La Plaza: Selling NM's Black History; Undermining Marriage Equality; Risking Young Native Lives

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

MAJOR LEGACY OF NEW MEXICO'S BUFFALO SOLDIERS NOW AWAITING DESTRUCTION

I wrote a few days ago about the impending threat to Fort Bayard, a state and federal historic site in southwestern New Mexico that embodies a major part of the state's African American history.

Since the 2014 legislative session ended yesterday with no attempt to salvage the historically significant landmark (nor to accomplish much else, as is usual with the state Lege), it appears that the old fort and its campus await destruction, with the land to be sold off to monied private interests.

Obstacles to its sale remain, to be sure, but General Services Secretary Ed Burckle appears to be pushing for a fast track to privatization:

ACTION: Help Save the Legacy of New Mexico's Buffalo Soldiers. Save Fort Bayard.

Photo copyright Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society; all rights reserved.

America does not do history well. Even at its best, it's inevitably a whitewash in service to the dominant culture's mythological retelling of events that were, to put it mildly, colonialist brutality. The histories and perspectives (and even the bare facts) surrounding people of color involved in any given historical episode are always and by definition elided, distorted, or simply missing completely. Nowhere, of course, is this more true than when dealing with our peoples, the original inhabitants of this land.

Even so, the history must be preserved. Without it, there's no chance of ever getting it right. That denies our children (and their children, and on and on) the possibility of ever knowing the real facts, the real richness of this land, its peoples, its histories. It denies our ancestors their memory and legacy, threatening to erase them and their footprints completely. And it denies us our identities, our very existences as who we are.

So today, I'm going to ask you to take a moment to try to help preserve and important piece of history. It's something that, in its former and current incarnations, has always been very flawed (and that's the polite way of putting it). Currently, much historical inaccuracy is involved. A great deal of anti-Indian racism is present. And all of that needs to be fixed.

It will never be fixed if this public landmark, the historical piece of the commons for so many populations in New Mexico and across the country, is privatized or razed to the ground.

So I'm going to ask you to read the details over the jump, and then help save Fort Bayard.