Emotion vs. fact-based history serves no one
Jaima Chevalier’s (“Cultural harmony and social justice is the goal,” My View, July 9) use of “mythical” to describe Elmer Maestas’ (“‘Veiled Lightning’ and the full story of New Mexico,” My View, June 15) use of historical facts is an insult to all historians of the Southwest. Maestas didn’t pull his facts out of thin air, and with a mere investment of time and research, Chevalier would be able to identify those same records.
Instead, she cunningly attempts to parallel the Spanish in New Mexico to the U.S. Southern Confederacy in an effort to trigger emotion that has little basis in fact. Attempting to fit a historical event that is separate by centuries, geography and culture into the convenient box of the American Civil War is just poor analysis technique. It’s also an inadequate historical measure and an incitement of emotion rather than crafted out of research.
Contemporary people are often guilty of measuring the past with a modern moral and intellectual compass that has undeniably benefited from an aggregation of all the mistakes of the past. It may be a cliche, but hindsight being 20/20 rings true and also applies to the Pueblo Revolt.
The logic and assumption she conveys is that Americans have the right to tell the people of the Pueblos that their traditions, such as celebrating Catholic Feast days, are inherently bad because such celebrations come from the Spanish and are akin to celebrating monuments to the Confederacy.
I am troubled by this incorrect modern, emotion-based imagination of history pushing the agenda that Spanish introduced violence for the first time in Southwestern history. Look no further than Christy G. Turner II’s tangible archaeological data presented in his book, Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest, to contradict the perpetuated false Garden of Eden-esque, pre-Hispanic idea of the Puebloan peoples. The bottom line is that history is much more gray than black and white, as people like Chevalier will have you believe.