Protesters in downtown Los Angeles toppled a Serra statue near Union Station on Saturday, June 20. Another statue of Serra was brought down in San Francisco on Friday. Several statues — dedic…
Statues and other symbols honoring Junipero Serra, a Spanish colonial and leading figure in California’s missionary history, have come under fire recently, as civil rights advocates statewide pick up the mantle of their counterparts across the country — who have called for the removal of monuments lauding some of the nation’s most prominent slave holders.
The nation’s attention in recent weeks has been focused on police brutality, systemic racism and the ways in which the country’s historical sins — such as slavery and the genocide of Native Americans — continue to influence the present. The reckoning with the United States’s history has stemmed from daily protests that erupted in the wake of George Floyd, a black Minnesotan, dying on Memorial Day when a white police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes.
Part of that conversation, especially of late, has resurrected debates about which historical figures the country chooses honor, with many advocates calling for the removal of Confederate statues in the South, as well as slave-owning Founding Fathers such as Thomas Jefferson.
But in California, it’s Serra and other Spanish conquistadors whose legacies, for the moment, shine large — and are now facing renewed outrage.
Protesters in downtown Los Angeles toppled a Serra statue near Union Station on Saturday, June 20. Another statue of Serra was brought down in San Francisco on Friday. Several statues — dedicated to Serra and two other figures — in San Pedro were defaced and then repaired over the weekend.
At the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel, where a similar Serra statue was vandalized in 2017, the staff and the local law enforcement are staying especially vigilant this week, according to Lt. Brian Kott, with the San Gabriel Police Department.
“The Police Department is aware of the historical statue in front of the San Gabriel Mission Church and the current issues surrounding its presence,” Kott said. “As with the entire community, we are fulfilling our primary duties to protect life and property by providing extra patrols, and have also been in contact with the church to address any concerns they may have.”
So far, there have been no planned demonstrations or vandalism at the site, said Terri Huerta, the mission’s director of Development and Communication. For the mission, work on cultural sensitivities is not new, Huerta said.
The mission has been working for the past three years on “how we are displaying our history and the best ways to tell the story with more sensitivity and working toward a heeling process,” she said.
Serra was active in the Spanish Inquisition and later led the first team of Spanish missionaries to California in 1769, which contributed to the killing and enslavement of thousands of native people and stripped many more of their cultural identity.
Part of dealing with current issues of systemic racism, many advocates have said, must include confronting the country’s colonial legacy of slavery and genocide.
