Albuquerque City Councilor Isaac Benton, state Sen. Bill O’Neill, and state Rep. Javier Martínez recently made headlines in calling for the elimination of a memorial relating to a Civil War battle won by the Confederacy that took place in Albuquerque.
Courtesy photo
Paul Gessing
Whitewashing of history is quite the trend these days. ISIS has been destroying monuments and historical artifacts for several months and, in the wake of a shooting at a black church in South Carolina, there has been a renewed debate over symbols of the Confederacy.
This is all well and good, but if New Mexicans, including our elected officials, are really serious about making New Mexico history more politically correct and less troubling to aggrieved groups in our state, they really have a long way to go. In the spirit of Jonathan Swift, here’s my modest proposal for Benton, O’Neill, Martínez, et al:
With barely 50 percent of the people in New Mexico calling themselves religious, and only a bit more than half of them Catholic, it is time to get rid of the religious city names.
It’s time for O’Neill and his “progressive” allies in the Legislature to change the name of the following cities: Santa Fe (holy faith, that’s Catholicism), Las Cruces (the crosses), Santa Rosa (Saint Rose), Belen (Bethlehem, the city of Christ’s birth for atheists out there) — and don’t get me started on Angel Fire!
Carson and Coronado
As if the oppressive Catholic city names weren’t enough, New Mexico has dozens of parks and museums honoring Kit Carson. While known by many as a great American frontiersman, Carson is also responsible for ethnically cleansing the Navajos from their traditional lands in Northwestern New Mexico and sending them walking across the state to Bosque Redondo about an hour west of Clovis. All this was done at the behest of “The Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln.
Carson has indeed been a target of Native American protests over the years, but he looks like a saint compared to Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, for whom a state monument and a shopping mall are named (among other landmarks).
Coronado explored the area now known as New Mexico in the early 1500s. How bad was Coronado? In 1544, Coronado was found guilty of committing atrocities against Indians and removed from office. Considering the track record of most conquistadors at the time, one can only imagine what Coronado must have done to be removed from office.
Teddy Roosevelt
Let’s move into more modern times. Teddy Roosevelt has a county here in New Mexico named after him. A picture hangs in the Albuquerque Museum at the edge of Old Town commemorating a speech he once gave in Albuquerque. This, of course, is not too far from the plaque and memorial that Messrs Benton and O’Neill are hoping to remove.
As the beloved “progressive” Roosevelt once said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
That “progressive” Teddy wasn’t satisfied just bad-mouthing Native Americans and others who stood in the way of his political agenda. He was more than willing to use government power to ensure results.
In a 1913 letter, Roosevelt wrote:
“Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty of the good citizens of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type. The great problem of civilization is to secure a relative increase of the valuable as compared with the less valuable or noxious elements in the population… The problem cannot be met unless we give full consideration to the immense influence of heredity…”
Roosevelt was hardly subtle in stating elsewhere his views on which groups formed the “right type” and “noxious elements” in society.
Learn from our history
So there you have it. History is messy. It is ugly. It involves sometimes decent or even “great” people doing things good and bad that impact the world around us.
The question is whether we should learn our history and try not to repeat our mistakes or whether we should attempt to cover it up. I fall firmly into the former camp. I hope that upon further reflection those in New Mexico and around our nation who now seem hell-bent on whitewashing our messy and often tragic history will agree with me.
Gessing is the president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation, an independent, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.