Unjust and strong against the weak

We are truly thankful for the op-ed commentary by E. Paul Torres, chairman of the All Pueblo Council of Governors (“Legacy of Manifest Destiny? Trauma and suffering,” Dec. 24), regarding New Mexico’s Public Education Department Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski’s inopportune remarks (“Education chief ’s talk of Manifest Destiny draws ire from pueblos,” Dec. 23) regarding Manifest Destiny, which led to a devastating war for Mexico and Southwestern Native Indians.

The lopsided Mexican-American War had dire consequences for Mexico, including the now U.S. states of New Mexico, Arizona and California, and all its citizens, including all the Native tribes within those areas. A century and a half prior to this war, fortunately, New Mexico’s native Pueblo Indians had made peace with the Spanish, and in most cases were living side by side and joining forces to fight off the still-warring Apache, Navajo and Ute tribes.

As the stronger U.S. Army invaders approached Santa Fe in 1846, New Mexico’s military commanders decided to surrender and avoid a certain slaughter of their mostly poorly armed, poorly trained and ill-equipped forces; many Spanish-Mexican fighters and their allied Pueblo warriors were armed only with bows, arrows and spears.

Just as fortunately, the Pueblos, then aligned with the Spanish-Mexicans, also escaped the torturous 1863 forced removal— known as the Long Walk — which ended with imprisonment at the Bosque Redondo reservation and had befallen the Mescalero Apache and Navajo tribes.

However, neither Pueblo Natives nor Spanish-Mexican fighters could escape the deadly consequences of the 1847 Taos Revolt, whereby Taos Pueblo warrior Tomasito spearheaded a short-lived revolt against the American occupiers, only to suffer losses of Spanish and Indian fighters, mostly due to heavy bombardments by the Americans’ six-pounder cannon. Most of these losses came for those who had taken refuge in the San Geronimo mission church; another 36 later died by hanging.

Thereafter, the Americans stole and/or misappropriated millions of acres of Indian and Spanish-Mexicans lands, causing devastating and long-lingering socio-economic losses. Thus, Ruszkowski should also recall the words of U.S. Gen. and later President Ulysses S. Grant: “For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure [annexation of Texas], and to this day regard the war [with Mexico], which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. This occupation, separation and annexation were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American union. Even if the annexation itself could be justified, the manner in which the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico cannot.”

Elmer Maestas is a Santa Fe resident, author and writer.