http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Pasatiempo/One-culture-s-Washington--anoth
er-s-Genghis-Khan

One culture's Washington, another's Genghis Khan

Robert Nott | 7/24/2008 - 7/25/08

Not all art designed to do good does good — at least, not for everybody.
That point is underscored by The Last Conquistador, a roughly one-hour
documentary about the controversy incited by Santa Fe sculptor John
Sherrill Houser's mammoth bronze monument to Juan de Oņate at the El Paso
International Airport in Texas. The Last Conquistador is scheduled to air
on the PBS series P.O.V. at 8 p.m. Thursday, July 31, on KNME-TV Channel 5.
Though the show played on many public-television stations earlier this
month, KNME held it up so the station could broadcast a special episode of
its discussion series New Mexico in Focus in tandem with the documentary.

The idea wasn't to glorify any of these individuals — it was to use them as
captions to history. — John Houser, Santa Fe sculptor

In 1997, Houser set out to sculpt the largest equestrian statue ever made.
The work stands 42 feet (including the 6-foot base) and depicts Oņate
clutching La Toma in one hand, astride a tall steed that is rearing up as
if to suggest the rider means business. La Toma was a formal proclamation
that Oņate was taking the land north of the Río Grande in the name of
Spain. In 1598, Oņate forged north from Mexico into El Paso and eventually
into what is now New Mexico.

El Paso's city leaders saw Houser's efforts as an opportunity to create a
public-art display that would revitalize the downtown area and attract
tourists. Some Hispanics saw the work as a paean to a man who brought
culture and civilization to the region. "He is my hero," a Hispanic
supporter of the Oņate statue says in the film. "He was way ahead of his
time."

Some Native Americans viewed the project as an insensitive tribute to a man
who initiated a holocaust against their people. Oņate ordered his soldiers
to cut one foot off of every man over 25 at Acoma Pueblo after he conquered
the village. Activist and artist Maurus Chino of Acoma — another interview
subject — called Oņate a "figure of genocide."

Yet others — including historian Marc Simmons, a Santa Fean who is
interviewed in the film — see Oņate as the father of this state. "He was
the founder of Albuquerque, the founder of Santa Fe, the founder of New
Mexico," Simmons said in a phone interview. "We all live under the
influence of that, and it's important to remember that."

The film mainly follows Houser's artistic journey as he finds himself
caught in what he acknowledges was a trap of his own making. It all
started, he said in an interview in a Santa Fe restaurant, when he offered
to adorn downtown El Paso (where he lived for a time) with 12 sculptures of
historical figures. The first was of Fray García de San Francisco, a
missionary to Manso and Suma Indians in the region, and other suggested
subjects included Santa Fe Trail diarist Susan Shelby Magoffin, Mexican
revolutionary Pancho Villa, and Lozen, a female Apache warrior of the
1880s.

"Anybody who had anything to do with the founding of the Southwest came
through El Paso to the north," Houser said. "Each figure would represent a
period of history. The idea wasn't to glorify any of these individuals — it
was to use them as captions to history."

The project, first pitched to the city of El Paso in 1988, was titled the
XII Travelers Memorial of the Southwest, which also became the name of the
nonprofit set up to raise money for Houser's proposed sculptures. The city
approved the project and kicked in some seed money, Houser said, but only
for the first two sculptures. City leaders had a wait-and-see attitude,
Houser noted, while he took an if-I-build-it, they-will-like-it approach.
Houser, it might be argued, wanted to make something that would put him in
the record books.

[Houser] was so focused on making his own place in history that he was
blind to the social implications of his work. — filmmaker Christina Ibarra

The 14-foot Fray García sculpture, located in Pioneer Plaza in downtown El
Paso, came off without a hitch. Not so with Oņate. Though the documentary's
timeline is sketchy, a January 2002 article in The New York Times reported
that Houser's work "sparked demonstrations." Houser was then building the
bronze memorial just outside Mexico City, because his El Paso studio wasn't
large enough to house it. While in Mexico, he said, he suffered a serious
car accident (he escaped uninjured) and had to deal with a contractor who
refused to finish building the studio, crooked lawyers, and a jealous
artistic rival who showed up at the studio wielding a pistol ("He resented
the horse — it was bigger than anything he'd ever done.")

The Times piece attracted P.O.V. documentarians Cristina Ibarra and John
Valadez, who approached Houser with the idea of filming his saga. "The
controversy was, of course, a part of the story, but I was expecting the
focus to be more on building the horse, perhaps because that's where my
focus was," Houser explained.

Speaking by phone, Ibarra, who described herself as a mestiza born in El
Paso, said, "When I first started the film, I didn't know what to expect. I
was taken with John and his mission as an artist. I was probably looking
for someone to point my finger at and blame. ... I thought he was on a
really dramatic journey. I saw the work he was involved in and how he
created a universe for himself. He didn't live in reality. There were all
these huge body parts and carcasses. It was an oversized hangar studio; the
horse barely fit in there. I could see how he was really far removed from
the community he was representing — my community."

As the film shows, progress was challenged by Houser's fear of
glaucoma-induced blindness. For Valadez, it was a turning point in shaping
a theme for the film: "His [Houser's] problem was he was so focused on
making his own place in history that he was blind to the social
implications of his work. His own hubris was his downfall. It's the Greeks
all over again."

As it turns out, Houser didn't go blind ("I don't have glaucoma; it was
misdiagnosed," he explained), but as the film relates, he lacked the
insight to understand the emotional response to his work. The documentary
suggests that the artist is a modern-day Oņate in terms of his
single-minded determination to do what he felt was right for himself, and
maybe El Paso, despite public outcry.

It was going up no matter what anybody did. It's a sad commentary on our
political society. — Maurus Chino, Acoma artist and activist

The Last Conquistador suggests that the sculpture cost about $1 million in
taxpayer funds. Not so, said Jody Schwartz, a former board member of the
XII Travelers nonprofit who was in charge of fundraising. "We raised
$1,263,000," she said by phone. "That was 65 percent of the budget for the
monument. About 35 percent came from the airport."

At one point, the documentary showcases a fundraising soiree at which
miniature Oņate models sell for $5,000. The camera focuses on one partygoer
who acknowledges the controversy over honoring the conquistador: "He killed
people, and etc., etc.," the man says over cocktails.

Money aside, as the documentary shows, the City Council, which initially
supported Houser, began to have second thoughts after protesters led by
Chino showed up at a public meeting to urge the city to stop the project.
Speaking by phone, Chino said he got a call from the P.O.V. filmmakers
tipping him off to the project.

"They heard about a protest I was doing regarding Oņate commemorations in
the state [New Mexico]," he said. "They told me about the statue in El
Paso, and that's the first I heard of it. It was already so well funded and
backed by politicians. We didn't know what we were up against; it was money
and power. But we protested anyway."

Ibarra said she and Valadez contacted Chino because they felt his reaction
to Houser's work was relevant. His appearance in the documentary gives the
film a shot of conflict-driven adrenaline.

That protest surprised both the council members and members of the New
Mexican Hispanic Culture Preservation League, who appear to support Houser
in the documentary. Racial divisions deepened as both sides became
entrenched in their positions. "To say, 'You shouldn't have come here' —
Well, you know what? They did come; get over it," the league's president
emeritus Conchita Lucero acidly notes in the film. "I don't care what
happened 400 years ago in my own ancestry," Houser said in the interview.

This statue certainly has gotten people talking. No, it hasn't gotten them
talking; it's created a situation where people are yelling. — John Valadez

The City Council agreed to continue the project, though Councilor Anthony
Cobos (now a county judge) changed his mind and warned that the sculpture
would bring negative national coverage to El Paso. The documentary follows
Cobos as he walks through a barrio to shake hands and get support for his
re-election campaign. He asks some voters what they think of the
controversy. A few residents suggest that the money could have been put to
better use by addressing social issues. "Who's Oņate?" another man asks.

The lack of historical knowledge about Oņate may be one reason Houser got
in hot water. "Most people in El Paso knew little about Juan de Oņate or
his history, so when they put money toward it [the statue], they did it out
of ignorance," Valadez said. "Oņate is not taught in the public-school
system, and most of the people we talked to didn't know who he was except
[that] he brought the horse to New Mexico and named El Paso."

When it comes to the history of the region, Houser seems to know his stuff.
He was aware of the Acoma Pueblo amputations (an incident given a detailed
recounting in Simmon's 1993 biography The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oņate
and the Settling of the Far Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press).
Houser said he doesn't defend Oņate's actions.

But ambition may have gotten the better part of the artist. His father,
Ivan Houser, was an assistant to Gutzon Borglum, who shaped the
presidential heads on Mount Rushmore. "I was totally enthralled with the
idea of making a big horse," Houser told Pasatiempo.

In both the film and the interview, Houser seems stunned by the public
response. "I never deliberately wanted to offend anyone. Oņate riding off
to conquer the Indians — that's not what I had in mind," he said. He gave
the piece its aggressive look — the rearing steed, the inclusion of La Toma
— for both dramatic and historical purposes, he emphasized.

Perhaps he and his supporters should have read up on a January 1998
incident, when someone — or a lot of someones — cut a foot off a sculpture
of Oņate at Alcalde's Oņate Monument and Visitors Center, north of
Espaņola. That work was made by Albuquerque artist Reynaldo "Sonny" Rivera,
who did not return calls seeking comment on the controversy about the
incident. "There must be at least five or six monuments to Spanish
conquistadors from Taos to El Paso," Chino said by phone. "Not all to
Oņate, but to his legacy. They're basically pushing it in our faces."

In the documentary, the El Paso International Airport appears to ride to
Houser's rescue after city leaders decided they didn't want Oņate's statue
downtown. Speaking by phone from his office in El Paso, Patrick Abeln, the
airport's director of aviation, recalled, "The City Council voted in 2003
to move the project from downtown to the airport. The municipal airport is
owned and operated by the city. It was a policy vote, and very few, if any,
people on today's council would be represented by that policy vote. It was
dedicated in April 2007." That ceremony is captured in the documentary.

Confirming Schwartz's financial estimates, Abeln said that decision cost
the city about $750,000, which came from an airport enterprise fund. "It's
all public money, ... but it doesn't impact our tax base. If you lived in
El Paso, the question you might have is, 'What did this cost me as a
taxpayer? Did my tax bill go up because of this art?' The answer is no."
The airport, built in 1941, has always been filled with art, Abeln noted.

As an additional compromise, El Paso decided to change the sculpture's
title from The Last Conquistador to The Equestrian. But, Ibarra said, "It's
a lie. It's not The Equestrian. It's Juan de Oņate." To date, the piece has
not been vandalized — an action Houser thinks would be difficult to pull
off considering the locale and the size of the piece. The documentary ends
with Houser — who has clearly aged during the making of the show (it took
six years, according to Ibarra) — enthusiastically detailing his plans for
future XII Travelers works.

To say, 'You shouldn't have come here.' Well, you know what? They did come;
get over it. — Conchita Lucero, N.M. Hispanic Culture Preservation League

One might think that Houser's sculpture — as well as Valadez and Ibarra's
documentary — could encourage debate on the purpose and impact of public
art as the film successfully highlights the rift between ethnic communities
and sociopolitical classes in El Paso. "Who makes these decisions?" an
Indian protester in the film asks, clearly upset with the way this piece of
public art came about.

Houser said controversy is good for any artist; it brought The New York
Times, Reuters, and CNN to his door, not to mention a slew of local and
regional television stations and newspapers. Put any artwork out on the
city streets, and there's no way everyone is going to approve of it, he
added.

"This statue has certainly gotten people talking," Valadez said. "No, it
hasn't gotten them talking; it's created a situation where people are
yelling, where people are angry, screaming at each other, crying.

"I'm not sure the statue has provoked a dialogue across the deep and
painful divisions of race and class that fracture the American Southwest,"
he added. "I have a hunch that when a community comes together to put up a
grand monument in the public square, on some level what they are doing is
articulating the values and aspirations that they hold dear, a vision of
not only who they are but more important, who they aspire to be. When you
look at the Oņate statue, you have to ask what kind of values are implicit
in that monument. ... It's really the symbol of one people taking away the
homeland from another people."

Houser is open to adding to the Oņate piece a plaque that describes Oņate's
battles with the Pueblo people. Valadez suggested amending the sculpture to
display the "darker underbelly to this glamour and beauty," perhaps adding
additional figures that suggest the "madness that existed in the American
Southwest once upon a time."

Chino wants the work taken down. "I'm not going to let go of that dream for
myself," he said. He also wants a public apology from the artist: "He has
never taken responsibility for glorifying such a violent act."

Whether travelers passing through El Paso International Airport will take
the time to consider more than just the surface beauty and incredible
physical scale of Houser's work is questionable. Chino and Houser both note
— with sadness and pride, respectively — that such a bronze can stand for
1,000 years.

Yet those who think the controversy might subside over time should heed the
words of film director and writer Preston Sturges. In his 1944 comedy Hail
the Conquering Hero, a phony war hero, played by Eddie Bracken, discovers
that his fictional stories sound so courageous that his hometown plans to
build a statue in his honor.

"What do I do now?" he asks his pal, a fast-talking sergeant played by
William Demarest.

"Well, you just let it blow over," Demarest advises, to which Bracken
replies, "Did you ever see a statue blow over?"