The New Mexican
October 18, 2005
The city of Santa Fe is pulling back from plans to tear down the Sweeney Convention Center next month to make room for a new civic center and underground garage because of objections from Tesuque Pueblo.
On Monday, the city Finance Committee postponed action on $44 million in bonds for the new construction until after Dec. 2, when the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee will again consider a burial-excavation permit.
Tesuque Pueblo leaders object to excavating what is believed to be an ancestral burial ground.
On Friday, the committee voted 4-1 to table the state Office of Archaeological Studies’ request for the permit for the second time to give the city and the pueblo time to work out an agreement.
Mayor Larry Delgado and Tesuque Gov. Mark Mitchell began trying to set up a meeting minutes after Friday’s vote, but both sides doubted there was room for compromise.
Charles Dorame, a former Tesuque governor and now the pueblo’s governmental-affairs officer, said the pueblo’s political leaders can’t change the pueblo’s basic tenets — such as the taboo against excavating graves and reburying the remains.
“On the question of reburial, our history and our beliefs don’t allow this,” he said.
Tim Maxwell, director of the Office of Archaeological Studies, said the delay could mean he will have to lay off some of the dozen archaeologists, about half of them American Indians, who have been excavating the downtown site since midsummer .
Maxwell had previously planned to move the dig slightly farther south in front of the western exit of City Hall. But he said Monday he is now reconsidering because he believes this area will yield more prehistoric burials.
“I don’t want to be the one to violate Tesuque’s wishes, but the reality is the development’s going to continue,” he said. “They say they don’t have a ceremony to put people back in the ground, but, you know, other pueblos have developed those ceremonies. … If Tesuque really wants to respect the dead, they’re going to have to do that.”
The only member of the committee to vote against tabling the permit was Signa Larralde, an archaeologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, who said she did not see any room for compromise, given Tesuque’s stance.
The committee handled a similar case several years ago involving an Arizona utility’s quest to build a railroad to a coal strip mine in Western New Mexico.
Zuni Pueblo opposed the plan because the railroad would cross a salt lake considered sacred by the tribe.
The committee voted to deny the project; a federal agency upheld the decision, and neither the coal mine nor the railroad was ever built. Contact Tom Sharpe at 995-3813 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.