Hispanic, veterans' groups to remember Glorieta Pass Saturday at Soldiers' Monument
The event will mark the 163rd anniversary of the three-day battle, which was fought from March 26-28, 1862, during the Civil War, between Confederate soldiers from Texas and Union soldiers from Colorado and New Mexico. Often referred to as the "Gettysburg of the West," the battle halted the Confederacy's hopes of advancing from New Mexico into gold-rich Colorado and California.
Though the battle was in some ways minor compared to the actual Battle of Gettysburg — only about 100 soldiers died, compared to 7,000 at Gettysburg — it turned the tide in the war's Western theater. Confederate troops had planned to march further into New Mexico and then onward to Colorado, but after losing their supply wagons, they were forced to retreat to Santa Fe and then back south through New Mexico into Texas.
"Had the Confederacy achieved its aims, America and Santa Fe and our Pueblos would not exist as we know them today," said Daniel Ortiz, founder of the U.S. Hispanic Anti-Defamation Association. "So it's very important that we remember and commemorate that event."
The association is organizing the commemoration along with the Santa Fe Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Union Protectiva de Santa Fe, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, Santa Fe LULAC Council 33 and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The event is a resurrection of an annual commemoration Ortiz said was held around the Soldiers' Monument from the mid-1800s through World War I, when it was discontinued.
The Soldiers' Monument in the center of the Santa Fe Plaza was built in 1867 in honor of Union soldiers who died in that battle and several others in New Mexico, including the Battle of Valverde, south of Socorro, a month before Glorieta Pass.
The commemoration was brought back in 2022 for the 160th anniversary of the battle and has been hosted annually since. Ortiz said this year's event will be special because it will be the first since the box around the Soldiers' Monument was removed by court order in January.
"We're slowly getting our Plaza back," he said.
The monument has been controversial for decades due to one of four plaques on its base that honors soldiers who fell in battle with "savage Indians." The word "savage" was chiseled off by an unknown man in 1973, and on Indigenous Peoples Day in 2020, the top of the obelisk was toppled by protesters.
The base was encased in a wooden box until January, when it was removed following a court ruling in a lawsuit the Union Protectiva filed against the city of Santa Fe seeking to have the obelisk restored to the Plaza. The monument's ultimate future remains uncertain, and the city is currently studying the feasibility of rebuilding or moving it.
Ortiz said there has been "a lot of misinformation" about the obelisk and what it stands for.
"The monument is not the plaque," he said.
The event Saturday will include a color guard presentation, the singing of the national anthem, the reading of the names of those who died in battle by one of their descendants and remarks from members of local veterans groups and a historian.
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