St. Junípero Serra statue targeted by protests in 2020 is now settled in a new home

The missions were a communal venture between the friars and Native leaders, though the Natives who joined the mission were not often permitted to leave freely, were sometimes subjected to corporal punishment, and suffered decimated numbers due to a lack of immunity to various European diseases. Nevertheless, the Spanish taught the Natives new agricultural techniques as well as instruction in the faith, performing thousands of baptisms.

Serra on many occasions defended the Natives against the Spanish military, who committed the worst abuses against the Native populations after the Spanish government ceased sending funding. Serra at one point drafted a 33-point “bill of rights” for the Native Americans living in the mission settlements and walked all the way from California to Mexico City in ill health to present it to the viceroy.

“Unlike many of us today, Serra was a man on a mission,” prominent California archeologist Rubén Mendoza told CNA in 2020.

“He was absolutely determined to [facilitate] the salvation of Indigenous communities. And while for some that may be seen as an intrusion, for Serra in his time, that was seen as one of the most benevolent things one could do — to give one’s life over to others, and that’s what he did.”

Similarly, Gomez noted in a 2020 letter that the worst abuses against the Native Americans in California took place after the age of the missions ended, when the Catholic friars were powerless to protect the Natives from the Spanish military and from the state’s burgeoning American population. 

“[T]he tragic ruin of native populations occurred long after St. Junípero was gone and the missions were closed or ‘secularized.’ Serious scholars conclude that St. Junípero himself was a gentle man and there were no physical abuses or forced conversions while he was president of the mission system,” Gomez wrote. 

“St. Junípero did not impose Christianity, he proposed it. For him, the greatest gift he could offer was to bring people to the encounter with Jesus Christ. Living in the missions was always voluntary, and in the end just 10%-20% of California’s Native population ever joined him.”

Today, despite having many prominent Native critics, other people of Native descent vigorously defend Serra’s legacy.