A True Tale

The content of Diego Romero's work covers a broad spectrum, including the most sensitive issues of politics, history, religion, ethnicity and personal struggle. One of his recurrent themes is the history of Colonial New Mexico and the conquest of Pueblo peoples. The subject of this work is a well-known episode that continues to resonate with Pueblo people today as a potent reminder of Spanish oppression. The image depicts two soldiers, accompanied by a priest, executing a sentence imposed upon a number of Acoma men in 1599 in retaliation for the deaths of soldiers killed at the Pueblo months earlier. More broadly, the work references the invasion of the Americas by European empires, the inevitable clash of cultures, the destruction and subjugation of indigenous peoples and the paternalism and brutality sometimes exercised by Church and State in achieving these ends.