This weekend the WLBOTT Argentinian ambassador, Elder M, stopped by WLBOTT HQ with her son Elder W. We had a great visit, but we suspect Elder M‘s motivation for her US visit was to try the new Oreos flavors.
Elder M also provided a cash infusion, emptying her wallet of Argentinian currency to help offset the crash of WLBOTT bonds (yield now running at 314.159%).
Elder M then shared the story of the recently redesigned Argentinian 10,000 peso bill. She was proud that her host country acknowledged the efforts of María Remedios del Valle in liberating her country from Spanish rule.
María Remedios del Valle (ca. 1768–1847) also known as the “Madre de la Patria” (Mother of the Homeland) was a pardo soldier who participated in the Argentine War of Independence on the side of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.
Although initially a civilian camp follower, she joined the Army of the North and participated in several battles. She was captured by Spanish forces after the Battle of Ayohuma, but escaped. Her entire family was killed in the war. When the war ended, she returned to Buenos Aires and eventually turned to begging. Discovered by one of the generals under whom she had fought, she was approved for a pension which was paid over the last decade of her life.
Official state portrait of María Remedios del Valle selected in 2021 and currently featured on 10,000-Argentine peso banknotes. By Gisela Banzer – Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación Argentina, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83038211
The statue of María Remedios del Valle in Plazoleta Castelao, Buenos Aires. By Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación – https://www.flickr.com/photos/culturaargentina/52487298825/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125181791
The inauguration celebrations of the sculpture of María Remedios del Valle on 8 November 2022 By Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación – https://www.flickr.com/photos/culturaargentina/52487107019/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125181788
The Portrait of María Remedios del Valle
The Argentinian government held a series of national contests to celebrate María Remedios del Valle and the Afro culture in Argentina. The government described its purpose quite explicitly: to recover María’s figure from historical neglect and, through her, recognize Afro culture as a constitutive part of Argentine national history. There were contests for portraiture, sculpture, comics/illustration, poetry, popular music and documentary filmmaking.
A major challenge was that no one knew what María Remedios del Valle looked like, and the government encouraged artists to use their imagination.
The work located on the walls of room 1 of Annex A of the Chamber of Deputies, belongs to the artist Gisela Banzer and is titled “The Captain – María Remedios del Valle”. It was made using the acrylic and colored pencil technique and was the winner portrait Contest for María Remedios del Valle promoted by the Ministry of Culture of the Nation, through the Secretariat of Cultural Heritage.
Digital Photography Winner: Mary’s Smile, by Ana Belén Greco
Patricia Martínez, María Remedios del Valle: Resilience and natural resistance, chlorophyll printing.
“María Remedios del Valle Sculpture” by Alexis Minkiewicz
And Elder G wanted to submit his entry (5 years too late, unfortunately)
Her/His entry is titled “A Hero Remembered.”
Elder G‘s statue is called “A Hero at Sunset.”
In Contrast to the United States
While Argentina celebrates its minority heroes and attempts to reconcile past injustices, the current regime in the United States is attempting to disavow the shameful past of slavery.
[The] Trump administration continues to corrupt the public record and whitewash the history of this country. Through a multipronged strategy that includes purging diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, pushing for changes in school curricula, and censoring museum exhibits, the administration has implemented a series of orders to reduce access to public areas and censor and rewrite historical exhibits, particularly those targeting the history and impact of Black Americans on public lands.
Between the lines: In contrast to Trump’s Black History Month gesture, his administration has rolled back bedrock civil rights measures and dealt unprecedented blows to institutions for their efforts to represent and include Black people, as well as other marginalized groups.
“Since the start of Trump’s second term, we have seen a coordinated effort to erase or rewrite parts of American history, especially Black history and the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement,” Martin Luther King III, son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., told Axios last month.
“The administration’s attacks on DEI programs and its moves to remove books and materials that highlight diversity, inclusion, and civil rights are a clear attempt to sanitize history and limit whose stories are told.”
Trump Is Trying to Force Americans to Unlearn What We Know, by M. Gessen (NYT / 8/3/2026) “We live in a country with an unpredictable past.” This was a saying among the intelligentsia in the Soviet Union when I was growing up. We never knew which part of our history would be obliterated next.
Now Americans, too, live in a country with an unpredictable past. Two months into his second term, President Trump issued an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, in which he directed officials to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and its museums, to cut funding to “programs that degrade shared American values” and to reinstate some monuments removed after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. […] Bryan Stevenson, who leads the E.J.I., is a litigator whose clients have included Black men on death row and children tried as adults and sentenced to life in prison. He came to feel, however, that the change he could achieve in the courts was not enough. “The real evil,” he told me — the enduring evil — “was the narrative we created to justify enslavement.” […] Another such symbol is Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s residence and plantation just outside Charlottesville. All visitors of the house are required to sign up for a tour, a tightly scripted affair that, if you listen closely, bears the signs of numerous edits made over the years.
The tRump regime, thru the National Park Service (NPS) has censured historical displays to “whitewash” slavery. Elder G enumerates just a few of these occurances.
The Washington Post, April 2025: Its reporters compared archived NPS webpages with the newly edited versions and documented changes to descriptions of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, slavery, John Brown, Appomattox and civil rights. For example, the introductory description of the Underground Railroad as resistance by enslaved African Americans seeking freedom was replaced with language describing it more generally as an expression of the American civil-rights movement.
The Washington Post, September 2025: It reported that the administration ordered slavery-related material removed at multiple NPS sites, including the famous 1863 photograph of the formerly enslaved Gordon showing the scars on his back.
Philadelphia, January 2026: NPS dismantled much of the President’s House exhibit at Independence National Historical Park. That exhibit concerned the nine people George Washington enslaved while living in Philadelphia and explicitly examined the contradiction between slavery and the ideals of the new republic. The Interior Department said the removal was pursuant to Trump’s directive.
POLITICO/E&E News, March 2026: An internal NPS spreadsheet showed that employees had flagged more than 600 items for possible alteration or removal. Subjects included slavery, Native American history, climate change and other historical material that staff thought might conflict with the administration’s directive.
Washington Post, March 2026: A separate examination of the internal database found, among other things, that material at Harpers Ferry quoting Confederate secession documents identifying slavery as a cause of secession had been flagged for review.
Reuters, June 2026: A court-ordered government inventory showed that NPS had removed at least 51 exhibits at 37 sites pursuant to the executive order.
Meanwhile, Back in tRumpistan
In 2026, President Obama proposed replacing slave owner Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the US $20 bill.
The tRump regime recently canceled this effort.
During his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump, who has since sought to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, called the move to replace Jackson with Tubman “pure political correctness.”
The unspoken message screams hatred and racism, and is yet another attempt to control historical memory.
There are no African Americans on circulating paper currency. However, there have been five African American women on circulating coins.
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, essayist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning more than 50 years.
Elizabeth Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926) was an early American civil aviator. She was the first African-American woman and first Native American to hold a pilot license, and is the earliest known Black person to earn an international pilot’s license. She earned her license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale on June 15, 1921.
Born to a family of sharecroppers in Texas, Coleman worked in the cotton fields at a young age while also studying in a small segregated school.
Althea Neale Gibson (August 25, 1927 – September 28, 2003) was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam event (the French Open). The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals (precursor of the US Open), then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years.
Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) was an American civil rights activist, advocate, legal scholar and theorist, author and – later in life – an Episcopal priest. Murray’s work influenced the civil rights movement and expanded legal protection for gender equality.
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially for women.
