The Beale-Carson and San Pasqual Battlefield Historical Monuments: Conflicting Commemorative Loyalties in History and Memory

My project examines the raison d'être behind the establishment of the San Pasqual Battlefield State Historic Park. In specific, I examine the Beale-Carson Monument (1910) and the San Pasqual Battlefield Historical Monument (1925). The historic park commemorates the Battle of San Pasqual (1846) between Andrés Pico’s lancers and Stephen W. Kearny’s U.S. Army of the West. Historians have catalogued the battle as the bloodiest military encounter between Mexican and U.S. armed forces in Alta California during the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-48). In 1919, the State of California officially accepted the land, donated by two members of the Native Sons of the Golden West in 1912, and set it aside as an historic battlefield site. The park is located nearby the present-day city of Escondido, California. My analysis proposes a counter-narrative challenging the official narrative espoused by the park via both monuments. The park claims that its landscape “has been set aside, not as a monument to war, but as a reminder of the human ideals, actions and passions that can drive nations to bloodshed.” In other words, the California Department of Parks and Recreation asserts that the park’s memorial landscape, including its monuments, is inclusive of divergent historical perspectives. Yet, I argue that the park’s seemingly benevolent memorialization of the clash at San Pasqual silences the voices of Mexicans and the northern Ipai Kumeyaay Indians barring them from a more nuanced and inclusive memorialization of the event. In specific, my work explores the San Pasqual Battlefield Historical and the Beale-Carson Monuments in order to provide a new reading of these memorials from a counter-hegemonic perspective critical of power, nationalism, and historical erasure. At stakes are conflicting notions of patriotism, national belonging, citizenship, and historical memory. The investigation seeks to contribute to the literatures of U.S.-Mexico Borderlands history, Cultural history, Public history, and History and Memory.