El Día de la Toma
"I Wish to Take Possession of This Land Today"
By Susie Byrd
(This article was first printed in the El Paso alternative newspaper, El Bridge, in 2001—back when Susie Byrd was not yet a politician and identified more with the conquered than the conquerors. We’ve republished it to show not only how times have changed when it comes to Susie, but how things haven’t changed that much when it comes to forcibly taking over other people’s land. Please make sure to check out our own updated, scholarly footnotes of Ms. Byrd’s piece.)
AFTER JUAN DE ONATE and his crew of some 500 colonizers crossed over the Rio Grande into “New” Mexico, they took some time out from their expedition to declare that all this that lay before them was now theirs.1 “I wish to take possession of this land today.” Simple as that. “Mine, now.” This practice of looking things over and then declaring them as the property of the King of Spain is fondly known as “La Toma” by colonizers.2 Then everybody had to sit through a play written by a Captain Farfán in which the Indians greeted the wondrous colonizers, begging to be baptized.3
Turns out things weren’t as smooth as imagined by Farfán in his epic play. Unfortunately, art often fails to imitate life, especially inn the hands of a propagandist and colonizer.4 As the colonizers headed north, there was some general greeting by some tribes of Indians, but there was also some frantic fleeing and some raucous revolt.5 During one such revolt, the Acoma Indians made the mistake of killing Oñate’s nephews. Oñate answered with a murderous campaign against all the Acoma people. And when they were defeated, he handed down this punishment:
“Males over age twenty-five to have one foot cut off and condemned to twenty years of personal servitude. Males twelve to twenty-five years old condemned to twenty years of personal servitude. Two Moquis captured in the Acoma fight to have the right hand cut off and be set free to take home news of their punishment. Children under twelve, whom Oñate ruled free of guilt, to be handed over to Father Martínez...for a Christian upbringing.”6
The biggest ever equestrian statue is due to hit El Paso soon.7 This statue features none other than old Don Juan de Oñate. The Juan de Oñate statue is the second in a series called the XII Travelers. The XII Travelers is an urban renewal project meant to recognize twelve people who journeyed through this region leaving behind a significant historical footprint.8 Folks not hard to forget, in other words.
Art in the service of history. History in the service of the tourist economy.
The XII Travelers crowd has pointed out that by building the largest equestrian bronze statue using large sums of cash (I think we are up to $1 million now) we are by no means saying that he was a swell guy. We are instead commemorating his “historic significance.” He did, after all, give El Paso its name. We should give him some credit. And of course, no one should discount that he was “the first successful colonizer of the American Southwest.”9
A regal looking statue just isn’t enough to remind us of Don Johnny and his “historical significance.” With that in mind I am encouraging everybody to attend the first ever “Colonize the Colonizer” day. Let’s make it April 30th—the day of the first “La Toma” or the taking of the land for the King of Spain.
To tell you the truth, I was not at all excited about this XII Travelers project, until I realized that as surely as they can fashion from bronze the images of these travelers—a stale art that addresses a history written only from one perspective—we can produce a living art that speaks of a history spoken by many, the conqueror and the conqueror, a history not born of individuals but of many. Thus, my “Colonize the Colonizer” annual celebration. I imagine it as a day of historic retribution. History re-peopled, reconstructed. Art in the service of truth, not truth with a capital T, but truth as in “Let’s hear what everybody has to say.”10 A day to remember that we have not learned the lessons of our past until we hear the stories of both the conquered and the conqueror. A day to remember that we may never learn the lessons of our past.11
I haven’t worked out all of the details, but the day will begin with a Toma of our own. Mine now.12 If the XII Travelers crowd has its way, the statue will be erected in the park right behind the Downtown Library...13 So we may be forced to Toma (sic) the park. We will simply declare, “We wish to take possession of this land today.” See, colonizing isn’t as hard as it looks.14
Then the festivities will begin. We will dress up as Border Patrol agents and have Oñate detained at the border for his illegal entry. We will build a monument with all of the body parts that Oñate ordered separated from their owners to remind us that to be “the first successful colonizer of the American Southwest” you have to be a real son of a bitch.15 We will beat drums and push against the biggest ever equestrian statue, hoping in one breath to topple him for good and hoping also that we might not be successful so that we can come back for another try next year. We will reenact his expedition in all of its arrogance and cruelty and bravery and greed.16 We will send up prayers in memory of those who died at the hands of the expedition and those who died as colonizers. We will write a series of “what if” poems—what if Oñate didn’t make it through that second inspection, what if the expedition never found water on those grueling desert days, what if the Acomas were successful in their revolt, what if Oñate contracted a deadly sexually transmitted disease, what if the King of Spain called Oñate back to Mexico City and investigated him for financial mismanagement and excessive force against the Indians—actually this last “what if” is actually a real fact. Seems as if the King of Spain was not as impressed with Oñate’s successful colonization as we are.
We will rewrite Farfán’s play. We will dance a delirious dance of inclusion.17 We will emasculate Oñate, dress him in the biggest ever dress, put him in high heels, paint his toenails bright red, blow him kisses. We will ask Native Americans to write their own ad copy for a commemorative plaque describing Oñate’s historic contribution.
We will teach our children to tell their own stories, loudly.We will beat drums and push against the biggest ever
equestrian statue, hoping in one breath to topple him for good and
hoping also that we might not be successful so that we can come back
for another try next year. We will reenact his expedition in all of its
arrogance and cruelty and bravery and greed.
And then we will go home, tired from a day of remembering our past. And the next day, we will awake with our past behind us, and we will rewrite a future in which El Pasoans will rise up triumphant against the marauders of here and now.18
Scholarly foonotes:
1. Today the colonizers go by the name of Paso del Norte Group, the name Oñate gave this area. This time around there’s only 360 of them, not 500 (maybe because of the difficult nomination process, the high membership fees and the confidentiality agreement). By the way, there is no evidence that back then the conquistadores needed to sign a confidentiality agreement before they carried out their hostile takeover and forcible relocations of the natives.
2. Today it is known as “eminent domain for commercial development.”
3. Kind of like the spectacle City Hall put on at the Abraham Chávez theater in June where a few locals were given free T-shirts, or sometimes even paid (Sal Balcorta and his employees), to cheer “La Toma.” Of course, none of them actually lived inside the zone targeted for forcible seizure. If the neo-conquistadores offer enough money to the neo-Indians, however, we’re sure they’ll find a few natives willing to sell out (especially if you pay them $250,000 a year like Mr. Balcorta).
4. Maybe poor Don Juan didn’t have the kind of dough the Paso Del Norte Group does to carry out his propaganda campaign. He didn’t have the reactionary cheerleading rag, The El Paso Times, either. Propaganda and colonization have come a long way since then.
5. Was the “raucous revolt” lead by a “small but vocal minority,” Susie? Those damned Indians didn’t know how to behave with “civility and decorum” back then either huh?
6. It seems good Christians have historically always punished the natives “for their own good.” Today it’s called “neutralize and engage the losers.”
7. Like this year under Ms. Byrd's watch when she hasn't said peep or squeak now that she has her little hueso.
8. You mean like Don Bill Sanders is going to leave a huge 130 acre footprint of demolished land that he will turn into a Wal-Mart and Lifestyle Outlet that is also going to be very hard to forget?
9. As in “there have been 50 colonizations plans before them” and all of them have failed, but this time this new group of conquistadores won’t.
10. Damn Susie! These are mighty noble sentiments. Why didn’t you make sure that the people who will be directly affected and forcibly expropriated from their homes and business tell you their truth before you helped draft the new “Toma of the Segundo Barrio”?
11. A day to remember that we have forgotten...that we will never learn the lessons from the past. It’s never in the interest of conquistadores to learn the lessons from the past. But wouldn’t it be better to commemorate a day when we do learn those lessons?
12. Ms. Byrd, unfortunately, now we see what you mean by staging a Toma of your own even though you haven’t “worked out all the details.”
13. This is no longer true. It’s been moved to the airport where it will be placed under armed guard and more people can marvel at El Paso’s proud history of conquest.
14. Ms. Byrd’s attempt at irony, given today’s new developments, are rather chilling.
15. To be a multibillionaire and the “largest landowner in the world” you have to be a real son of a bitch too.
16. Ms. Byrd, we thought you meant just a symbolic reenactment. You didn’t have to be so literal with this modern-day reenactment of destruction and greed of yours.
17. A “delirious dance of inclusion!” Wow!
18. Bravo Susie! Eso! We are ready to follow you in your glorious and triumphant struggle against the marauders of here and now! But wait a minute...uh...why are you sitting on a bulldozer next to Bill Sanders? We are a little confused. Guess it’s easier to have all these very democratic and noble sentiments only when they are merely symbolic—as long as they pertain merely to the realm of art or don’t interfere with your political ambitions or have very little to do with people’s actual lives. Say it isn’t so, Susie, please say it isn’t so.
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