Angelus News | August 2-9, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 27
A nationwide trend pushing to remove tributes to certain historical figures of U.S. history has seized on a new, unlikely target: the bells lining California’s iconic El Camino Real. The reason? The belief that Spanish missionaries — among them St. Junípero Serra — were oppressors, captors, and even murderers of California’s first peoples. On Page 10, renowned historian Gregory Orfalea examines the most common critiques of the Spanish evangelization of California and makes the case for why the bells represent a legacy of love, not oppression.
A nationwide trend pushing to remove tributes to certain historical figures of U.S. history has seized on a new, unlikely target: the bells lining California’s iconic El Camino Real. The reason? The belief that Spanish missionaries — among them St. Junípero Serra — were oppressors, captors, and even murderers of California’s first peoples. On Page 10, renowned historian Gregory Orfalea examines the most common critiques of the Spanish evangelization of California and makes the case for why the bells represent a legacy of love, not oppression.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIBRARIES/CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY<br />
A ‘Camino’<br />
in California<br />
The Camino de Santiago in<br />
northern Spain today that follows<br />
the medieval pilgrimage<br />
along the Pyrenees west to a miraculous<br />
site in Santiago de Compostela is<br />
trod by millions, many of faith, many<br />
of no apparent faith.<br />
I say “apparent” because faith is a<br />
curious thing. It can start with awe over<br />
the beauty of nature, and end with awe<br />
at the Creator of it all. In any case, it’s<br />
an opportunity for a spiritual upgrade.<br />
The magic of the Spanish Camino de<br />
Santiago in the Old World could become<br />
part of the California Camino. I<br />
propose a spiritual and history-marking<br />
walkway from Loreto (Baja California)<br />
to Sonoma, or even more appropriately,<br />
from Mexico City to Tepic to La Paz<br />
to Loreto to Sonoma.<br />
This journey on foot would have several<br />
purposes. For those of a spiritual<br />
bent, it would be the cause for meditation,<br />
prayerful hiking, worship of the<br />
Creator, and a Franciscan-like wayfarer’s<br />
trust in strangers on the road.<br />
For those who also respect history, the<br />
Camino in California (or the Californias)<br />
could have mini-exhibits along<br />
the way of treatment in the missions —<br />
pro and con — and of Native American<br />
testimony in every shade.<br />
For environmentalists, they would<br />
have a walk in some of the most<br />
beautiful land and sea and mountain<br />
in the world, and an opportunity to<br />
raise awareness of the threat of global<br />
warming and the erosion and warming<br />
of the seas. Many might be drawn by<br />
all three perspectives.<br />
As my friend and celebrated author<br />
Richard Rodriguez wrote in his book<br />
“Days of Obligation”: “Have I, like the<br />
California Indians, sought some refuge<br />
from a world that can no longer make<br />
sense to me?”<br />
From the nuclear shadows of our<br />
world, from the terrible addiction to<br />
energy that is killing us, from the fear<br />
of the Other, let the Camino give<br />
refuge. And let the mission bells bend<br />
gently over that road.<br />
— Gregory Orfalea<br />
human, with no dignity, who abused<br />
them sexually, and grabbed their land.<br />
But the supreme act of “radical<br />
mercy” occurred after the Kumeyaay<br />
raid on Mission San Diego in 1775<br />
that burned the mission to the ground<br />
and killed three Spaniards, including<br />
a priest friend of Serra’s who was one<br />
of the Kumeyaay’s greatest champions,<br />
Father Luis Jayme.<br />
Despite Jayme’s deeply tragic, nonsensical<br />
murder (he was beaten to death<br />
and skewered by a dozen arrows),<br />
Serra insisted to the viceroy that those<br />
jailed and awaiting execution in San<br />
Diego for the attack be pardoned and<br />
released.<br />
“As to the killer,” Serra appealed to<br />
the highest authority in the Americas,<br />
“let him live so that he can be saved,<br />
for that is the purpose of our coming<br />
here and its sole justification.”<br />
Though there was severe loss of<br />
life due to disease, and disciplinary<br />
measures we do not counsel today, in<br />
contradistinction to intentional murder<br />
and land seizure of the American<br />
government in the 19th century, those<br />
Hispanic mission bells represent the<br />
Gospel of Love. That, to me, is one<br />
California symbol worth saving in the<br />
midst of so many social ills that inflict<br />
so much misery.<br />
The Franciscans were founded, after<br />
all, by one of the great peace-lovers of<br />
all time; if they had forgotten him in<br />
Peru and Mexico and Arizona, they did<br />
not — for the most part — forget St.<br />
Francis in California.<br />
An early San Diego interlude in the<br />
life of Serra always brings to me the essential<br />
benevolence of the Franciscans<br />
in 18th-century California. On the first<br />
exploration, just over the present-day<br />
U.S.-Mexico border in what is today<br />
the Tijuana Estuary Nature Preserve,<br />
the Portola expedition came across<br />
“good sweet water” and the leader proposed<br />
to water the horses, let the men<br />
bathe, wash their clothes, and drink.<br />
Serra would have none of it.<br />
“We do not want to spoil the watering<br />
site for the poor gentiles,” he said,<br />
meaning this was the Indians’ water<br />
and hands off. Does that sound like<br />
genocide?<br />
On the side of the heart<br />
“If we weren’t here, who would have<br />
put the bricks on top of each other?”<br />
Mel Vernon, captain of the Luiseno<br />
tribe, hardly sees mission life uncritically.<br />
But at a book signing for my<br />
Left to right: St. Junípero Serra scholars Steven Hackel, Robert Senkewicz, Rose Marie Beebe, Ruben<br />
Mendoza, and Gregory Orfalea at Serra’s canonization in Washington, D.C., in 2015.<br />
biography of Serra in San Diego, he<br />
took the time to shake my hand and<br />
tell how proud he was to be a part of<br />
the book.<br />
Vernon is one of the many Native<br />
Americans in California who understand<br />
this complex history and come<br />
down on the side of the heart.<br />
Ernestine de Soto, whose mother was<br />
the last Native American speaker of<br />
Chumash, herself a Chumash shaman<br />
and registered nurse, is no shrinking<br />
violet on difficulties in the missions, as<br />
I can personally attest. Yet today she is<br />
not only a devout Catholic, but leads<br />
winter solstice services at Mission Santa<br />
Barbara with a recitation of the “Our<br />
Father” in Chumash.<br />
She also wrote to the Vatican present-<br />
GREGORY ORFALEA<br />
14 • ANGELUS • <strong>August</strong> 2-9, <strong>2019</strong>