Santa Fe mayor unveils plan to put controversial statue of conquistador in museum

May 23—Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber expressed hopefulness Thursday as he unveiled a plan to try to end a long-running dispute over a statue of a Spanish conquistador whose role in history makes him both reviled and revered.

"I'm glad you could all make it for this terrific announcement of a very positive development in our community," said Webber, who was flanked by tribal and Hispanic leaders and three city councilors during a news conference at the south-side Santa Fe Teen Center.

"We hope that we can ... bring this to a very, very happy outcome that everyone can celebrate and feel very good about," he said.

It was wishful thinking.

Both inside and outside the room, dissension emerged before the news conference was even over.

The plan calls for a bronze statue of Don Diego de Vargas to be placed temporarily at the New Mexico History Museum at the same time a sculpture of two Native Americans who played a pivotal role in the deadly Pueblo Revolt of 1680 is installed inside the Santa Fe Community Convention Center.

"These are important historical and cultural figures, and they need to be out in safe, respectful public places," the mayor said. "We need them to be available to residents and to visitors, to our students and our families, so we can all talk about and learn about our history and our culture."

New Mexico's history is complicated — and bloody — and continues to stir passionate emotions to this day.

Thursday was no exception.

After the mayor opened the news conference for questions, Elmer Maestas, a member of Hispanic fraternal organization Union Protectíva de Santa Fé, which has sued the mayor over city monuments, tried to ask a question.

"Are you a reporter, sir?" City Manager John Blair asked.

"What difference does that make?" Maestas replied.

Blair told him the event was a press conference and not a "citizen event," and tried to escort him out.

"You touch me and you're going to jail," said Maestas, who eventually was escorted out by two Santa Fe police officers.

Outside, Indigenous activists and their allies protested with signs, including one that read, "No honor in genocidal monuments."

Christina Castro, a co-founder of the Three Sisters Collective, said all monuments are "inherently harmful, and they're erected to enact harm or dominance over certain groups and individuals."

"I don't really think that these monuments bridge communities and cultures," she said.

Speaking about the sculpture of the Indigenous runners, Castro said, "It's political pandering, and it's really unfortunate that tribal leaders are co-signing on this."

Virgil Vigil, the Union Protectíva president, described the proposal as the mayor's latest attack on people of Spanish descent in Santa Fe.

"The museum will take the De Vargas statue and place it in the cellar," Vigil wrote in an email. "It will not be visible to the public like the [two] runners will be on City Hall property. No equal treatment. Double anti-Spanish standards."

Vigil called the mayor's proposal "totally disrespectful" to Spanish history, culture, traditions "and our Catholic Faith."

"It was the two runners who spread the word to the pueblos to revolt against the Spanish people in 1680," he wrote in the email. "During their revolt, the Natives 'slaughtered' over 400 men, women and children. They also tied 21 Catholic priests to horses and dragged them along the street until they died. One was taken to Tesuque Pueblo and stoned to death. Now, they publicly celebrate this!"

Unequal public access?

Though a location for the de Vargas statue within the New Mexico History Museum has not yet been determined and a temporary loan agreement between the city and the state still has to be approved, the statue will be on public display for the first time since its removal from a downtown city park in 2020.

Still, the museum, unlike the convention center, charges admission — a point raised by former Santa Fe City Councilor Ron Trujillo, who once portrayed de Vargas in the annual Fiesta de Santa Fe.

"The unfortunate thing is we now have to pay to go see de Vargas while the runner statue is open to the public," he said. "It just seems once again, the Spanish culture, you know, we're the ones that are taking the hit again."

Billy Garrett, executive director of the New Mexico History Museum, noted admission is free to all youth under the age of 16.

"There also are days and times when all New Mexico residents are able to get in [for free], and as part of this, we will be promoting those days and times so everybody understands when they can come in," he said.

Garrett said the museum is assessing alternate locations for the statue.

"The whole idea of how we facilitate dialogue and how we encourage people to understand different points of view will be something that we'll want to figure out how to set that up," he said. "But we're not there yet. We're just at the very beginning of getting this process going."

Webber, who was joined at the news conference by Tesuque Pueblo Gov. Milton Hererra and Gary Delgado, president of the Caballeros de Vargas, which had commissioned the statue, said the city hopes to have the plan in place this summer.

"We'd like to get it done as quickly as possible after the [City Council] passes — I hope passes — the resolution and makes it a matter of public policy and gives instructions to the city manager to pursue the work to go ahead," he said.

The plan the mayor unveiled is laid out in a resolution sponsored by the mayor, as well as City Councilors Carol Romero-Wirth, Michael Garcia and Pilar Faulkner, who also attended the news conference. The council will introduce the resolution at its meeting Wednesday and is expected to vote on the measure June 12.

The resolution calls for the life-size sculpture of the two Indigenous runners to be placed inside the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, "accessible to the public whenever the Convention Center is open."

The resolution also authorizes Blair, the city manager, to work with state officials "to enter into a temporary loan agreement" for the de Vargas statue, in consultation with the Caballeros de Vargas.

"The Governing Body shall determine any future and permanent location for the Don Diego Statue, preferably on City property, in consultation with the Caballeros de Vargas," the resolution states.

Garrett said the term of the loan agreement for the de Vargas statue would be for less than four years.

First-time display for runners

The mayor's announcement comes nearly four years after Webber ordered the removal of the de Vargas statue from Cathedral Park amid escalating tensions in Santa Fe and across the country over monuments commemorating controversial figures and periods in history. The mayor has said he ordered the statue's removal for safekeeping ahead of a planned protest over an obelisk in the center of the Santa Fe Plaza known as the Soldiers' Monument.

The monument, dedicated in part to Civil War Union soldiers, had been a long-running source of controversy because of an inscription on one side honoring "heroes" who fought against "savage Indians."

The obelisk was toppled by protesters several months later.

Asked about the fate of the monument, Webber said, "Today is about this," referring to the announcement on the statues.

After the de Vargas statue was removed from Cathedral Park, it was supposed to be housed in a safe location, but it was later found in the backyard of the contractor who removed it, with the crane straps still hanging over its base. A source said the statue is now being stored in a hangar at the Santa Fe Regional Airport.

The sculpture of the two Indigenous runners, also in bronze, has never been on public display even though it was finished years ago. Valued at $300,000, it was created by noted sculptor and former Pojoaque Pueblo Gov. George Rivera, who also attended Thursday's news conference.

The city's plans to install the artwork were first interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and then delayed amid a community dialogue about historic markers following the destruction of the obelisk.

In May 2018, the City Council formally accepted from Tesuque Pueblo the gift of a bronze sculpture in honor of Catua and Omtua, young men from the pueblo who set out on foot to notify other tribes about a planned uprising against Spanish colonizers before the two were captured and killed.

Their execution sparked, in part, an early start to the rebellion, which left 400 Spaniards dead and drove some 2,000 settlers out of the area for 12 years.

A resolution the City Council adopted at the time called for the sculpture to be installed in an outside area between City Hall and the convention center, which already has a courtyard dedicated to Catua and Omtua. A plaque marking the dedication notes the courtyard rests on the pueblo's ancestral lands.

Follow Daniel J. Chacón on Twitter @danieljchacon.