This isn't a picture of the San Jose Museum of Art. Well, it is, but it also isn't. No, this is a picture of the triangle at the northern end of Cesar Chavez Park, where a statue was supposed to stand.

In 1987, Mayor Tom McEnery and the city commissioned two statues: one historic, one modern. The modern one, known as Figure Holding the Sun, stands in front of the Museum of Art. The historic one, the Fallon statue, originally intended to stand here, now stands in Pellier Park, on the edge of downtown, by a freeway.

The statue depicts two horsemen. The one in front, representing Thomas Fallon, is shown raising the American flag. The one in back represents an unknown rider. It’s meant to memorialize the moment, in 1846, when Fallon announced that San Jose was under American rule.

While both statues went through the same approval process, only the modern piece was unveiled in 1988. The Fallon statue, embroiled in fifteen years of turmoil, wouldn’t see the light of day until 2002. Why? This is the question the documentary, The Search for the Captain, attempts to address.

On Saturday, we drove downtown to see the movie. It was showing at the Repertory Theatre, across from Camera 12 where most of Cinequest is playing. We never made it inside though. In front of the box office was a long ticket line and dozens of protestors blocking the way. It was an intimidating scene and I decided to avoid it all.

Yesterday, driven by curiosity, I dropped by the Camera 12 box office and purchased a ticket for the 9:30 screening of the film. Later, I made my way through the protestors and found a seat in the front row of the theater. The place was completely packed.

I recognized a number of people in the audience and quite a few people in the movie itself. Most of those interviewed were former city council members and other notable citizens prominent in the late eighties and early nineties at the height of the controversy.

At the center of the story was Tom McEnery, San Jose’s mayor from 1983 to 1988. He received the most screen time for two reasons. First, he was one of the statue's primary advocates. Second, the filmmaker is his daughter, Erin.

Surprisingly, the controversy surrounding the Fallon statue has little to do with Thomas Fallon. The man, as far as I can tell, led a rather ordinary life. True, he raised the American flag and was one of the city’s early mayors, but that’s pretty much it. He never killed anyone or committed any acts of bravery. He lost three children due to illness while traveling to Texas, went through a messy divorce and was prone to drinking later in life.

The controversy, rather, seems to surround McEnery and three of his opponents. McEnery, while mayor, was a major advocate of downtown redevelopment. Through his vision, the city built the Convention Center, the Children’s Discovery Museum, the Tech Museum and the Arena. All were bold and successful moves, but they came at a price. To build everything, the city razed existing "slum" neighborhoods and relocated a large Spanish-speaking population.

The move made McEnery unpopular with Mexican-Americans and highly unpopular with a man named Salazar, who rose up against the mayor’s proposal for the Fallon statue. Salazar, who attended yesterday's screening, called the mayor a racist and claimed the artwork was discriminatory and offensive to Mexico and Americans of Mexican descent. Thomas Fallon, he claimed, was a conquistador and equivalent to Hitler. They were false claims, but politically and racially charged enough to paralyze a city council uninformed about history and obsessed with political correctness.

McEnery’s second opponent was a career community activist by the name of Napoli. Anything the city proposed, she opposed. If the city wanted to build a new library, she was against books. If the city wanted to build new schools, she was against children. So, when the city wanted to build the Fallon statue, she was against that, too. She felt it was a waste of public funds. She would later be directly responsible for the city spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional statue relocation and storage expenses.

The mayor’s last opponent was his successor, Mayor Hammer. The two had a falling out when Hammer ran for mayor in 1988 and McEnery refused to endorse a candidate. Once elected, Hammer was unwilling to confront Salazar or Napoli on the issues. Instead, she let McEnery’s statue sit in an Oakland warehouse for eight years.

Finally, in 2002, with a new mayor in office, the city erected and unveiled the statue. They did it quickly and quietly in the hopes that no one would notice. Nobody did. Most citizens of San Jose have no clue about Fallon, McEnery, the statue or the controversy. The Search for the Captain isn't an unbiased account of local history, but it's a decent starting place for the curious.