva Faith” and “Viva la Fiesta!”

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Nearby, Rachel Girón, who works in a dental office in California but grew up in Santa Fe, said she was pleased with the changes in the Fiesta. “If this means I can dance and sing with my Native brothers and sisters, then I’m all for it,” said Ms. Girón, 54. “The Fiesta is still as beautiful as ever.”

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{snip} Anglo merchants, clergymen and archaeologists created the Entrada in early decades of the 20th century largely to lure tourists to Santa Fe.

Anglos filled many of the conquistador roles in the celebration’s early years until Hispanics began supplanting them as both participants and organizers, the scholar Chris Wilson meticulously documents in his book “The Myth of Santa Fe.”

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Still, some have complained that the Entrada’s cancellation is emblematic of the many ways in which Hispanics have ceded economic and political power in Santa Fe to Anglos in recent years, to the point that many families who have hewed for generations to the city’s Hispanic traditions can no longer afford to live here.

“What happened to our city?” asked Ron Trujillo, a former City Council member, in a widely shared Facebook post. “It’s so easy to say any event does not conform to your thinking.”

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“Some of my ancestors were beheaded during the Pueblo Revolt,” said Mr. Rodriguez, 45, referring to the 1680 uprising by Native Americans in which more than 400 colonists were killed. “War is war and there’s nothing we can do about the past but learn from it. We don’t go to the Pueblos and protest on their land against their traditions.”

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Either way, the pageant’s end may also reflect how political power here is shifting. Tribes in the state are asserting greater economic sway, thanks largely to casino gambling revenues; the Democrat and community activist Deb Haaland is seeking to make history this year in her bid to be the first Native American woman elected to Congress.

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