More than four years after local activists toppled the Soldiers’ Monument on the Santa Fe Plaza during an Indigenous People’s Day protest, city employees are removing the wooden box that has surrounded the controversial monument ever since.
In December, First Judicial District Court Judge Matthew Wilson ruled in a lawsuit against the city, filed by Spanish fraternal organization Union Protectiva de Santa Fe, that the city is required to remove the box and all other objects obstructing the view of the monument to comply with the New Mexico Prehistoric and Historic Sites Preservation Act.
The Santa Fe City Council and Mayor Alan Webber decided not to appeal Judge Wilson's decision at its Jan. 15 Governing Body meeting after privately discussing the ruling in executive session.
Webber tells SFR the city will move forward with its plans to investigate the feasibility of restoring the monument to its prior state and moving it to the Santa Fe National Cemetery, per a resolution the city council passed 5-4 in October last year.
“The judge’s decision is very much in line with what the governing body was doing already,” Webber says. “ It simply augments it…and I'll just speak for myself, that as mayor, I believe we'd be better served to find solutions that will work, rather than continued litigation.”
In his ruling, Wilson found Union Protectiva de Santa Fe had established the Soldiers’ Monument as an “integral part of the aesthetic, character, and history of the Plaza and the district, both of which constitute significant historic sites” within the meaning of the New Mexico Prehistoric and Historic Sites Preservation Act.
When asked if he thought the ruling’s assertion that the monument is integral to the Plaza would affect the possibility of moving the monument to the cemetery, Webber responded that the city’s ongoing consultations with the State Historic Preservation Office would ensure “we’re all in concert on the same things.”
Kenneth H. Stalter, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, said he and the plaintiffs see the ruling and the city’s compliance with it as a “significant victory.”
“We see it as a positive development that [the city] decided not to appeal,” Stalter tells SFR. “I think it's unfortunate that it took as long as it did for the city to recognize what the law requires in this case, rather than forcing it through trial over several years and several hundred thousand dollars of public funds spent in defending this case, but at least they recognize that the judge has spoken and the ruling was correct and not worth appealing.”
After the city removes all obstructions covering the Soldiers’ Monument, Wilson’s ruling says the city has two options: restore the monument to a similar condition depicted prior to the 2020 toppling of the obelisk within 180 days, or take no further action in relation to the monument unless it is in accordance with the Prehistoric and Historic Sites Preservation Act.
Stalter says Union Protectiva de Santa Fe believes the monument should be restored to its pre-2020 condition.
“This was a memorial to fallen soldiers that existed for about 150 years before the mayor called for its removal illegally, and some vandals accomplished,” Stalter said. “They firmly believe that the right thing to do is restoration.”
Webber says Interim City Manager Randy Randall is investigating what it would take to reassemble the obelisk.
“I think the important thing is that we're making progress on taking steps to, hopefully, come to a conclusion that people in the community can all feel good about, and that we try to come to an outcome that people can accept and move on,” Webber says.
Standing at the side of the monument’s base on Jan. 14, a custodian washed away the painted red handprints activists left behind at the October 2020 protest against the monument’s racist inscription referring to Native Americans as “savage Indians.
As employees from the city’s parks department and facility management division work on removing the box, Facilities Division Director Sam Burnett tells SFR they are also documenting the extent of the damage done to the monument.
“We're the ones who built the box originally, so we're a natural fit for taking it down,” Burnett says. “We have a general idea, but we don't have a detailed assessment [of the damage] yet. We're really focused on the paint and getting it ready to take the next step.”
