Memory and memorialization

The first three essays discussed here, by Elizabeth Archuleta, Kathy Freise, and Phillip B. Gonzales, all deal with the subjectivity of memory and, by extrapolation, history. Archuleta’s “History Carved in Stone” discusses and analyzes national (nationalistic?) monuments and their significance and often enduring contradictions. Mount Rushmore, with its quasi-likenesses of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, symbolizes “independence, the nation’s birth, territorial expansion, national unity, and the ‘equality’ for all citizens” (317-8). Yet she is quite right to point out that Mount Rushmore is not far from the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre—something U.S. History scholars should be more attuned to. The crux of her argument entails discussion of the ways in which Don Juan de Onate and Po’Pay, the conqueror of New Mexico and leader of the Pueblo revolt, respectively, have been remembered and continue to be memorialized. As she claims, traditional historical narratives “ask us to forget past violence, but American Indians cannot overlook the historical events that forever transformed their lives” (325). How, then, to understand a history forged from a non-consensual encounter (if you’ll forgive the clinical phrasing)?

A similar problem runs through the articles by Freise and Gonzales, who both discuss New Mexico’s “Cuartocentenario Controversy.” How to memorialize Onate and the Indians he brutalized? Was such an approach feasible or possible? As Freise phrases it, “Can the story that those who shaped the memorial were asked to tell…be told without the lead character, whether hero or villain?” Her question is prescient, and probably unanswerable, since even if the main character is deleted form the scene, a generic “Spaniard” or “Spaniards” will remain, and remain controversial. Of particular worth in her article, moreover, is her analysis of the distinction between  memorial and a monument. She memorably terms this “codes of remembrance” (243). Monuments, so she argues (and I agree) mark victories; memorials are more elegiac, and perhaps more subjective in their effect. Memorials, ideally, “point to the tension of the past that seeps into the present and taps into the instability of memory itself” (246). Gonzales’ essay articulates the inherent tension in the Cuartocentenario situation more forcefully. “For centuries,” he writes, “American Indians suffered both hostility in being considered vestiges of the uncivilized ‘savage’ and condescension in being connected to the quaintly primitive” (211). Given this traditional hostility, how does one explain ethnic and cultural diversity? On the one hand, diversity is, publicly at least, one of the most celebrated attributes—nothing is more politically correct right now than diversity. And yet, that diversity came about through violence and rape both literal and figurative. “To glorify Onate,” he writes, “it was necessary to leave major episodes of his story aside” (214). The message is clear: history with purposeful omissions cannot be true history. Pro-Onate advocates speak of the benefits brought by the Spanish to the region. The same, of course, has been said about the positive attributes of the European colonization of Africa.

Alfredo Jimenez’s article about the same celebrations perhaps best expresses the difficulty of approaching a topic (or milestone) from sharply contrasting worldviews. As Jimenez claims, the rise of the Spanish American empire was a tremendous thing, and Onate was undeniably in a world of rapid transformation—a situation he was able to manipulate for his own personal goals and gain. At the same time, however, the Native Americans in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres were not biding their time in an idyllic paradise. “[W]arfare, conquest, and subjugation were the rule throughout the western hemisphere…” (111). Yet he is not, as I se it, an apologist. “History and centennials,” he writes, “do not have to wait until the present for the trial of Don Juan de Onate” (121). The so-called “last conquistador” was himself tried in Mexico City and obliged for forfeit his titles and a substantial part of his riches.

For the indigenous peoples, the sixteenth (and seventeenth, and eighteenth) centuries were marked by fear and uncertainty. For the Europeans, those years represented the pinnacle of progress. Perhaps the best way to examine the tumultuous time is to recognize that all historical actors are products of their environment. Furthermore, it is not the historian’s job to condemn (or condone) the actions of people in the past, but to explain them on their own terms (without excusing their often heinous actions). Is it possible to remember without potentially controversial memorials? Probably not, but centennial celebrations do seem to cause more anxiety than understanding, and more agitation than education.

Rigoberta Menchu certainly seems to think so. Regarding the 1992 Quincentenary, for example, she claims, convincingly, that “A just evaluation of history seems to have been set aside.” Persuasively, she argues that milestones such as these need not be automatic celebrations, but rather evaluations of historical events. Of course, whether one can summon up the energy to do so without a hero is another question. Novelist Maria Vagas Llosa expounds upon this educational, rather than celebratory, approach. (I think she uses her history professor, Raul Porras Barrenechea, to good effect here.) How to understand the fall of the Inca, one of the few civilizations in world history to eliminate hunger from its population? Llosa argues that it cannot be done without a comprehensive understanding of who the Tawantinsuyu were and what comprised their worldviews. When the Inca himself was killed, given the “vertical and totalitarian structure” of their society, the Tawantinsuyu believed they had no choice but to die (albeit heroically, as Llosa notes). Despite their genius at organization, she claims, the stregth of the society was misleading. They were not capable of “facing the unexpected.” But, again, how should historians judge the fall of the indienous Peruvian empire, given that it was a totalitarian state, and its fall opened the way for the individual? Given the enduring poverty and hunger in modern-day Peru, Llosa leaves little question as to where she stands on the issue.