Tim Steller’s column: Council overreacts on Tucson park name rejection

Tucson’s decision to freeze all future park and public space renamings leaves the city with a broad policy response to a deeply specific dispute. The immediate issue was whether Joaquin Murrieta Park on the West Side should be renamed for Salomon Baldenegro, a longtime community organizer who helped establish the park. Instead of approving or rejecting that request, the Tucson City Council voted four to three on Sept. 9 to suspend renamings altogether. The result affects other naming proposals, including those that might otherwise move through the city’s established review process without controversy.

The council’s action followed a debate shaped by an unproven domestic violence allegation against Baldenegro, the national reckoning over César Chávez, and longstanding political divisions within Tucson’s Mexican American community. Baldenegro was arrested by Tucson police in 1973 and accused of striking and kicking his then-wife inside a vehicle. Newspaper accounts at the time said a gas station attendant and another witness saw the incident. The charges were quickly dropped, and Baldenegro was never convicted. He has strongly denied the accusation.

Supporters of the renaming argued that Baldenegro’s decades of activism and role in creating the park should carry greater weight. Raul Ramirez led the campaign, raised $10,000 and guided the proposal through the city process. The Tucson Parks and Recreation Commission approved it unanimously before the matter reached the council. Frank Sotomayor, another prominent supporter, said the campaign was intended to recognize Baldenegro’s contributions rather than reopen old political disputes.

Baldenegro’s current wife, Cecila Cruz Baldenegro, also addressed the council. She said she has known him for more than 50 years and has never witnessed him behave violently. For supporters, the absence of a conviction and the allegations’ rapid dismissal made the accusation an insufficient basis for denying the honor. For opponents, however, a criminal conviction was not the only relevant standard. West Side resident Patricia Palomera argued that domestic violence victims frequently decline to continue cooperating with prosecutors or serving as witnesses, meaning a dropped case does not necessarily settle what happened.

The discussion took place after a national controversy that has already changed Tucson’s public landscape. On March 18, the New York Times published an account describing sexual assaults associated with Chávez, the celebrated farmworker organizer. The report included Dolores Huerta’s accusation that Chávez raped her. Although Chávez had never been convicted and was already dead, the revelations prompted Tucson to remove his name from an arch, a park and a holiday, and to take down a statue. That recent experience formed an important backdrop as council members considered whether another contested figure should be honored in a public place.

Council Member Lane Santa Cruz proposed the moratorium, saying the Chávez revelations caused her to pause other park naming requests. Santa Cruz has said she is a survivor of sexual assault and that the disclosures brought up difficult experiences for her and many Tucson residents who have faced gender based violence. Her position was that the city needed broader conversations about how it evaluates names for public spaces when credible allegations exist, even if those allegations did not result in a conviction. The council approved the pause immediately after approving the naming of the Stacy Redondo Fields at Kennedy Park, honoring the late Cholla High School softball player who later helped the University of Arizona win two national championships.

That sequence also points to why a citywide moratorium may be unnecessarily sweeping. The Redondo naming moved forward without the conflict surrounding Baldenegro, showing that the challenge is not public renaming in general. Tucson already has a process for these decisions, set out in a 2020 directive signed by then City Manager Mike Ortega. The more difficult question is how that process should handle credible but unproven allegations involving a person being considered for a civic honor.

The dispute also exposed political fractures that are easy to miss from outside the West Side and Tucson’s Mexican American communities. Baldenegro and the late Congressman Raúl Grijalva worked together during the activism of the 1960s and 1970s, but their relationship changed by 2002, when Grijalva left the Pima County Board of Supervisors to run for Congress. Many expected Grijalva to support Baldenegro as his successor. Instead, he backed Richard Elias, who won the election and served more than four terms before his death in 2020. Ramirez described Tucson’s Chicano political world as divided between those aligned with the Grijalva network and those who support Baldenegro’s independent political tradition.

Those divisions remain relevant because Baldenegro supported Miguel Ortega, Santa Cruz’s Democratic primary opponent in 2023. Ramirez said the naming campaign was meant to help heal that fracture, but he believes the council’s decision has caused people to take sides again. Santa Cruz rejected the idea that the old political conflict drove her position, saying she would not be drawn into that framing. Mayor Regina Romero, Santa Cruz, U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva and others have been identified by Baldenegro supporters as part of the political establishment they oppose, while elected officials such as state Representative Alma Hernandez and state Senator Sally Ann Gonzales are associated with the dissident side.

The council faced a legitimate ethical dilemma, but a moratorium treats every future naming request as though it presents the same problem. If council members believe the evidence against a nominee is substantial enough, they can reject that particular proposal after weighing the accusation, the person’s public contributions, the available evidence and the community’s response. A clear decision would also spare supporters from investing time and money in a process that can be halted at the end. Joaquin Murrieta Park, located at 1400 North Silverbell Road, recently received major improvements, including refurbished ball fields. Its name will remain in place for now, while Tucson puts all other renaming efforts on hold and considers how, or whether, to revise its standards.