Santa Fe New Mexican

Las Cruces high school renamed after scenic Organ Mountains

School board approves name change from conquistad­or Oñate

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LAS CRUCES — A Southern New Mexico school district blocked efforts Tuesday to repeal a vote to change the name of a high school named after a brutal Spanish conquistad­or.

After hours of debate and a dizzying display of parliament­ary procedure, the Las Cruces School Board did not take a vote to annul its decision last month to drop the name of Don Juan de Oñate y Salazar from a high school, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.

Instead, the board voted to rename it Organ Mountain High School, referencin­g the mountain range near Las Cruces that is part of the skyline.

The range was originally called Sierra de los Organos by early Spanish settlers who thought the pinnacles resembled the pipes of organs in European cathedrals.

The long meeting was sparked by a board member who said she regretted her vote to change the name and some Hispanic advocates who were angry over the renaming.

“I really regret allowing myself to be rushed. And when you’re rushed, you don’t think things through,” said board member

Carol Cooper, who voted for the renaming July 14.

About 40 minutes after the vote to change the name to Organ Mountains, the school board voted again, this time on Organ Mountain High School, without the “s” at the end of “mountain.” The vote on Organ Mountain High School passed 5-0.

“I don’t think Organ Mountain killed anybody,” board President Terrie Dallman said.

The proposal to change the name of the school 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 such as Oñate, who led early Spanish expedition­s into present-day New Mexico, shouldn’t be celebrated.

They point to Oñate’s order to have the right feet cut off of 24 captive tribal warriors after his soldiers stormed Acoma Pueblo.

They say other Spanish figures like Oñate oversaw the enslavemen­t of Indigenous population­s and tried to outlaw their cultural practices. Oñate was eventually expelled from present-day New Mexico for “excessive force.”

Some Hispanics who trace their lineage to the early Spanish settlers say removing the likenesses of Oñate and others amounts to erasing history.

It is a complicate­d history both marred by atrocities against Indigenous people and marked by the arduous journeys that many families made for the promise of a new life or to escape persecutio­n in Spain.

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.

 ?? NATHAN J. FISH ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO ?? The Las Cruces School Board voted Tuesday to drop the name of Oñate High School amid a movement to reexamine the Spanish colonial past in the Southwest. it was renamed after the Organ Mountains in the background.
NATHAN J. FISH ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO The Las Cruces School Board voted Tuesday to drop the name of Oñate High School amid a movement to reexamine the Spanish colonial past in the Southwest. it was renamed after the Organ Mountains in the background.

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