The Right Foot of Juan De Oñate

for John Nichols and Arturo Madrid

On the road to Taos, in the town of Alcalde, the bronze statue

of Juan de Oñate, the conquistador, kept vigil from his horse.

Late one night a chainsaw sliced off his right foot, stuttering

through the ball of his ankle, as Oñate's spirit scratched

and howled like a dog trapped within the bronze body.

Four centuries ago, after his cannon fire burst to burn hundreds

of bodies and blacken the adobe walls of the Acoma Pueblo,

Oñate wheeled on his startled horse and spoke the decree:

all Acoma males above the age of twenty-five would be punished

by amputation of the right foot. Spanish knives sawed through ankles;

Spanish hands tossed feet into piles like fish at the marketplace.

There was prayer and wailing in a language Oñate did not speak.

Now, at the airport in El Paso, across from Juárez,

another bronze statue of Oñate rises on a horse frozen in fury.

The city fathers smash champagne bottles across the horse's legs

to christen the statue, and Oñate's spirit remembers the chainsaw

carving through the ball of his ankle. The Acoma Pueblo still stands.

Thousands of brown feet walk across the border, the desert

of Chihuaha, the shallow places of the Río Grande, the bridges

from Juárez to El Paso. Oñate keeps watch, high on horseback

above the Río Grande, the law of the conquistador rolled

in his hand, helpless as a man with an amputated foot,

spirit scratching and howling like a dog within the bronze body.

Source: Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2015)