SAN JOSE, Calif. (KRON) — In San Jose, a statue stands commemorating Thomas Fallon — a captain who raised the U.S. flag in the city in 1846 to claim the land from Mexico during the Mexican-American War.
But for decades, the statue has been the topic of heated debate as to what the city should do with it.
“I drive my car up 87, I pass by this statue pretty much periodically every day and the feeling that I get every time I pass by is a really painful feeling,” said Yolanda Guerra, a teacher at San Jose High School.
Some residents including Guerra who live in the neighborhood say the statue should be taken down.
“The statue to me represents disappointment, displacement, broken promises and all of those things into one towards the original Californians, the original ancestors of the people who lived here prior to the settlers,” she said.
“And it’s very painful because not only did it happen in the 1800s, I feel like it’s happening now.”
The controversy with the Fallon statue dates back to 1988 when it was commissioned without any public process by former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery.
For local activists, taking down the Fallon statue is not about erasing history but part of a much bigger conversation taking place locally and across the nation on who should be commemorated through public art.
Santa Clara County Board of Education trustee Peter Ortiz helped lead the successful campaign to have the Christopher Columbus statue removed from San Jose City Hall and says the debate on the removal of the Fallon statue is not based on who Fallon was but what he stood for.
“The movement to have Thomas Fallon statue from downtown San Jose has literally been several years in the making even Chicano, Latino, and Indignenous activists when I was younger were fighting this statue,” said Ortiz.
“The statue represents the glorification of American imperialism, toxic nationalism, and essentially the oppression and subjugation of the Mexican and Ohlone Muwekma native people, the original inhabitants of this land,” Ortiz added.
“It’s the fact that this was an act in history that led to many misguided acts Hispanic and native populations, literally a transfer of wealth in land from our community to people of European descent and the glorification of that just can’t happen.”
But much of the debate with the Fallon statue stems from who Thomas Fallon actually was.
Fallon was born in Ireland in 1825 but grew up in Canada for most of his youth.
Eventually, Fallon migrated to California where he was allowed by the Mexican government to live in the state and settle in Santa Cruz.
But when the Mexican-American War began in 1846, Fallon volunteered to be a soldier in John C. Fremont’s brigade that crossed the Santa Cruz Mountains and captured El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe (now the City of San Jose) without bloodshed.
Fallon went on to serve one year as San Jose’s mayor.
“Part of the irony of the Fallon statue is this is a inconsequential, very little-known figure in local San Jose history, California history,” said Stanford History professor Al Camarillo.
“I actually tried to dig some original documents about him, it’s very hard. He left very little legacy in San Jose.”
Camarillo tells KRON4 News the statue also represents the confederacy and a troubled past and asks those who have “any historical consciousness” why would they want to commemorate those parts of U.S. history.
“Of course that’s going to cause consternation, has been for a long time and people endured it, but no more they said,” Camarillo said.
For years, the Fallon statue was stored away up until 2002, when it reappeared at Pellier Park.
Fast forward to 2020 and in the wake of the killing of Geroge Floyd — criticism with the statue revived as protests in San Jose broke out.
Still, some consider Fallon an important part of local San Jose history.
To help the city decide what to do with the statue, Mayor Sam Liccardo, the City Manager’s Officer, the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs and the San Jose Arts Commission held a public online forum on Jan. 29.
Called “When art provokes: Sharing and Learning from Community Views about Public Art,” the forum brought together more than 100 residents as emotions were high demanding the removal of the statue.
This week, Liccardo is calling for the city to begin its public process of removing the Fallon statue which currently stands at the intersection of West Julian and West St. James Streets in downtown San Jose.
In a memo, Liccardo concludes with a call for the community to move forward.
“I urge that we refocus our collective energy on the critical tasks we face as a community—to keep people safe during a pandemic, to sustain families amid a painful recession, and to rebuild shattered lives and businesses in our recovery,” Liccardo said.
“I further hope that when these crises clear, we can move forward with a more generative community dialogue—not about what we want to tear down, but about what we want to build.”