Tag Archives: conquest

Culpability

This is my last month in Durham, North Carolina. I’m preparing to move west to Taos, NM on May 6, 2021, if all goes forward as planned. Last week, I walked to Maplewood Cemetery and around the historic tobacco town filled with renovated warehouses, factories and storefronts. Each step is a reminiscence of my 21 years living in North Carolina, and in the American south since 1989. This blog post is about intersections between past, present and future. It is about culpability: the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the American southwest. It is about indigenous and enslaved peoples. It is about redemption, making restitution, and guarding our democracy. It is about Oaxaca, too, as I look forward to the arrival from Teotitlan del Valle of my goddaughter Janet Chavez Santiago who will travel with me on this road trip. On her arrival from Mexico, I will get her vaccinated so she doesn’t have to wait until March 2022 for her age category.

As I walked Maplewood Cemetery, 120 acres at the intersection of Kent and Morehead Streets, I saw familiar names of families that had built this town interred here: Julian Carr who trademarked “Bull Durham and whose tombstone is inscribed with Veteran of the Confederacy. Here, too, lay philanthropist Mary Duke Biddle, Dr. Bartlett Durham, and Brodie Duke, eldest son of Duke University founder Washington Duke. As I walked, it jumped out at me: Where are Black people buried? Maplewood was established in 1872 during Jim Crow. There would be no Black graves here.

This is when I found Greer Cemetery, established in 1877, on four acres embracing the graves of at least 1,500 African Americans, many born into slavery. It was the first Durham cemetery for Blacks. So, I went to visit in tribute to the region where I have lived, respecting the Black Lives Matter movement, the acknowledgement that civil society enacts horrific crimes in self-protection of social, political and economic interests. I wandered the old carriage path and diverged onto ground uneven and softened with unmarked graves. I wanted to honor the diversity and voices of past, present and future. And, I wanted to mark the travesty of current voting rights restrictions enacted by 43 state legislatures across the USA now, in April 2021. We know that separate is not equal — this is another perfect example.

This visit caused me to think about culpability — the question of who is responsible for wrong-doing or failure, who is to blame, who is at fault, who accepts moral responsibility for transgressions past and current?

Which got me thinking about my life in Oaxaca among indigenous Zapotec people and their history of oppression and discrimination, and my future life in New Mexico where Native People’s have been abused and marginalized since the Spanish and U.S. conquests. This year, Mexico City marks its 500-year anniversary of the invasion by Spanish conquistadores and friars. We are in the middle of the George Floyd murder trial. So much and yet so little has improved.

Today, we celebrate spring, the emergence of new life flowering and green, as we move toward breaking down the barriers of isolation from Covid with 3 million jabs in arms daily, and the promise of travel to come soon. In doing so, let’s honor those who have passed to bring us to this day and be mindful to protect those who are vulnerable whose voices are muted or suppressed. It is up to us to be the difference.

Madrid, Morocco and Mexico: Conquest, Empire, Power and Religion

Madrid was my gateway city to and from Morocco. I planned two full days there on the way back for arts immersion.  (It wasn’t enough time!) What was quickly revealed were the inextricable links between Spain, Mexico and the Americas, and North Africa.  This last stop on my journey tied it all together.  Our histories are linked, intertwined, related.

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Flanking the entrance to the Palacio Real in Madrid are greater than life-size marble statues of Moctezuma, Mexico’s Aztec ruler (above right), and Atahualpa, Peru’s Inka king.  The conquest of Mexico and Peru provided Spain with extraordinary New World wealth and power including gold, silver, cochineal and labor.

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These sculptures acknowledge the subjugated people of Mexico and Peru on whose backs the Spanish Empire was built during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor and King Charles (Carlos) V.   The sculptures also represent Spanish religious will to convert the world to Catholicism through whatever means.  The Baroque 18th Century palace built by Phillip (Felipe) IV honors the role his grandfather King Charles played in empire building and solidifying his succession.

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At the beginning of the 16th Century, Spain defined herself as defender of orthodoxy.  At the same time as Cortes and Pisarro were funded to plunder and convert the Americas, the Spanish kings were coalescing territory and power on the Iberian Peninsula.  The Spanish Inquisition, started in 1492 by Ferdinand La Catolica and Isabel la Catolica (as they are known in Spain and Mexico), to purify Spain and purge her of Moslems and Jews, continued until 1834 and extended to Mexico and her territories in the American southwest.  At the same time, the growing Protestant movement promised to threaten traditional faith.

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As I walked the magnificent Palacio Real halls, grander than Versailles, surrounded by a collection of Renaissance art second only to Italy, handwoven Belgium tapestries, crystal chandeliers, sterling silver, gilded mirrors, and all the adornments of royalty, I could not stop thinking about the human cost to the indigenous peoples of the Americas to finance Habsburg Spain, European Machiavellian politics, and the Thirty Years War.

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Velazquez, Titian, Botecelli, Rubens, Hieronymus Bosch, Goya, Rafael and Tintoretto are only of the few artists commissioned and collected by Spanish monarchs and on exhibit at the Museo el Prado.  The collection in the Museo el Prado is extraordinary.  At the Palacio Real, I was able to see an exhibition open to the public for the first time of paintings decorating the walls of El Escorial, the monastery and mausoleum constructed as a religious retreat center by Phillip IV, located 45 miles from Madrid.

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When I returned to Hostal Don Juan — fabulous and affordable — I conveyed my experience to Juan Antonio.  He replied wistfully that Spain was once the most powerful country in the world.  Ah, yes, I said, things change, don’t they?  America is on the wane and now China takes her turn.  Then, I returned to my favorite tapas bar Mercado de la Reina, where locals sip great beer on tap and delicious red table wine starting at 11 a.m.

The Spanish may no longer be a world power, but they sure know how to live!

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