The Rebel Flag Revisited

Our mayor, courageously defying the Texas tourists who keep Old Town’s shops afloat, has ordered the removal of the Confederate Flag from the Plaza. I have no particular affection for what we used to call the “Rebel Flag” when I was in college back in Illinois, but I believe rewriting (or even worse, simply  erasing) inconvenient bits of history is a dangerously slippery slope, especially in a land where we have so much history to regret. Several weeks ago, I was dismayed to meet a young woman born and raised in NM who had never heard of the Texican invasion during the Civil War. She explained that in her school New Mexico history was generally the last topic at the end of the term, and the teachers  skimmed over it as “not important.”  She had never heard of the Warm Springs Apaches, either.