Critics, however, associate Serra with human rights violations and the destruction of native cultures, among other things charging that natives at his missions who refused to embrace Christianity were often mistreated, including imprisoning them to prevent them from leaving.
Source: Another statue of St. Junipero Serra vandalized in California
I hated history for most of my school-forming years till I had a great teacher in High School who taught us that we would never comprehend what happened if we did not understand what was going on at the time the events happened. We were forced to research from what was eaten to medicine to transport to literacy, basically what the normal people were doing and how were they living. It made for an amazing comprehension on how things came about and how we got here from there.
The other thing he taught is was to avoid (as much as could be avoided) to see past events under the tinted glass of modern “morality” and politics. This was amazingly helpful to weed out the tons of bullshit surrounding the New History that was becoming vogue back then and now populates our classrooms.
Was Saint Junipero Serra the perfect man? Nope. Was the monster they are trying to make people believe now? Not by far. He was doing his church mandate of conversion, created missions in God-forsaken places and brought peace and sanity to the region.
“Damn it, Miguel! How can you say that? He is responsible for the destruction of the culture of the poor Aztec injuns!” Well, the Aztec culture was not their, it was Mayan that they pretty much stole as they were what we would now call an invading species. And the Aztecs were keen on not only addicted to warfare and torture, but loved to sacrifice thousands of human beings every time they had one of their religious festivities. And they were also into certain gourmet delicacies that were a bit unusual: Cannibalism.
Let us not forget that Cortez’s handful of soldiers had the backing of tens of thousands of indians that were tired of the shit from the Aztec Elite and Priests. The idea that somehow the Spaniards and specifically Junipero Serra were responsible for the destruction of a peaceful and creative culture is just an unadulterated lie. But makes for great Social Justice fodder.
I’ve reached the point of concluding that “making people stupid” is actually intentional. It’s hard to control smart people who are used to thinking with minds of their own.
It’s amazing how successful this movement has been. Today’s Wall St. Journal has an article about the young generation (including “university students”) who are unable to participate in a vote-by-mail referendum because they can’t figure out how to mail things. It sounds like parody but it wasn’t.
The British ended the practice of widow burning and punitive amputation, and nearly eradicated female genital mutilation in India. You wouldn’t know that from modern history, only that India colonial rule was evil. Also, the traditions of amputation and FGM are coming back to India in the wake of the expulsion of British culture, along with acid attacks and disfiguring of women. But we’re not supposed to talk about that either.
The Social Justice Warriors focus their wrath on a single historical figure who by all accounts was a kind man who actually had the best interests of the local population, as he understood those interest, at heart. The abuses of the mission system he helped setup was largely due to the ruthlessness and corruption of the colonial Spanish government.
By the way this is same colonial government that laid claim to most of South and Central America, and large portions of North America which is used as “justification” for the Antifa claims that the midwest and western US belongs to Mexico. If the Spanish Colonial period was so great, Why not just return Latin America to Spain?