Santa Cruz Historical Commission Recommends Removing City’s Last Mission Bell

[Michie]

During the years that the missions were active, the bells were mainly used to wake the Franciscan friars for their daily prayers.


The historical preservation commission of Santa Cruz, California last week advised the city council to remove a replica mission bell from a city intersection, saying the bell represents painful history for the indigenous people of the city.

In a Nov. 18 recommendation to the city council, the Santa Cruz Historic Preservation Commission wrote that some California indigenous peoples view the mission bells as a “colonial settler and racist symbol” that “glorifies the killing, dehumanization, forced labor and imprisonment of their ancestors.”

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Santa Cruz Historical Commission Recommends Removing City’s Last Mission Bell

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Wow, I am really familiar with that area went college there and my parents live in that county, as well as a cousin, and an uncle until a few years back. Not surprised though, that place has been kind of a Berkley of the South Bay since the late 60s.

 

[Gnarwhal]

Stupid, stupid people. Not at all surprised though, Santa Cruz is one of the wackiest places in the state.

 

[Gnarwhal]

Unfortunately, reminders of missions are quite painful for some indigenous families. I don’t know that calling them stupid, stupid people is a charitable way to speak of them. The pat response to uncomfortable reminders that Christian missionaries sometimes brought great suffering to First Nations communities is “yeah well those tribes weren’t nice to each other either”. So what? Rival cliques of Jews in Poland sometimes commuted violent acts against each other, that doesn’t mean Nazi symbology shouldn’t bother them.

I realize what the excuse is but it's gravely misguided because the missions are not symbols of abuse or exploitation, Saint Serra fought against those things. Any mistreatment was perpetrated by Spanish colonists and soldiers, not Catholic missionaries.

 

[Gnarwhal]

Do you honestly believe that Catholic missionaries do not have a history of mistreating indigenous people, that these people were treated with the dignity and respect due them by missionaries? I am familiar with Serra's whitewashed history shared by his proponents and also the demonized history provided by some of his detractors. while I tend to believe that neither is wholly accurate, I wouldn't call those who feel that these bells represent hardships inflicted upon their ancestors as "stupid, stupid people."

If you think any of the saints are the wicked antagonists that secular society has tried to convince people of since the abomination of critical theory arrived on the scene, then you've truly drunk the Kool Aid and beyond hope.

 

[Wolseley]

Maybe they should replace it with a minaret and a muezzin.