We return today with the second and final part of our "Remembering La Matanza" series in response to today's violence against Americans of Mexican descent. Program Director Diana Hernandez and Community Engagement Associate Gilbert Correa lead today's conversation as they meet with Elsie Garcia, a descendant of one of the men killed in the Porvenir Massacre. Elsie shares with us how she learned about her family's story and the way she works to ensure it continues to be remembered. 

Credits

Song Credits:

Melancholy Lull by Vital

Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music

License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES

This episode comes in a time of dire need for historical reflection and current action. Over the past few weeks, the Monuments Toolkit team, alongside the rest of the nation, has watched as anti-immigrant sentiments, deportations, and racial violence all reached new heights in the modern era. The events happening in Minneapolis today feel reticent of those in 2020 that led to the creation of the Toolkit and this podcast, including the murder of George Floyd and the summer of protests against oppressive monuments thereafter. However, we must also highlight the difference between the protests then and the protests now as this time our nation struggles to reconcile with its history of violence against the Latine community. 

This history needs to be present in the monuments and sites landscape, but it largely remains absent. While we often discuss the need to remove bronze figures of oppression, we also must reinterpret the historic sites of violence to tell the stories of those lost, which is why today, we bring to you a special episode addressing our nation’s history of violence against Americans of Mexican descent in Texas. We’re meeting with Trinidad Gonzales, a history professor, descendant of La Matanza, and formerly a co-founder of Refusting to Forget; and Benjamin Johnson co-founder ofsx Refusing to Forget, a Texas-based non-profit dedicated to strengthening the collective memory of La Matanza and the history of racial violence on the Mexico-Texas border. 

Credits

Song Credits:

Melancholy Lull by Vital

Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music

License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES

The process of commemorating a site with complicated histories can be a challenge. Whether you're looking to memorialize a tragedy or highlight the hidden history of a site popular for other reasons, there are several steps of care necessary to consider. Ereshnee Naidu, Executive Director of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, joins us today to tell us a bit more about how these sites can be properly cared for as well as what types of places qualify as a "site of conscience."

Credits

Song Credits:

Melancholy Lull by Vital

Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music

License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES

Monuments are often designed by a single person or small team of people. The (Un)Set in Stone project defies that. Instead, the three initial creators of this monument pass the work onto the community of Montgomery, Alabama to define what monument represents them. Today, we're joined by Jose Vazquez and Ashley Edwards to talk about their work with this project and what it means for a monument to be community made.

Credits

Song Credits:

Melancholy Lull by Vital

Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music

License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES

As often as we discuss monuments that have stood for decades or centuries, we rarely find the opportunity to discuss a monument just recently erected. In our final episode of 2025, we're excited to share a conversation with Harmonia Rosales, the artist of a new monument in Boston, Massachusetts entitled, "Unbound." Harmonia shares with us her artistic vision for the monument, how the project came to be, and what her overall ethos is as an artist that works with sculpture, paintings, and more. 

Visit Harmonia's website at https://www.harmoniarosales.art/

Credits

Song Credits:

Melancholy Lull by Vital

Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music

License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES

Statues of Christopher Columbus have been at the forefront of the debate on monuments in both the United States and all over the world. In the city of Columbus, Ohio, they launched the Reimagining Columbus project in order to determine what ought to happen with their statue and their city's legacy moving forward. 

Today, we're joined by Shelly Corbin, an Indigenous Knowledge expert and a member of the Reimagining Columbus project. She tells us about how the project as wrapped up as well as about other monuments across South Dakota and her Lakota homelands. 

Credits

Song Credits:

Melancholy Lull by Vital

Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music

License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES

The Hawaiian monuments landscape offers important differences to the rest of the monuments landscape known throughout the continental United States. One of their contentious monuments is the Captain James Cook Monument, an obelisk that exists at the site where Cook was killed. In this episode, we talk with Shane Akoni Palacat-Nelsen, the President and Executive Director of Hoʻāla Kealakekua Nui, who shares with us the history behind this monument and what makes monuments in Hawaii unique. 

Credits

Song Credits:

Melancholy Lull by Vital

Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music

License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES

Today, we’re joined by Rivka Maizlish, Senior Research Analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center to talk about the center’s most recent edition of the Whose Heritage? report. The Whose Heritage? report documents the progress in Confederate memorial removal over the last two years and provides an interactive map documenting where these monuments exist and their current status. This is the third edition of this report that SPLC has been creating since 2015 and includes information on Confederate memorials of all kinds, including monuments, schools and buildings named for Confederates, sites of Confederate history, and more. In our conversation, we discuss some of the highlights from this report and how individuals can get involved in the greater fight to remove oppressive monuments and memorials. 

Read the Whose Heritage? report here.

Learn more from the Community Action Guide.

Credits

Song Credits:

Melancholy Lull by Vital

Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music

License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES

Many of our past episodes have focused on the South as the region with the most monuments of the Confederacy. However, the West isn’t immune from having controversial monuments as well. In this episode, we’ll turn our attention to the western United States, looking at Kit Carson and the controversial monuments that exist of him all around the wild west. We’re joined by Susan Lee Johnson, the Harry Reid Endowed Chair for the History of the Intermountain West at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her most recent book, Writing Kit Carson: Fallen Heroes in a Changing West, discusses this western figure and his evolving history as historians reconcile with his past.

Credits
Song Credits:
Melancholy Lull by Vital
Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music
License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES

Monument removal, relocation, and reinterpretation is a process that has several means to its end. For some, this process involves work from activists in the community appealing to political leaders. In other cases, decisions to rectify an oppressive monument come from the top down with local and state governments working with their communities in order to create a consensus around how a monument might best be dealt with. In this episode, we’ll discuss both of these approaches and the general trends in monument removal, relocation, and reinterpretation with Professor Kirk Savage from the University of Pittsburgh.

Credits
Song Credits:
Melancholy Lull by Vital
Royalty Free Music: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music
License code: GHSG4LYAWYBKBEES