Council empowers staff to initiate change of racist street name
LAS CRUCES – The Las Cruces City Council updated the city's 40-year-old street naming guide, empowering city staff to initiate the change of a Las Cruces' Foothills road bearing a racist slur.
According to the new guidance approved Monday, the name change still requires the council's approval. However, multiple councilors expressed a desire to change the name of Squaw Mountain Drive after approving the new guidance.
"Forty years is a long time," Councilor Johana Bencomo said during the meeting. "Many things have changed in society, in the way we use language, the way we relate to one another."
Squaw Mountain Drive has been a target of the Las Cruces council for months. Bencomo first suggested changing the name of Squaw Mountain Drive last fall. Councilor Yvonne Flores, whose district includes the street, expressed support in the past and again on Monday.
However, city rules stymied the effort last January.
“I think we were… derailed when the residents on that street took action not to have the street changed,” Flores said.
"Squaw" is used to denigrate women of Native American descent.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous woman to lead a Cabinet agency and a former New Mexico congresswoman, formally labeled the term a slur and directed the federal government to rid the word from geographic features on federal lands.
The slur is generally thought to have been derived from the Algonquin language, with an initially neutral meaning that became demeaning and misogynistic as white settlers coopted its use. Even before Haaland's action, places around the country that bore the term were changed or were considered for change.
One such example includes Bar Mountain, formally named Squaw Mountain. And while the mountain's name changed – the street bearing the slur has not.
But the unanimous vote Monday may soon result in change.
The resolution approved by councilors updates the naming guidelines adds new graphics and a purpose statement to the packet and creates new processes for changing street names.
Specifically, it empowers city staff to determine the appropriateness of street names. Name changes involving things other than appropriateness will not necessarily require council approval.
If city staff determines a street name inappropriate, the new guidelines require they propose the name change to the council. The council then votes to accept or reject the name change.
Squaw Mountain Drive will almost certainly go through this process. Multiple councilors requested staff review the name even before the resolution passed on Monday.
Larry Nichols, director of the Las Cruces Community Development Department, provided the Sun-News with the results of a survey conducted last year among residents who opposed the effort.
Seventy percent of the street's residents, or 14 property owners, opposed the name change, Nichols said, and none selected an alternative name from a list of suggestions in the survey which were derived from geographic locations in the Organ Mountains, such as Razorback, Rabbit Ears and Wildcat.
Residents who spoke with the Sun-News last year were concerned that a name change would inconvenience them. They said the hassle of changing addresses would be exhausting.
A meeting to hear the name change has not been scheduled as of the publication of this article.
Michael McDevitt contributed to this article.
Justin Garcia covers crime, courts and public safety. He can be reached via email at JEGarcia@lcsun-news.com.
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This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: City Council considers name change for Squaw Mountain Drive
