Serra no Saint...

Junípero Serra’s missions destroyed entire native cultures--now he's going to be a saint

By Gary Kamiya

It's a warm fall day outside Mission Dolores, where an Ohlone man whose baptismal name is Francisco is tied to a whipping post. A week ago he ran away to the village where he grew up, but the soldiers hunted him down and brought him back in chains. A priest has gathered the other Indians at the mission to witness Francisco's punishment. "Remember that this is for your own good, my children," he says as he raises the leather whip. "The devil may tempt you to run away. But you must fight off temptation to gain eternal life." He brings down the whip on Francisco's bare back. After applying 25 lashes, he drops the whip, bows his head, and says a prayer.

This is not a side of mission life that's taught in the fourth grade. But scenes like this took place at every one of the 21 missions in the chain begun in 1769 by a diminutive Franciscan friar named Junípero Serra. Every schoolchild knows that California Indians at Serra's missions were taught the Gospel, fed, and clothed; few know that many were also whipped, imprisoned, and put in stocks. Junípero Serra's pious hope to convert pagan Indians into Catholic Spaniards resulted not only in the physical punishment of countless Indians, but in the death of tens of thousands of them—and, ultimately, in the eradication of their culture. So it was understandable that when Pope Francis announced plans to canonize Junípero Serra in January, some California Indians felt, at least figuratively, as if they were being whipped by a priest again.

"I felt betrayed," says Louise Miranda Ramirez, tribal chairwoman of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation, whose people occupied large parts of northern California at the time of Serra's arrival in 1769. "The missions that Serra founded put our ancestors through things that none of us want to remember. I think about the children being locked into the missions, the whippings—and it hurts. I hurt for our ancestors. I feel the pain. That pain hasn't gone away. And it needs to be corrected.

But the pain is not being corrected. In fact, say many Native American leaders, it's being exacerbated. Since the announcement of the pope's plan, Indians across California have risen up in protest. On Easter, representatives of the Ohlone, Amah Mutsun, Chumash, and Mono peoples gathered at Serra's home mission in Carmel, San Carlos Borromeo, to denounce the canonization. Protests have also been held at Mission Dolores in San Francisco, Mission Santa Barbara, and Mission San Juan Bautista. When Francis canonizes Serra in Washington, D.C., on September 23, more demonstrations will likely take place (though the actions of a pope—who is infallible by definition—are not subject to any trappings of democracy, least of all public protests).

The conflict juxtaposes two radically different perceptions of the soon-to-be saint. In one, he is a selfless "evangelizer of the West," as Francis called Serra when he announced the canonization: a man who forfeited his worldly possessions and traveled to the ends of the earth to save souls. In the other, he is a zealous servant of the Inquisition and agent of colonialism whose coercive missions destroyed the indigenous peoples who encountered them. These two versions of history not only force us to ponder whether a man who carries a mule train's worth of toxic historical baggage should be declared a saint, but also raise difficult questions about Latino identity and the founding myths of the United States—because there is a political dimension to Francis's choice: Well aware that Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in California and constitute a third of American Catholics, the Catholic church is making much of the fact that Serra will be America's first Hispanic saint. His canonization may indeed promote greater acceptance of Latino Americans, especially immigrants, and challenge the Anglocentric creation myth that starts American history with Plymouth Rock. But it's far from clear whether Serra can, or should, serve as an exemplar for Latinos. And the church's attempt to weave Spain into the nation's DNA raises as many questions as it answers.

In short, Francis kicked an enormous historical, theological, and ethical hornet's nest when he made his announcement. Whether he did so wittingly or not, only he knows. But the dustup about Serra's canonization gives California, and the nation, an opportunity to learn a lot more about California's deeply tragic Spanish and colonialist origins than most ever knew before.

If any two people embody the contradictions and complexities of the Serra controversy, they're Andrew Galvan and Vincent Medina. Galvan, 60, a curator at San Francisco's Mission Dolores, is a descendant of Ohlone, Coast and Bay Miwok, and Patwin tribal groups; like many California Indians, he also has Mexican ancestry and is a devout Catholic, but unlike most, he emphatically supports the Serra canonization, or "cause" in church nomenclature. Medina, Galvan's 28-year-old cousin, is a fellow curator at Mission Dolores and another devout Catholic—but also a staunch and vocal opponent of Serra's cause.

I meet with Galvan and Medina in Fremont at Mission San Jose, which Galvan proudly tells me his ancestors helped build. A loquacious man with a neatly trimmed beard, wearing a thick necklace of Indian beads, he is as effusive as Medina is reserved and soft-spoken. Sitting on a pew inside the reconstructed mission, near a baptismal font where his great-greatgreat- grandmother was baptized in 1815, Galvan explains the roots of his love of Serra. "My family home is across the street. My parents were both devout Catholics, and on summer vacation, our hobby was to visit California missions. I can remember the family asking, 'What mission haven't we been to yet?'"

Paradoxically, Galvan goes on to describe the mission system as a monstrosity: "In California schools, the fourth-grade kids make papier-mâché or sugar-cube missions. But they're never asked to build a slave plantation or a concentration camp with incinerators." Given his equation of the missions with such hideous institutions, why does he support canonizing the Father-President of the missions, who could be seen as the Spanish colonialist equivalent of Heinrich Himmler?