Again Junipero Serra: “What not to do”

Edd Doerr of  Silver Spring, MD had this letter (“What not to do”) published in the Nov 6/19, 2015, issue of the rather liberal National Catholic Reporter (NCR) newespaper.    

Loring Abeyta’s excellent critical review of Gregory Orfalea’s book about Junipero Serra, Journey to the Sun (NCR, Sept 24/Oct8),(she called it "

Cloying book skirts damage Serra wrought") is backed up and reinforced by California Latino author Elias Castillo’s well-researched and documented 2015 book, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions. Serra’s mistreatment of the Indians was so bad that the Spanish civil governor of California, Felipe de Neve (1775-82), criticized him.

From a review of A Cross of Thorns:

The myth of California’s missions as a nurturing environment for Indians is stripped away by Elias Castillo. Instead, he reveals the Indians’ enslavement by friars who used whips, chains, and shackles to restrain the unwilling prisoners who provided the labor force for the missions.

Through study of historical reports and letters, Castillo describes the efforts of Father Junipero Serra, father of the state’s mission system, to gain more souls in heaven. But it came at the expense of Indians wrenched from their lives close to nature into a worse one. Serra may be canonized by Pope Francis, but his legacy is stained.

The book is thoroughly researched and well written. It depicts a sad period in California history.

Too little, too late, alas

by Gary Berg-Cross

More and more, on so many fronts it seems that the adage of "too little too late" applies to the contemporary scene.  The refuges crisis pouring out of Syria, parts of the Near to Middle

East and North Africa comes to mind driven there by the latest, ghastly TV images of a multitude of suffering .   The Greek debt crisis lingers as another situation that organizations were unable to deal with early on.   Over time it slid from bad to worse and it is possible that the scale beyond worse still looms.  And of course we have the difficult problem

of climate change.  Sure there is a growing international community consensus for action as we near the  Conference of Parties in Paris in December. A small step towards some leadership on the climate has been provided by the US and China. But it all seems like too little to stop temperature rise, acidification of the seas, glacial melt, droughts and the like. It has always been hard to fix things, but it is getting to seems that we need to fix things in every direction. As European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard put it. we need more action:

“for Paris to deliver what is needed to stay below a 2°C increase in global temperature, all countries, including the United States, must do even more than what this reduction trajectory indicates”..

And it is hard to do more in the face of determined opposition. California, usually a trendsetter for climate change actions, illustrated that recently. Recently under focused

pressure from the oil industry, CA state leaders folded and lessened an important piece of climate change legislation. They dropped a provision that would have required a 50% cut in petroleum use in cars and trucks by 2030.  We get too little and it will be too late.

What we are likely to get down the road are apologies. . Polite apologies such as “mistakes were made in the Iraq invasion/occupation. But of course, these don’t fix the problems that were made, as we know from things like the refugee crisis.  Awareness and apologies are better late than never.  They are fine and good as moments, but they can be tragic when they come too late and miss windows of opportunity.

An Orwellian “selective manipulation of history”

by Edd Doerr

The Vatican announced on May 6 that Pope Francis has approved the decision to canonize Junipero Serra as a “saint”.  This move is viewed by many Native Americans and others as approval of Spanish colonialism and the mistreatment of Native Americans. Francis should give this further thought before proceeding.

And California politicians are part of the problem. Each state is allowed two statues in the US capitol. Theirs until rather recently were those of missionary Junipero Serra and Unitarian minister Thomas Starr King, who was credited by Abraham Lincoln for keeping California in the Union during the Civil War. But when California politicians decided to put Ronald Reagan’s statue in the capitol, they removed the one of Starr King and left the one of Serra, who never lived in the US and who died before California was even part of the US.

All this seems to be part of an Orwellian “selective manipulation of history”. Shame. Americans should speak out on this.