#onealbuquerque

October 19, 2020

Mayor Tim Keller Director of Cultural Services Shelle Van Etten de Sanchez Director of Office of Equity & Inclusion Michelle Melendez Deputy Director of Cultural Services Hakim Bellamy Public Art Urban Enhancement Division Manager Sherri Brueggemann

Dear Mayor Keller:

We hope this message finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy. We are members of the ABQ Art Workers collective working for racial and cultural equity within the Albuquerque arts and cultural spheres.

Recently, a concerning situation regarding racial equity within the City’s Public Art Division has come to our attention. We understand that Augustine Romero, the Gallery Curator for the City of Albuquerque, has been evicted from his office at the South Broadway Cultural Center. This raises questions about workplace mistreatment and possible discrimination. Mr. Romero has overseen the South Broadway Cultural Center and KiMo galleries since 2006. As the only curator of the city we are aware of who is working directly with living artists in our community, he is also one of the longest serving curators that is a person of color, identifying as a Chicano man. It is our understanding that Mr. Romero has been displaced to two offices, one in City Hall near the Department of Cultural Services and the other in the offices of Public Art at the Convention Center. This means that Mr. Romero is the only curator in the City of Albuquerque that is not based in the gallery where he curates the majority of exhibitions. This poses a major barrier to artists, many of whom are from underrepresented groups and who regularly met with Mr. Romero at the South Broadway Cultural Center to discuss shows and exhibitions. Now our choice is to meet with Mr. Romero in one of two offices located miles from the South Broadway Cultural Center. Another option is to conduct business such as signing contracts and discussing details of art shows in the parking lot or shed of the SBCC. The other option is to meet in a public space in the gallery with no office space. This is not only humiliating to Mr. Romero and artists, but it also speaks volumes about the lack of critical reflexivity on institutionalized racism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism within the division and the CSD.

This appears to us as a present-day, real-time example of the institutional racism that the City purports to stand in opposition to. According to the City of Albuquerque Office of Equity & Inclusion website, its mission is “[t]o inspire and equip city government to make Albuquerque a national role model of racial equity and social justice.” One of the stated goals of the office is to “[d]evelop a city workforce that is representative at all levels of the demographics of the city.” Also on the Office of E&I website: “We define inequities as disparities in health, mental health, economic, education, or social factors that are systemic and avoidable and, therefore, considered unjust or unfair.”

It seems to us that the actions of Mr. Romero’s superiors in denying him access to these spaces would severely hamper his ability to perform his workplace duties, thereby causing potential disparities related to his job performance evaluation and any potential promotion or salary increase. These are precisely the kinds of aggressions that people of color face in the workplace that lead to the vast continuing racial wealth gap in this country. Furthermore, racial equity with regard to representation within the leadership in the City as a whole, the CSD, as well as the Public Art Urban Enhancement Division appears to fall far short of the Office of Equity & Inclusion’s stated goal to have a workforce that is representative at all levels of our city’s demographics. We find it deeply concerning that the Gallery Curator, one of the few people of color in an important professional leadership position in this Division, would face such serious obstacles from his superiors to the proper performance of his job duties.  

We would like to understand this situation better and to know how the City will take immediate steps to correct this injustice. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

October 19, 2020

Mayor Tim Keller Director of Cultural Services Shelle Van Etten de Sanchez Deputy Director of Cultural Services Hakim Bellamy Public Art Urban Enhancement Division Manager Sherri Brueggemann

Dear Mayor Keller,

We hope this message finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy. We are members of the ABQ Art Workers collective working for racial and cultural equity within the Albuquerque arts and cultural spheres. We are writing with regard to several concerns about the City’s actions and communications related to the Race, History & Healing Project and its response following the events surrounding the La Jornada monument.

Regarding the RHH Project, some of our members have participated directly in RHH sessions and have witnessed problems with lack of transparency, organization, and overall mishandling. Those concerns have been outlined in a letter sent to your offices on October 9, 2020. With this letter, we are bringing to your attention several troubling issues regarding the language and representation of the RHH Project, specifically on the project webpage at https://www.cabq.gov/culturalservices/race-history-and-healing-project

1. The image chosen for this website and the community survey site is an image from the La Jornada monument. If this monument (and all of its components) is the very source of the violence and discord that has taken place, why was this image selected as a representation of the RHH Project? It seems to us both tone deaf and actively re-traumatizing to the communities who have grave objections to this monument in its entirety. As you are aware, the monument is a representation of conquistadors and settlers entering what is now New Mexico: the colonizers enslaved Indigenous people and forced them to pay taxes and tribute to the Spanish crown. This led to revolt by the Acoma people, to which Oñate and his men responded by attempting genocide: they tried to destroy the Acoma village, leaving only 200 survivors out of the 2,000 villagers. Oñate ordered one foot of 24 Acoma men to be cut off, and he committed other atrocities that led even the Spanish crown to charge him with cruelty and excessive force. We cannot help but wonder if the selection of the image was related to the sculptural representation of the “Native American woman” and thus intended as a nod to some distorted notion of balanced representation. If this was the intention, we find it extremely condescending and insulting, not just to Indigenous groups calling for the removal of this monument, but to all who are interested observers and active participants in the RHH Project; in fact, it is an affront to all residents of this city who are the intended audience and who are tax-paying individuals supporting this project.

2. In watching a video recently published on the same webpage entitled “What is a monument,” we found the language and representation here to be extremely problematic and disturbing as a reflection of the city’s approach to the RHH.  The video describes La Jornada as such: “The artwork was intended to honor the founding families who entered the lands of the now-American Southwest from Mexico.”

Firstly, calling the settlers “founding families” already negates any supposed neutrality of the city’s position–no matter what the presumed intention behind the work was. This term is an insult to the Indigenous people who are the original inhabitants of this land and an insult to the Indigenous communities engaged in the RHH Project process.

Secondly, the video’s statement regarding Oñate’s entrance from Mexico is misleading. “Mexico” did not exist as a political entity during the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, the period being represented: the colonizers came from New Spain. This is an important distinction to make, so that your audience understands that Oñate and the conquistadors came in the name of the Spanish crown as part of a proselytizing, extractionist, and white supremacist project.

The above concerns may seem like minor issues of language. However, so much of the discord and conflict we have witnessed are due to a long tradition of misrepresentation of the historical record, from our school textbooks to public monuments and official representations. The City should be held to a high standard in all cases of historical representation, and especially this one. If the word “History” is to be included in the Race, History & Healing Project, we would expect the historical record to be communicated accurately.

Your website states: “The Race, History & Healing Project supports community-centered dialogue and input to inform community-led recommendations for the Oñate statue and La Jornada public art installation…” Indeed, our city has the opportunity to follow through on these admirable goals and to actually work to find “thoughtful solutions for difficult and complex issues.” We applaud the City’s commitment to the important work of equity and inclusion in partnership with the community. However, if the language used in the RHH is an indication of the theories and approaches grounding the project, we fear that it is bound to fail in achieving its goals. We strongly suggest that all city representatives involved in the RHH sit down for more meaningful dialogue with community members around anti-racism and anti-oppression. There are many community organizers in our city who can be valuable resources, starting with Kiran Katira and Diana Dorn-Jones with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.

With the national uprising surrounding monuments and systemic racism in this country, we are witnessing a mass movement for accountability and dismantling of white supremacy within institutions at all levels of our society. It may sound surprising, but one can draw a direct line from the violent oppression of Oñate and the conquistadors to ongoing police brutality and carceral systems of the present day. Both represent agents of the state working to uphold white supremacist values whose goals are to supress Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

We thank you for your time and service to our city. We look forward to hearing your response to our concerns.

Sincerely,