Researching Oñate: A Working Decolonial Bibliography

by Vanessa Fonseca Chávez, Ph.D. and Estevan Rael-Gálvez, Ph.D.

In 1901, 33 year old lawyer, Eusebio Chacón, already a noted orator, poet and New Mexico’s first novelist, rose to a platform before hundreds in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The crowd had gathered in protest of an inflammatory article by Nellie Snyder, a local missionary school teacher from Illinois, who had noted her aversion to Hispano Catholicism and had articulated a notion that Nuevomexicanos were part Spanish and part Indian, resembling their ancestors in every way. The organizers of the event invited the man who had already begun to research and write about New Mexico history and knew he had the capacity in speech to counter the slight. …

Juneteenth is one of the oldest recognized celebrations commemorating an end to slavery. I learned about it as an undergraduate student with friends who wanted me to know the story and why it mattered. I listened then and have continued to learn. It should serve as a moment of reflection for all of us.

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to deliver General Order №3, proclaiming the emancipation of the enslaved African Americans. In theory freedom had already been granted two and a half years earlier by presidential order through the Emancipation Proclamation. …

I learned from an early age that wisdom sits in places, particularly those places where the stories and people have imbued it with presence and meaning. Savannah, Georgia is special in this way. Layered with history, it is spectacularly beautiful and enchanting. Adding creativity to an already inspired place, the presence of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) has, since its founding created an energetic pulse here, adding tremendous vibrancy and creative promise. …

Recently, I had the opportunity to watch Pixar’s new animated film Coco. Seeing the reflection of a deep, profound and beautiful heritage was meaningful and yet, mine have never been rose colored glasses. How Native Americans and Latinos are imagined and represented continues to be an issue in society. There were some uncomfortable moments for me, particularly in how Mictlan (Land of the Dead) was portrayed as a border town, where even for the dead producing identification and recognition continues to define the ability not only to cross, but to exist at all.

Although I have always endeavored to emphasize a critical remembering of the stories that have been and continue to be told about any marginalized communities, particularly those impacted by colonialism, this work is also always informed by a creative reimagining, where we must work to not only to recover and retell the stories of who we are, but to create new ones. In this way, in watching this film, I was drawn to the narrative focus — the power of memory as well as family trauma and intergenerational healing. …

“When it’s truly alive, memory doesn’t contemplate history, it invites us to make it.”— Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking –Glass World

Archives and museums have long served as sites that hold wisdom and the promise to awaken curiosity, imagination and memory. However, more than in buildings where treasures are placed in vaults and beneath glass, this promise also sits in both the tangible and intangible. Its richness is manifest in the natural and social landscape; retained in the names of mountains and trails; radiating from cityscapes onto dirt roads that touch agricultural lands, plazas, burial grounds, and deeper still, layered into the archaeology of ruins. Profoundly, it is also found in prayers, songs, language and perceived even in the dust rising from dances that have persisted for ages. …