Memorials, monuments and erasing history

This year the status of certain monuments, such as the obelisk on the Santa Fe Plaza, has been challenged and debated in an ongoing controversy. One side wants to remove monuments considered offensive from their perspective, and another side charges that removal is tantamount to trying to “erase history.”

Memorials do have the goal and function of preserving history. But, particularly in the case of monuments, memorials also serve to honor people or events. I believe honoring needs to be a central part of the discussion about monuments.

To give an extreme example, we will never forget Hitler and his Nazi regime, but we don’t have monuments commemorating him. He belongs in the annals of history but not on the avenues or in the parks of our cities.

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., has Abraham Lincoln in a place of honor overlooking the National Mall. But the desire to honor even him may depend on your perspective. He is responsible for the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery, but he also ordered the largest mass hanging in U.S. history after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 (On Dec. 26, 1862, 38 Dakota warriors were hanged in Mankato, Minn., and their bodies dumped into a mass grave). So from a Native perspective, Lincoln may not be seen as an unmitigated hero.

Here in New Mexico, the prominent actors were Hispanic and Native. Although there might be consensus around particularly bad or particularly good historical actors, which of them should be honored and which condemned likely differs for people of Hispanic versus Native descent. These differences seem like the core of a discussion worth having, but it’s about who merits honor, not erasing or preserving history.

Douglas Medin writes from Santa Fe, where he poses this question: Who was the first minority baseball player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame? Answer: Albert Bender (Ojibwe) a major league pitcher in the 1900s and 1910s inducted in 1953.