https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/06/a-word-from-amb-landau.phpA WORD FROM AMB. LANDAUIn reference to John Hinderaker’s post “Grant, Too†I just wanted to bring to your attention that the same radical San Francisco mob also toppled and vandalized a statue of Junipero Serra, founder of the original California missions and a revered figure in both Mexico and Spain.
The Spanish Embassy in DC (@SpainInThe USA) posted a series of tweets today in English on the issue, including one saying that they were “expressing our deep concern regarding these attacks to federal, state, and local authorities, asking that the memory of our rich shared history be protected.â€
The vandalism is also being condemned here in Mexico, as you can see from a Twitter thread on this issue today by a popular Mexican historian, Enrique Ortiz (@Cuauhtemoc_1521) to which I responded — all in Spanish, but translated (sort of) by Google Translate upon the push of a button.
I suspect this attack on an important Hispanic figure in US history will not endear this mob, or those who support it, to the many Americans who really care about Hispanic heritage in our country.
I'm not sure Amb. Landau realizes the degree to which Father Serra has been vilified here in the US, and believe Mexico and Spain know even less. After the Mexican Revolution happened, some 35 years after Serra's death, the Catholic Church was not loved by the new leaders, and people greedy for lands controlled by the missions vilified the missions as abusing the Indians. The outcome was that the mission lands were secularized. To what degree the vilification was fictionalized or exaggerated from isolated incidents into generalization, I do not know. The Indians were not treated any better by those who took over mission lands.
Fast-forward nearly two centuries, US Libs & Progs have taken these agenda-driven, probably at least partly fictional, claims and blamed Fr. Serra, even though whatever abuses may have happened occurred after his death. In that sense, to some degree Mexico and Spain are seeing the harvest of a crop they sowed two centuries ago.
Fr. Serra and the priests at the missions were imperfect humans and didn't conform to a political ideology that would not come into being until a century or two after their deaths. All in all, this destruction, like that in other states, is due to city and state governments not taking the anarchists seriously, or being sympathetic to them.
