Two weeks ago I wrote “Toxic Culture, Not Gun Culture, Fuels Violence,” lamenting how we as a society have grown intolerant toward our fellow Americans, our logic hobbled by a short fuse over insignificant disagreements, the willingness to resort to violence as a result, as if the absence of civility itself might be spurring us toward civil war.
On Thursday, at an event to erect a statue of New Mexico’s first Spanish governor, the conquistador Juan de Oñate, another protest turned violent. A man was shot during the altercation. He remains in the hospital as of this writing. The only video circulating of the event shows the shooter being chased, attacked, then firing one shot from a handgun after jumping free of the attackers.
It’s not the first shooting over the Onate statue. At a protest in Old Town on June 15, 2020, Stephen Baca shot Scott Williams after Williams struck him with a skateboard. The shooting charge was dropped because of video evidence proving he acted in self defense. Baca pled guilty to lesser offenses, for pushing down two women during the altercation and for concealing his gun without a license. He has yet to be sentenced.
There’s not enough information yet to say whether Ryan Martinez is innocent or guilty. What we know from the partial video online is that he was chased and attacked, which alone would justify a self-defense plea, if prosecuted. But what preceded the attack isn’t clear. Was he violent first? Did he threaten lives or brandish his weapon? Would a jury say he was no longer in danger after he broke free of the attackers? It’s impossible to say. As can be expected in this day and age, everyone on social media seems to have already taken an unwavering position on the incident.
What’s striking isn’t just the polarization but the readiness to resort to violence because of differences that everyone agrees are insignificant.
Asked by KOB4’s Ryan Laughlin just three days ago why compromise wasn’t an option, such as putting the statue in a museum, protester Christina Castro replied, “Because it’s more important for the dominant culture and the power structures to continue to keep us in a state of continually opposing it instead of worrying about the real issues that are truly impacting the people.”
It’s a ridiculous admission on its face. If one man wasn’t in the hospital and another in jail, this type of historic trauma re-enactment could easily be mistaken for parody. How is it at all logical to claim that you must fight the evil colonial powers and their offensive bronze sculpture in the same breath that you admit that the evil colonial powers are using said sculpture to distract you from the real issues affecting your people?
Are you trolling or being trolled?
Why not ignore the statue and fight the system on the issues that matter? What is gained, or lost, by the presence of Onate? Is not New Mexico’s Spanish heritage as or even more foundational to the state of New Mexico than Indian heritage? Do you want to get into a battle of who has done more for the Land of Enchantment? Or is this just grievance culture at its worst, battling over ghosts in order to avoid the harsh reality of the problems we face today?
I’m not taking the shooter’s side. I can’t defend something I didn’t see from beginning to end. Martinez seems to have attended the rally for the same reason the Indian protesters did: to agitate—one side against a statue and the history it represents, the other presumably against the erasure of that history. No laws were broken until the peaceful opposition turned violent.
This is where we stand, one side against the other, both exercising constitutionally enshrined rights, both morally opposed to the objectives of the other, both proud New Mexicans, and neither side wrong for doing so until suddenly words were not enough.
We’re attacking each other over movie theater seats. Over getting cut off in traffic. Over some 400-year-old history that nobody today lived through.
Something has happened in this country that has made us incapable of settling differences of opinion and values and beliefs without resorting to vitriol and violence.
Civilly, it seems we are at war.
