Junipero Serra was declared a saint in 2015. But his role in California's colonization via the mission system makes him a target for statue toppling.
On Saturday afternoon, a group of about five dozen indigenous activists of all ages — children and elders included — gathered at Father Serra Park in downtown Los Angeles, just south of Olvera Street.
“Mass incarceration comes from the mission system,” says Joel Garcia, a cultural worker of indigenous Huichol background who was in attendance at Saturday’s toppling, and was part of a group of activists that pressed to have removed from Grand Park in 2018. “It’s important that what is going on doesn’t overshadow what happened in California.”, a long-time activist in indigenous cultural causes, says that he wanted to offer the blessing for the toppling because of his own family’s history.
“My family was brought to the San Fernando mission in 1799,” he says. “So when I talk about Native people who lost their culture, their language and their lives — and were worked like slaves at the missions — I’m talking about my great-great-great-great-grandparents.”The statue of Serra, holding aloft a cross and bearing a model of a Spanish mission, was first installed in the downtown area by the Knights of Columbus in 1932.
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