Few symbols in California are as ubiquitous because the roadside markers formed like mission bells that flank state highways and the streets of coastal cities from San Diego to Sonoma alongside the so-called El Camino Actual. They rejoice the Spanish mission system, which seized Indigenous lands and sought the elimination of tribal cultures, religious practices and methods of life.
The bells should come down — and there are about 585 of them.
My tribe, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, is descended from Indigenous individuals who have been taken to Missions San Juan Bautista and Santa Cruz alongside California’s Central Coast. We stand with many different Indigenous folks within the state in calling for the whole removing of the bell markers.
Mission bells are a potent image of the domination and enslavement of our ancestors, who toiled lengthy hours with out pay within the mission compounds and have been subjected to many types of abuse. The clanging of the bells regimented the day’s obligatory schedule, and failure to reply to the decision of the bell may end in extreme punishment.
The ornamental roadside bells we see as we speak have been invented within the early 1900s as a method of selling tourism and settlement in California. Civic boosters, car associations, actual property builders and ladies’s golf equipment appropriated the mission bell to mark the route of a brand new state freeway that linked the 21 missions of California. They named the 600-mile path El Camino Actual or the “Royal Street.”
The looming presence of those markers on state roadways exacts a psychological toll on Indigenous folks. The bells function fixed reminders of the struggling of our ancestors within the mission system, and of what number of Californians stay woefully uniformed about this tragic historical past.
The set up of the bell markers coincided with repurposing the crumbling historic Spanish missions into vacationer locations. Fanciful, whitewashed historic narratives of the missions as locations of convivial, peaceable collaboration between padres and prepared Native American converts started to be broadly promoted and finally entered the grade-school curriculum.
These insulting historic narratives are usually not solely false, they serve to erase the voices and precise experiences of the Indigenous individuals who have been held captive within the missions, and who perished in astounding numbers. In keeping with the California Native American Heritage Fee, about 100,000 Indigenous folks died as a direct consequence of the missions, almost a 3rd of the estimated Native American inhabitants of California at the moment.
The bells put a tourism-friendly spin on the historical past of the missions, one which tries to rewrite California historical past, obscuring the truth that many tribal communities survived the mission system and proceed our cultural practices to at the present time. The bells additionally assist conceal the fact of widespread resistance to the missions by Indigenous folks, who typically tried to flee and staged revolts.
The missions left most of our tribal communities landless inside our personal territories. All the things was taken from us. Households that descend from mission survivors proceed to expertise the results of historic trauma, which is said to the excessive charges of despair, dependancy, suicide, poverty and incarceration in our communities.
It’s actually shameful that these locations the place our ancestors have been enslaved, raped, tortured and uncovered to deadly ailments have been transformed into vacationer points of interest and, in lots of instances, wedding ceremony venues. As a substitute, the missions must be locations for the general public to study what actually occurred to Indigenous folks within the mission period and bear witness to the atrocities that happened.
The bells have began to come back down. On the request of Amah Mutsun tribal members, UC Santa Cruz eliminated its El Camino Actual bell in 2019. A yr later, the town of Santa Cruz grew to become the primary California metropolis to resolve to take away its mission bell markers; two websites remained. And the Metropolis of Hayward, following talks in 2020 with native tribal representatives, reversed plans to put in an El Camino Actual bell in a public plaza.
Not all of our tribe’s efforts to achieve out to decision-makers have been effectively obtained. Town of Gilroy put in a brand new El Camino Actual bell downtown in January, regardless of fervent requests to rethink. This disrespectful motion demonstrates that a lot work stays to be carried out, and that many are reluctant to let go of the sugarcoated state historical past they discovered to determine with of their youth.
We lately launched a petition urging Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature to take away the bell markers from Freeway 101 and different state property. The place applicable, state businesses — working with native tribal leaders — may exchange them with new historic markers or instructional indicators honoring Indigenous peoples of the world.
Steps should be taken to start addressing the harm attributable to greater than 100 years of the promotion of dangerous myths concerning the missions. Town, county and state businesses and organizations that erected the El Camino Actual bells ought to fund and facilitate initiatives aimed toward telling the reality about how our ancestors have been handled within the mission period.
Defenders of the El Camino Actual bells typically say that eradicating them is “erasing our historical past,” echoing a standard chorus of advocates for retaining Accomplice statues. In reality, our motion to take away the bells is a name for California to acknowledge and confront its true historical past, regardless of how tough, so that each one of us — whether or not Native American or non-Native — could start to heal.
One other era of younger tribal members shouldn’t must develop up residing beneath the shadow of the mission bell. Ship these bell markers to the scrap heap — and cease selling the mission myths they herald.
Valentin Lopez is chair of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band.
