Frontera! Revolt and Rebellion on the Río Grande (Animation, 20 minutes, 2014)

The Pueblo Revolt had to happen.

By 1680, life in the Rio Grande region was out of balance—drought, hunger, forced conversion, and colonial violence had brought Indigenous societies to the edge of collapse. Unexpectedly, the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico orchestrated a coordinated uprising that expelled Spanish colonizers from the entire region, sparking a cultural and political renaissance that continues to shape Pueblo life today.

Frontera! is a 20-minute animated documentary that reimagines this pivotal moment in Native resistance through oral histories, satire, and visually dynamic storytelling. Blending Indigenous cosmology with historical research, the film traces the early colonial entradas (military-religious invasions), the rise of settler violence, and the radical vision of resistance that culminated in the Pueblo Revolt.

The film begins in mythic time with Awanyu, the horned serpent, as the spiritual witness to the land’s history. Revered across North American Indigenous cultures, the horned serpent is a bringer of water, balance, and life. Its absence signals chaos—ecological and social breakdown. With the serpent gone, the Spanish colonial project takes root in El Norte, ushering in an era of violence, enslavement, and cultural devastation.

Frontera!’s first act is narrated by an animated character at a New Mexico casino, playing slot machines while recounting the first contact between Río Grande Native peoples and Europeans. But this first “contact” was not with a Spaniard—it was with Estevanico, a North African survivor of a Spanish shipwreck. After a decade of wandering across what is now the American South, Estevanico was conscripted to search for the mythical Seven Cities of Gold near present-day Zuni Pueblo.

What followed Estevanico’s encounter were waves of violent entradas—led by conquistadors Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and later Don Juan de Oñate—each seeking wealth, domination, and religious conversion. The second and third acts of the animation chronicle their failures: Coronado’s illusions of gold dissolve into ruin; Oñate’s brutal regime ends in exile, though his legacy of extraction and violence persists in the region today.

The film’s final act shifts into a rap performance narrating the rise of Po’Pay, a Pueblo religious leader from Ohkay Owingeh who was arrested and publicly whipped by Spanish authorities in 1675 for practicing Indigenous spiritual traditions. After his release, Po’Pay retreated to a Taos Kiva where he orchestrated an unprecedented pan-Pueblo revolt. Despite linguistic and political divisions, more than thirty Pueblo communities coordinated a unified uprising. On August 9, 1680, the Pueblo peoples drove out Spanish forces from the entire Río Grande region. In the aftermath, Pueblos burned missions, reclaimed ancestral sites, and sparked a cultural revival that continues to this day.

About the Production

Frontera! is directed by John Jota Leaños, a Chicanx and Native (Chumash) media artist and Professor of Film & Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The animated documentary is a collaboration between mestizx and Native artists from California and New Mexico, grounded in Indigenous storytelling, visual sovereignty, and borderland aesthetics.

Featured contributors include:

• Conroy Chino (Acoma Pueblo), journalist and documentary filmmaker

• Warren Montoya (Santa Ana and Santa Clara Pueblos), visual artist

• Lee Moquino (Santa Clara and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblos), traditional artist and spiritual leader

• Andrea Serrano, Albuquerque-based Chicana spoken word poet and musician

• Dr. Aimee Villarreal, cultural anthropologist and scholar

• Cristóbal Martinez (Alcalde), composer and member of the artist collective Postcommodity

Community Collaboration and Scholarly Input

The film was developed with deep input from Native scholars, archaeologists, and community leaders:

• Joseph “Woody” Aguilar (San Ildefonso Pueblo), archaeologist

• Hayes Lewis (Zuni Pueblo), educator and tribal leader

• Benny Shindo (Jemez Pueblo), community leader

• The late Dr. Linda Cordell, archaeologist and author of Archaeology of the Southwest

• Dr. Matthew Liebmann (Harvard University), author of Revolt: An Archaeological History of Pueblo Resistance

• Dr. Robert Purcell (Brown University)

Support and Recognition

Frontera! was made possible through support from:

• Latino Public Broadcasting (Public Media Grant)

• Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and Video

• San Francisco Arts Commission

• Center for Cultural Innovation

• National Association for Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC)