New Mexico’s Leaders Are Running From History

New Mexico didn’t simply add a holiday honoring Indigenous peoples. It eliminated Columbus Day from its official state calendar. The 2019 legislation said exactly what it intended to do: “replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Four members of our federal delegation later backed legislation to carry that replacement into federal law. Martin Heinrich sponsored the Senate bill. Ben Ray Luján cosponsored it. Melanie Stansbury and Teresa Leger Fernández cosponsored its House counterpart. The legislation did not become law, but their position was clear.

We consider that disrespectful to an important part of American history.

And we call it weakness, not leadership.

Indigenous peoples deserve recognition. Columbus’s historic voyage does, too. A confident nation can acknowledge both without demanding a spotless past from either.

This was a deliberate choice

In the October 12 posts reviewed for this editorial, every member of New Mexico’s federal delegation recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day. None acknowledged Columbus Day. Deb Haaland and the Democratic Party of New Mexico likewise celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day without mentioning Columbus Day in the posts reviewed.

An omitted greeting alone would make a thin case. The legislative record makes this a substantive question about leadership.

Heinrich’s office described the 2023 proposal plainly:

“The bill would also replace any mention of Columbus Day in all federal laws or regulations with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

The bill instructed Congress to strike the Columbus Day entry from the federal holiday statute and insert Indigenous Peoples’ Day. It also addressed references to Columbus Day throughout federal laws, rules, regulations, and other official papers.

That is not an effort to recognize both. It is an effort to replace one with the other.

Precision matters: Vasquez’s holiday messaging does not establish sponsorship of that legislation. The documented supporters were Heinrich, Luján, Stansbury, and Leger Fernández. Our criticism of Vasquez concerns his public messaging, not a legislative action we have not established.

Their explanation is not an excuse

The supporters have already explained their reasoning.

Heinrich spoke of working with Tribes and Pueblos to “re-frame this national holiday.” His office described federal recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day as “a necessary next step to address generations of trauma and inequity.”

The 2026 resolution sponsored by Heinrich and cosponsored by Luján states that Columbus Day does not provide an opportunity to reflect on Indigenous stories and perseverance. It invokes suppression, forced assimilation, and genocide following Western contact. This resolution supports designation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day; unlike the earlier bill, it does not itself amend the federal holiday statute.

We understand the argument. We reject the conclusion.

If the existing holiday does not adequately recognize Indigenous experiences, establish an additional observance. Explain the history. Expand the public’s understanding.

Why must recognition come through replacement?

No civilization gets a sanitized history. No people should be reduced to their worst acts. And no historical achievement should require a declaration that everyone associated with it was beyond criticism.

That standard should apply consistently—not selectively, depending on whose commemoration is being considered.

Recognition is not surrender

Columbus’s voyage initiated enduring contact between Europe and the Americas. The consequences transformed the world and helped shape the circumstances from which the United States eventually emerged. That is historical significance worth recognizing, not an inconvenient footnote to be pushed aside.

For Americans whose family stories run through European migration, that connection is personal. It is part of the larger history of how their families came to belong here.

Columbus Day also developed a meaning beyond the explorer himself: Italian American heritage, contributions, and belonging in a country where Italian immigrants faced discrimination. Eliminating the commemoration disregards that dimension as well.

Recognizing Columbus’s achievement does not require endorsing every action he took. Celebrating Indigenous peoples does not require declaring every Indigenous society beyond criticism.

Leadership should be capable of explaining that.

Instead, New Mexico chose to remove one designation, and four delegation members supported carrying that choice into federal law. We consider that erasure from our civic calendar. The fact that its supporters offer a justification does not make the decision immune from criticism.

The comforts of a complicated inheritance

We also see hypocrisy in enjoying the benefits of modern America while treating a consequential part of its beginnings as unworthy of public commemoration.

The electric car, the airport latte, the Washington travel circuit: they are familiar symbols of comfortable modern life, not a purchase ledger for any particular official. The point is the contrast between enjoying a national inheritance and accepting responsibility for explaining its complicated origins.

America did not arrive fully assembled, prosperous, and protected. Its story was shaped by exploration, migration, conflict, ambition, perseverance, and sacrifice.

We are proud of that inheritance. We refuse to treat national pride as an embarrassment.

These officials have publicly stated their positions. What we believe they are avoiding is the harder responsibility of leadership: explaining why a historical achievement can remain worthy of recognition without requiring every surrounding chapter to satisfy their preferred narrative.

Replacing a holiday is easier than making that argument.

We call that running from history.

New Mexico deserves stronger leadership

We believe America is the greatest nation on Earth. That is our judgment, and we make no apology for it.

Our pride does not depend on pretending the past was spotless. It rests on recognizing what generations built, defended, improved, and passed forward—including a nation conceived in liberty whose promise Americans continue to argue over and pursue.

Indigenous Americans belong in that story. So do explorers, immigrants, settlers, and the generations whose work and sacrifice shaped the country.

Recognition need not be a contest in which one commemoration must disappear before another can matter.

Yet replacement is what New Mexico enacted and what four members of its federal delegation proposed nationally.

We reject that decision. We reject selective recognition presented as inclusive leadership. And we reject the notion that respect for Indigenous peoples requires eliminating Columbus Day.

Honor Indigenous heritage. Recognize Columbus’s historic voyage. Have the confidence to explain both.

America is strong enough to hold its whole story.

New Mexico deserves leaders who are, too.