{"id":68074,"date":"2015-07-22T11:47:05","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T17:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=68074"},"modified":"2015-07-22T11:51:11","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T17:51:11","slug":"time-to-really-whitewash-new-mexico-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2015\/07\/time-to-really-whitewash-new-mexico-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to really whitewash New Mexico history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Albuquerque City Councilor Isaac Benton, state Sen.\u00a0Bill O\u2019Neill, and state Rep. Javier Mart\u00ednez recently made headlines<\/a> in calling for the elimination of a memorial relating to a Civil War battle won by the Confederacy that took place in Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

\"Paul

Courtesy photo<\/p>

Paul Gessing<\/p><\/div>\n

Whitewashing of history is quite the trend these days. ISIS has been destroying monuments and historical artifacts<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, here\u2019s my modest proposal for Benton, O\u2019Neill, Mart\u00ednez, et al:<\/p>\n

With barely 50 percent of the people in New Mexico calling themselves religious<\/a>, and only a bit more than half of them Catholic, it is time to get rid of the religious city names.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for O\u2019Neill and his \u201cprogressive\u201d allies in the Legislature to change the name of the following cities: Santa Fe (holy faith, that\u2019s Catholicism), Las Cruces (the crosses), Santa Rosa (Saint Rose), Belen (Bethlehem, the city of Christ\u2019s birth for atheists out there) — and don\u2019t get me started on Angel Fire!<\/p>\n

Carson and Coronado<\/h3>\n

As if the oppressive Catholic city names weren\u2019t 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<\/a> 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 \u201cThe Great Emancipator\u201d Abraham Lincoln<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Carson has indeed been a target of Native American protests over the years, but he looks like a saint compared to Francisco V\u00e1squez de Coronado, for whom a state monument<\/a> and a shopping mall<\/a> are named (among other landmarks).<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Teddy Roosevelt<\/h3>\n

Let\u2019s move into more modern times. Teddy Roosevelt has a county here in New Mexico named after him<\/a>.\u00a0A 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\u2019Neill are hoping to remove.<\/p>\n

As the beloved \u201cprogressive\u201d Roosevelt once said<\/a>, \u201cI don\u2019t 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\u2019t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.\u201d<\/p>\n

That \u201cprogressive\u201d Teddy wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

In a 1913 letter, Roosevelt wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“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\u2026 The problem cannot be met unless we give full consideration to the immense influence of heredity\u2026”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Roosevelt was hardly subtle in stating elsewhere his views on which groups formed the \u201cright type\u201d and \u201cnoxious elements\u201d in society.<\/p>\n

Learn from our history<\/h3>\n

So there you have it. History is messy. It is ugly. It involves sometimes decent or even \u201cgreat\u201d people doing things good and bad that impact the world around us.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Gessing is the president of New Mexico\u2019s 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.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":790,"featured_media":48942,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[709,143,177],"class_list":["post-68074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-native-americans","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/790"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}