After four years and a whopping $578,000, Allan Webber and his team are still clueless about what to do with Webber’s brown box in the center of the Plaza. The City spent $254,000 on Valerie Martinez’s CHART process, only to receive a report suggesting the options are either to restore the Soldier’s Monument or tear it down. Ms. Martinez must be enjoying a good laugh all the way to the bank with our tax dollars. On top of that, an additional $324,000 has been squandered in an attempt to defend Webber’s actions in court.
The Union Protectiva bravely stood up to protect our history and culture from Webber and his vandals, with the City employing every trick in the book to fight against them, despite the Soldier’s Monument being part of the National Historic Registry. The registry explicitly mandates restoration, not removal, of any monument. However, Dictator Webber and his Minion McSherry continue to conveniently ignore this fact, even going so far as to claim that the National Historic Registry only protects the ground under the Soldiers Monument, not the monument itself.
Adding to the sh*t show, Three Sisters Sympathizer Alma Castro has now jumped on the Webber bandwagon, advocating for its removal. It’s quite a spectacle when someone like Castro, who lives in her parents’ house, and was handed a business on a silver spoon, assumes the role of decision-maker.
Santa Fe, when are we going to start electing competent officials?
Online Comments:
- Why is there even a debate. Vandals don’t tell us what to do. Property was destroyed. Just put it back. If you don’t like it, go through the proper channels to have it removed. Whenever have we let vandals tell us what to do?
- Thank you so much Union Protectiva. Many of us support you holding this sorry government accountable for trying to destroy our collective history and culture. We will continue our support to get this job done.
- How can our mayor, who really isn’t from anywhere near Santa Fe, even understand the cultural aspects of this situation. He’s done nothing but foment resentment and ire over the entire situation.
- How about reconstruct it and actually punish people for destroying property that isn’t theirs instead of simply standing by
- Perhaps they should put a plaque up saying “ this monument, which stood here for over 100 years, was destroyed by protesters “. “ if you wish to know the history of the monument or what it was, good luck. “. Reality is anything you decide to put up is going to offend somebody.
- Rebuild it…… and this time actually arrest people who destroy property that isn’t theirs instead of just standing by and watching.
- $300,000 for a study that concluded that you could either rebuild the obelisk or not. Wonder what politicians relative scored that gig.
- Counselor Castro isn’t very articulate.
- You are right. One thinks of Orwell: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Who and what, in turn, controls the city government? I find it heedless, rudderless, and without a soul, open to and encouraging pillage by big capital and the federal government, specifically the National Nuclear Security Agency, which needs Santa Fe to house its contract nuclear workers so the privatized nuclear weapons business can profit and grow. We see a lack of humility and respect and an unseemly obsequiousness to external authority and power — a lack of sovereignty. “Progressive” voices on the Council are all too easily manipulated by virtue-signaling narratives that serve as a vehicle for fake concern. In defense of the Council, it is difficult to know how to get out of this box. I am sympathetic, up to a point. We’re past that point now. What is the idea of “Santa Fe?” Is there one? The progressive narratives that resulted in the peremptory and illegal destruction of the Plaza monument have been nurtured by a newly-virulent form of identity- and partisan-politics, which is also a divide-and-conquer approach to shoring up central government control and opening profit opportunities in Santa Fe.
- Like some others posting here, I think the monument should be rebuilt to the condition it was in before vandals tore it down. Their crime should not be rewarded. That crime and the resulting absence of the monument has seriously poisoned the waters in Santa Fe. If the City doesn’t want to spend money defending its actions and inactions, just rebuild the monument as it was before the crime. Accept the blame, resolve to do better, and move on.
- Historically, the Soldier’s Monument was built and placed on the plaza, at that time, by the citizens of Santa Fe. If they wanted to place it at Glorietta or at the National Cemetery, they would have done so. It was not up to the vandal thugs to make the decision.
- When ones roots are no deeper than top soil, one might agree with the vandal’s who destroyed something our ancestors thought appropriate for the time because it fits your narrative.
- Yes, and as some wise men once said: “I think little of people who will deny their history because it doesn’t present the picture they would like.” And: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
- Destroying the past is the goal.
- The Obelisk the only monument destroyed in the United States that honors the soldiers from New Mexico that fought with the Union to defeat the confederates and stop them from moving futher West should not be a problem to rebuild!
- The DA and the Mayor should have filed a lawsuit and punished the people that destroyed the Obelisk!
- Mayor your not king of Santa Fe your a public servant along with all the city council that want it moved! Do your dam job!!
- Webbers plan to stall until an Alan Webber statue can be erected is working.
- Thanks very much for this most useful summary — a start at getting “the whole story” — of what has happened with the Plaza, its center and its box.
- It would be useful in addition to know what were (and are?) the continuing objections to the Soldiers’ Monument, even after the text that was considered offensive, praising the soldiers for their fighting in conflicts against Indigenous peoples, was expunged (chiseled off). If these objections have to do with resentment against the prominence of a monument that celebrates Spanish New Mexicans — as apparently Virgil Vigil and those who think like Virgil suspect — , then this is something we really need to know. But if the objections are based on something else, then we need to know that too. Meanwhile the charge of following a “woke agenda” (whatever that is supposed to mean) does none of us any good. As for the matter of suppressing Spanish New Mexican heritage through obliterating the monument, it seems clear that a majority want the monument to be reconstructed and preserved, and of these very many would probably accept the suggestion that it be restored in another location, perhaps the Santa Fe National Cemetery. It is not at all clear that a majority of Santa Feans wish to suppress Spanish New Mexican heritage!
- It’s completely ridiculous that four years have gone by and this is still an issue. Put the obelisk and the statue back and leave our history alone. The people who took down the obelisk got away with criminal behavior and isn’t it interesting how it’s suspected that Webber violated state historic preservation rules for calling for the obelisk’s removal several months before it was toppled in 2020 and how he ordered the police to “stand down” when it happened? How about someone go tear down the statue of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha from in front of the Cathedral and then have it stored in “a safe place” just like Webber did with the Don Diego statue in the middle of the night? I bet Webber would have the law taking action on that in a flash, but being that the Don Diego statue is of Hispanic history he could care less. The $254,000 CHART process was a total joke and waste of money. Now the city wants to spend $324,000 on the lawsuit filed by the Union Proctectiva saying the $324,000 will get them through discovery, meaning they’ll be spending more tax payer dollars to get through a trial that could easily be avoided if Webber would just put things back the way they should be. In regard to the runners statue – In December, Webber said the city is “at the level of conceptual conversations” regarding where to put the runners statue but he couldn’t share any more. Just more of his b.s.
- Why not George Floyd in a dress? Diversity! Inclusion! Equity!
- Elected and unelected officials lie, constantly, and a majority of people believe. George Floyd died of heart failure, not strangulation. His autopsy proved it, but that information was disallowed from trial, and four police officers will spend many years in jail for the lie. Minneapolis suffered over a billion dollars in flaming damage, liberal cities everywhere were on fire, and liberal Santa Fe wanted a slice of the action. The mayor and the police delivered and bestowed Santa Fe with the virtue-signaling opportunity to show the world this town believes a good lie, too. The same mayor and police will allow Destruction Part 2 when a restored obelisk is attacked again.