Story updated Feb. 11
Some San Jose State professors have different opinions about whether the city should take down a statue of Thomas Fallon after Mayor Sam Liccardo voiced support for its removal in a Feb.1 blog post.
“For a significant part of the community the statue has become a deeply painful symbol of racial oppression,” Liccardo wrote in the post. “It’s time to move on.”
Fallon was the mayor of San Jose in 1857 and was known for his controversial treatment of Native American and Mexican communities.
The Thomas Fallon Statue was first proposed under Mayor Tom McEnery’s administration in the late ʼ80s. The statue features Fallon riding on a horse and is located on West St. James Street in Downtown San Jose.
Gregorio Mora-Torres, a retired SJSU Chicana and Chicano studies lecturer, said he wants the statue completely gone because it’s a reminder of an imperialist war that symbolizes oppression.
“[Fallon] is not that significant and he was not a great mayor,” Mora-Torres said in a phone call.
He said Fallon took part in a military expedition led by John Fremont, a military officer who mistreated and killed Native Americans and Mexicans. Further after the Mexican-American war, many Mexicans were losing land and immigrants were being killed.
“He is not significant like Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, there is no value,” Mora-Torres said. “The statue must go, as he represents conquest.”
He said there is a huge population of Latinos in San Jose and the “needs of modern California” need to be addressed.
“We need to start thinking about role models that the Mexican-American community can identify with,” Mora-Torres said.
SJSU Chicana and Chicano studies lecturer Juan Pablo Mercado said statues are symbolic and agrees with the mayor’s belief.
“Sites of public memory have always had a significant impact on how we understand and often misunderstand this country, its history and our place within that history,” Mercado said in an email.
He said removing Fallon’s statue is a way for people to publicly reject an ideology of subjugation and exploitation.
“Public art provides a very important opportunity to choose what we will collectively remember,” Mercado said. “We have an opportunity now to reject those previously outmoded and incomplete histories and envision stories of resistance, struggle and of opportunity.”
History department chair Glen Gendzel said although he favors the removal of the statue, he’d rather see it relocated to History of San Jose at Kelley Park, an outdoor museum three miles away from the statue’s location.
He said in this setting it would better represent how different San Jose communities have viewed the statue over time and why it’s no longer appropriate for the city to display this statue in a place of honor.
“A museum setting that explains the complex, multiple and changing meanings of the statue is a good way to stop glorifying it without scrapping it altogether,” Gendzel said.
