Mural of colonial image ignites firestorm
Artwork commissioned for Teen Court program
Was Tomás Vélez Cachupín a compassionate protector of Native American lives and interests, or was he a harsh ruler who readily resorted to violence and slayings to preserve the Spanish people’s upper hand in a nascent New Mexico?
It may be up to a group of teens in trouble with the law to decide.
That may not be as inappropriate as some might think. After all, a mural that has ignited
controversy, being painted by artist Glen Strock on the wall of the Santa Fe County Human Resources Building at Solano Center on West Alameda, showed a 16-year-old Comanche boy on the ground with the Spaniard on horseback above him, sword pointed downward.
The Indian youth was among alleged raiders of his tribe who were being hunted down by Vélez Cachupín’s soldiers.
So, yeah, a 16-yearold in trouble with the law — Strock said he thought it was a good story to tell in the mural. It was commissioned by the county’s Teen Court program, whose participants have helped paint other murals around town instead of facing punitive sanctions. “I wanted to do something besides turquoise coyotes,” he said.
But after an explosion of criticism and defense, in print and on social media, erupted over that particular focus of the image, sword and supplicant, Strock whited it out.
The issue currently is in limbo, with program director Jennifer Romero saying it was decided from a public meeting in December that Teen Court participants should make the final decision on the image, and they’re awaiting proposed alternative designs from Strock.
The plan is to also have a core of adults review the teens’ choice or choices, and to then hold another public meeting to get input from the community — probably by the end of January, she said.
She sounded a little shell-shocked when talking to the Journal before the holidays about the controversy. The Teen Court mural project, which began in 2009, has completed some 11 images with little murmur of dissent from the public, she said.
So she wasn’t quite ready for the firestorm over this one.
“We’ve heard a whole spectrum of feedback,” Romero said, from ‘this is history, something that is our culture,’ all the way to ‘this is inappropriate, not a good image for the community.’”
“We value input,” she added. “Typically, all the murals get a lot of positive feedback. This one has had quite a bit of negative feedback.”
One woman who stopped by the mural while the Journal was visiting defended the mural, saying it speaks to local history. “It’s not pretty,” Joan Morales said, “but it’s what our history is... It’s life. You need to tell the whole story. You can’t cut out pieces, because you don’t learn.”
Consideration of revising the design, which was approved by the ones who commissioned it, is censorship, Strock’s wife, Alida Strock, said. “It’s a perfect image for Teen Court,” she added.
Subjugation or amnesty?
Glen Strock said he could understand why a casual observer might object to the image of the sword wielded from horseback toward an Indian boy on the ground. On the surface, it does carry a message of subjugation and violence. And, indeed, that is exactly what critics have seen in it.
But the story he was trying to tell, one Strock illustrated in a book by Malcolm Ebright, tells of amnesty that Vélez Cachupín, a colonial governor of New Mexico, was offering to Comanches who were surrounded in a marsh after a reported raid on the pueblo in Pecos. “It’s a beautiful story,” Strock said.
He said Vélez Cachupín stopped the bloody battle after the remaining raiders were cornered, and offered them amnesty if they would put down their weapons and surrender any slaves they kidnapped in the raid.
While most distrusted the offer, the badly injured boy eventually was the first to come forward, holding a cross woven from weeds and seeking mercy. Vélez Cachupín “received the boy with respect and love and embraced him,” Strock said. “When they (other Comanches) saw the kindness with which he was received, they respectively came out.”
Then again, when some eight remaining Comanches tried to break through the line of soldiers, three of them, including the chief, were killed, he added.
So it wasn’t all sweetness and light.
An article on the colonial governor written by Suzanne Stamatov on the website of the New Mexico Office of the State Historian relates that after initially ordering his soldiers to set fire to the reeds where the first group of Comanches were hidden and shoot anyone who moved, Cachpupín told them to stop when he heard women and children crying out. That’s when he offered to spare the lives of anyone who surrendered — but also threatened to kill anyone who didn’t, according to this telling. Of the 145 Comanches believed to be raiders, 49 were taken prisoner and the rest were dead.
Yet this version also portrayed Vélez Cachupín overall, in the tenor of the times, to be a pragmatic governor who found ways to seek peaceful relations with all area residents and thus create conditions for economic improvement.
“The courage and compassion he displayed at the Battle of San Diego Pond (the story referenced in the mural) earned him a reputation among the Comanches, Utes and Apaches that proved beneficial in maintaining peaceful ties,” Stamatov’s article states.
It also illustrates the complexities in New Mexico of the 1700s. It wasn’t black-and-white, Europeans versus Indians. The more settled Pueblo Indians and mestizos often sought Spanish protection from the attacks and raids by the more mobile tribes, sometimes fighting together against Comanches and others. Vélez Cachupín built earthworks and towers and stationed some troops at pueblos in Pecos and Galisteo to help defend the Indians there from raiders, according to a National Parks Service online history.
Deep divisions brought into open
Ultimately, the controversy reflects deep divisions and resentments that simmer not far beneath the surface in Santa Fe: Anglos versus Hispanics versus Native Americans, newcomers versus residents with generational roots, rich versus working class, liberals versus conservatives.
“There is a lot of pain in our community,” Strock said, with a mixture of regret at the vitriol directed against him and hope that bringing discussions out into the open will help heal some of the divisions. “This is what the community needs,” he said of open discussion. “If we do not learn history, we’ll be forced to repeat it.”
Morales, who said she is a fifth generation Santa Fean, with her nieces and nephews and their children constituting the sixth and seventh, reflected the resentment against newcomers to the community trying to dictate its practices.
Of the people objecting to the mural’s image, she said, “Where are they from? Are they local? If you don’t like it, don’t look at it. If you don’t like the history of New Mexico, maybe you shouldn’t be here.”
Alida Strock suggested that some outspoken critics had a vendetta against her husband for some work he did in the Legislature; Glen Strock said he didn’t want to get into that subject, but she likely was referring to his outspoken opposition to bills supporting samesex marriage. Strock is pastor of the Pecos Valley Cowboy Church.
But he also is a talented muralist, and Romero said she invited him to paint the project on the Alameda Street wall after she saw the mural he painted in La Familia Medical Center just across the river on Alto Street. “It’s amazing. It’s very cultural. That’s where I heard of Glen,” she said.
Ultimately, Strock said, he would like to incorporate a window of the county building into an image of a ruin, with a riot of colorful flowers growing up and around it, leading toward a break in the clouds that showed peoples of all heritages coming together in harmony.