SANTA FE – The fate of monuments linked to Spanish colonialism and violence against Native Americans in Santa Fe remains unclear months after the city’s mayor called for their removal.
A proposed “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” has yet to form and two monuments still stand but are surrounded by plywood, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports.
While a statue of Spanish conquistador Don Diego de Vargas was taken down from Cathedral Park on the eve of a planned protest over fears it would spark violence or damage, Mayor Alan Webber hasn’t made much tangible progress on his other plans.
Plywood covers the two other monuments – an obelisk in the middle of the Plaza dedicated in part to the “heroes” who died in battle with “savage Indians,” and an obelisk in honor of famed frontiersman Kit Carson in front of the U.S. District Courthouse.
Mayor Alan Webber said in a statement the City Attorney’s Office is reviewing unspecified “legal issues” involved with the monuments.
“With regard to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or some other independent group that could look at the larger issues of these (statues and monuments), as well as the history and culture of Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico, there have been numerous discussions and conversations,” he said.
On Sept. 3, the Northern New Mexico chapter of the advocacy group Showing Up for Racial Justice wrote a letter to Webber asking for an update on his efforts.
“You have already stated unequivocally that you know this is the right thing to do,” the group wrote to the mayor, referring to his calls to remove the two obelisks and the statue of de Vargas.
The discussion over the monuments in Santa Fe comes amid a national conversation about monuments and names of institutions honoring historical figures linked to racism, slavery, and genocide.
Indigenous leaders and some younger Latino activists say figures from the region’s Spanish colonial era shouldn’t be celebrated. They say Spanish conquistadors oversaw the enslavement of Indigenous populations and tried to outlaw their cultural practices.
Some Hispanics who trace their lineage to the early Spanish settlers say removing the likenesses of Spanish conquistadors amounts to erasing history.
Spanish rule over the New Mexico territory lasted for about two centuries until the area briefly became part of the Republic of Mexico before it was taken over by the U.S.
Some scholars say the phenomenon of conquistador commemoration is linked to efforts that originated more than a century ago as Hispanics tried to convince white members of Congress that New Mexico should become a state.
During the 19th century, white people moved into the territory and held racist views toward the region’s Native American and Mexican American population, according to John Nieto-Phillips, author of “The Language of Blood: The Making of Spanish-American Identity in New Mexico, 1880s-1930s.”
As a result, Nieto-Phillips said some Hispanics in the region took on a solely Spanish American identity over their mixed heritage to embrace whiteness amid the racist eugenics movement.
