The Santa Fe Soldier’s Monument was built to honor Union Soldiers who fought pro-slavery Confederates, and those who fought in the Indian Wars. But it also commemorates the 16th, 17th, and 18th New Mexico Territorial Legislative Assemblies, half of whom enslaved Indigenous people.
505OMATIC’s J. Alex the Technologist sat down with Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez, Executive Director of Native Bound Unbound: Archive of the Indigenous Enslaved, to explore how this practice of slavery in the Southwest was cited as a cause for much of the Indian Wars, further complicating this monument with contradictions and hypocrisy.
Read Dr. Rael-Gálvez’s article on Medium Centering Truths Not So Evident:
[https://estevanraelgalvez.medium.com/centering-truths-not-so-evident-9573b344d1e6](https://estevanraelgalvez.medium.com/centering-truths-not-so-evident-9573b344d1e6)