21st Century Commemoration and the Landscapes of an Absent Past: Remembering with Places in Santa Rosa, CA

Summary

Located in an overwhelmingly Democratic county, Santa Rosa's neighborhoods returned decidedly mixed results in the 2016 presidential race. Ensuing public discourse has invoked long-standing rhetoric about who "really belongs" in the community of immigrants, based on arrival time. But unlike Confederate monuments in the South, Santa Rosa’s historical narrative is less openly contested in its commemorative sites and monuments than it is essentially absent altogether. This historically silent public landscape radically affects contemporary efforts to create two new commemorative monuments: one a Mexican era homestead seen as the city’s birthplace over 150 years ago, and one the place where an immigrant child died at the hands of local law enforcement in 2013. The debate over how and why these two sites link the city’s past and present reveals an intrinsically local memorializing process which suggests this city is still struggling to define a coherent historical narrative, 150 years on.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Excavating reaction and regression: American conservatism in Material perspective   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 344