Ex-mayor’s report on contentious monuments in Santa Fe shelved
with the findings” of the report.
But the report was nothing more than a list, and not much has changed since then.
The primary reason may be a change in administration.
“It’s not something [Mayor Alan Webber] has reviewed since taking office, and it isn’t something he is focused on,” city spokesman Matt Ross said Thursday in a text message.
“The underlying goal is to find ways to bring the community together, and Mayor Webber has made that a priority in his own way through initiatives like the Southside Summer, the [$20 million bond issue] that invests in citywide priorities, and others.”
The dissonance over some of the city’s more controversial monuments may be something Webber has to deal with at some point, if only because some represent hot-button issues in tense political times.
A Ten Commandments monument, for example, continues to sit in front of a fire station in Ashbaugh Park. At the beginning of the year, a nonprofit organization in Madison, Wis., called for its removal, saying the 6-foot-tall granite tablet is an “inappropriate and unconstitutional” remnant of the Cold War era.
While organizers of a dramatization depicting Spanish conquistador Don Diego de Vargas’ reoccupation of the city retired the event this year after two consecutive years of protests, a statue of de Vargas — who ordered the execution of some 70 Native Americans by firing squad — remains at Cathedral Park.
And an obelisk on the Santa Fe Plaza dedicated “to the heroes who have fallen in the various battles with the savage Indians in the territory of New Mexico” still stands today, though the word “savage” was chipped out in 1974 by an unidentified man wearing overalls, and just outside the structure is a plaque stating that “monument texts reflect the character of the times in which they are written and the temper of those who wrote them” and that “attitudes change and prejudices hopefully dissolve.”
However, Debra Garcia y Griego, director of the Santa Fe Arts Commission, said an examination of the city’s inventory has proved an important tool for those who want to provide a wide-ranging picture of its history.
“It’s useful to know what we have,” she said. “From the public art perspective, I think that the inventory turned up a remarkable balance of pieces, and I think in terms of creating future choices around public art specifically, since that’s what I’m charged with, I think it provides some good insights into where there might be narratives that we haven’t paid as much attention to.”
Garcia y Griego noted the City Council passed a resolution to accept the donation of a sculpture of Catua and Omtua, Tesuque Pueblo runners who notified other tribes about the start of the Pueblo Revolt. The sculpture, by noted sculptor and artist George Rivera of Pojoaque Pueblo, will be installed near the courtyard of the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, which is already dedicated to Catua and Omtua.
“We’re working on the landscape plans for that project right now, so that will be another public memorial that definitely tells another narrative around Santa Fe,” Garcia y Griego said.
Garcia y Griego said the inventory didn’t take too much work to complete because the city already has up-to-date information on its public art. The inventory also included special events, such as the Fiesta de Santa Fe, which is where the Entrada was performed until this year, when it was retired.
“It was still a good exercise for the city to look at the narratives that it has in public spaces and to be conscious of those that may be missing,” she said.
“We have monuments to Japanese internment camps. We have a Korean War monument. We have different monuments to Native American culture. Yes, we have some monuments that are aspects to colonialism, but overall, I think for a city of our size, we’re doing a good job. And I think there was value in the exercise, so that we know where the gaps are and we know about commissioning moving forward.”