On Monday evening, protesters in Albuquerque, New Mexico tried to take down a statue of Juan de Oñate (the Spanish conquistador known for many horrors, including brutalities against Indigenous populations, like overseeing the deaths of Pueblo Indians) that sat outside of the Albuquerque Museum in Old Town. Tearing down statues isn’t so unusual in recent days; we’ve seen statues of Confederates and Christoper Columbus tumble in the United States as well as abroad; a clip from the United Kingdom went viral when demonstrators tore down a statue of a slave trader.
In New Mexico, however, a protester ended up being shot and hospitalized in critical but stable condition during the latest effort to remove a racist statue, as reported by NPR. Now, as reported by CBS News, even the FBI is being called in to help investigate.
How did this go down? There’s some information we simply don’t know yet—namely, who the victim is. The victim is being reported as an unidentified male.
Otherwise, we do know that protesters faced off with an unregulated, armed militia group that reportedly calls themselves the New Mexico Civil Guard. At this event, right-wing militia members reportedly carried semiautomatic rifles. Witnesses who spoke to local outlet KRQE said that members of the civilian militia fired the shots. They also claimed to the outlet that they had called the police for help a full half an hour before officers actually arrived to the scene. Police arrived after the protester had been shot.
According to local outlet KOAT, a 31-year-old man named Stephen Ray Baca has been taken into police custody and charged with aggravated battery. It’s unclear if Baca is part of the militia group or not. According to a journalist at the scene, police detained several members of the group.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, issued a statement on the incident: “The heavily armed individuals who flaunted themselves at the protest, calling themselves a ‘civil guard,’ were there for one reason: To menace protesters, to present an unsanctioned show of unregulated force,” she said in part.
Albuquerque Police Chief Michael Geier also issued a statement, noting they are “receiving reports about vigilante groups possibly instigating this violence. The chief continued: “If this is true [we] will be holding them accountable to the fullest extent of the law, including federal hate group designation and prosecution.”
“To menace the people of New Mexico with weaponry — with an implicit threat of violence — is on its face unacceptable; that violence did indeed occur is unspeakable,” Gov. Grisham added.
As a warning, the below Twitter videos from the incident contain graphic violence.
The city says it will remove the statue.
Update: According to The New York Times, Baca is the son of a former Bernalillo County sheriff. According to The Washington Post, Baca is a registered Republican.