UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title California’s Mission Projects: The Spanish Imaginary in Riverside and Beyond Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1pp931x8 Author Sepulveda, Charles Anthony Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE California’s Mission Projects: The Spanish Imaginary in Riverside and Beyond A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies by Charles Anthony Sepulveda August 2016 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Robert Perez, Chairperson Dr. Anthony Macias Dr. Michelle Raheja Copyright by Charles Anthony Sepulveda 2016 The Dissertation of Charles Anthony Sepulveda is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There aren’t enough words to thank those who have helped me along the way, and this is merely a partial list. I have to begin by thanking my parents, Carolyn and Jim Thorsen - and - Charles and Gail Sepulveda, who provided me with the foundations necessary to make the choices I have in my life. My Aunt Billie who passed away in 2015 was one of my favorite people on this planet and I will be forever grateful to her. I miss her incredibly. I want to thank Irene Sepulveda- Hastings, one of the remaining elders from my Dad’s family – who I still need to interview! I have to thank the Belardes family; 2015 was a tough year, Chief David Belardes also passed. I want to remember and thank all of my family and ancestors who came before me. A special thank you to Angela Mooney D’Arcy, who has provided support, opportunities and friendship. I want to thank Kēhaulani Vaughn for being a brave companion through many hard times that I would not have made it through without. Michael Lerma who began this crazy thing called graduate school with me a decade ago – now we need to publish that book we wrote! I want to thank Joyce Perry, L. Frank Manriquez and Cindi Alvitre for being inspirational leaders, each in their own way. A special thank you to my friends and colleagues in Ethnic Studies, particularly J Sebastian, Loubna Qutami, Ren-yo Hwang, Alex Villalpando, Marlen Rios, Brian Stephens, Angelica “Pickles” Camacho, and Arifa Raza. Each of you provided unique support and encouragement. I want to thank my committee chair, Robert Perez, for all of his advice and the friendship that developed through our many meetings. Anthony Macias and Michelle Raheja for their commitment and iv support, especially this last year and the many letters of recommendation they provided! I also need to acknowledge Cliff Trafzer, Dylan Rodriguez, and Andy Smith who each provided distinct support and influenced my scholarship. A special thank you to Maile Arvin for all of her help and advice. Finally, to the UCR Ethnic Studies faculty and community for their fearless work. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION California’s Mission Projects: The Spanish Imaginary in Riverside and Beyond by Charles Anthony Sepulveda Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Ethnic Studies University of California, Riverside, August 2016 Dr. Robert Perez, Chairperson California historical discourse routinely centers Europeans and represents Indians as primitive remnants that could only fully exist in the past. This study provides a historical overview of the formation of California’s Spanish imaginary and its intersections with race, class, gender, sexuality and indigeneity through both theory and archival materials. It disrupts this imaginary through a re-centering of Native peoples and land. This dissertation understands mission style architecture to be a physical manifestation of an anti-Indian ideology that permeates a landscape that has been critically altered by and for the settler. Focusing on place/territory the history of California Indians is re-evaluated through a critical evaluation of the canonization of Junípero Serra in 2015 and the dedication of his memorial on Mount Rubidoux in Riverside, California by President Taft in 1909. Also evaluated is the Sherman vi Institute, an Indian boarding school in Riverside originally constructed in mission revival style architecture. The school was founded through a white-supremacist logic similar to that of California’s mission project: to educate, convert and assimilate the Indian into productive laborers. Nearby, the Mission Inn would also be constructed in mission revival style architecture. These buildings and those similar convey a history crafted to narrate the Spanish Missions as benevolent with Junípero Serra as the “founder” of California. Largely erased in the imaginary is gendered and sexual violence perpetrated through the institutionalization of the monjerio, the gendered dormitories that functioned as prisons for unmarried baptized Indians at the mission. Argued throughout this dissertation is that despite the past violence, denial of the genocidal conditions, historical trauma and the continued erasure faced by California Indians including, but not limited to, destruction of sacred sites and environments, language loss and massive settler populations living on their lands, they have continuously resisted and struggled to maintain culture and tribal governance. This study acts as a bridge between theory and archival sources to dispute the myth of the Spanish imaginary. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE…………………………………………………………………………...……………………………… ix. CHAPTER ONE: An Introduction to the Spanish Imaginary…………………………………………………………… 1. CHAPTER TWO: The Case of Indigenous Nations v. Junípero Serra………………………………..…………….. 57. CHAPTER THREE: The Colony of Riverside and other Racial Projects in Southern California………………………………………...……. 114. CHAPTER FOUR: Mount Rubidoux: Resisting Native Invisibility through Cultural Continuance, Historical Narrative, and Alliance Building…………………………….………………...……… 170. CHAPTER FIVE: Architecture of Genocide…………………………………………………………………….………….. 214. CHAPTER SIX: Playing and Praying: California Missions and Anti-Missions……………………….……. 279. CHAPTER SEVEN: Conclusions: Kuuyam, Ending the Spanish Imaginary…………….……………………….. 338. Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 349. viii PREFACE Before I began the graduate program in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) in 2011, I attended a conference they hosted titled: “Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide: Settler Colonialism / Heteropatriarchy / White Supremacy.” The conference hosted an all-star lineup of academics; however it featured few community members and organizers outside the ranks of the university tenure-track academic elite of Ethnic Studies and associated fields. The few panels and keynotes I witnessed left me uncomfortable. Although I hadn’t yet entered the PhD program, I was already well educated and yet I was unable to follow along with several of the presentations. I wondered aloud, “how do these academics believe they can make change if they are unable to communicate better than this?” To say the least, I was unimpressed with their grand academic vocabularies. Although I was unable to follow along with their presentations then, hopefully now at the brink of finishing the dissertation and graduating I would be able to understand more of what the presenters had to offer. Yet, I still struggle to read Denise da Silva, so I’m not sure! Furthermore, I was unsettled by the use, and perhaps appropriation, of settler colonialism without an invitation for local Indigenous communities to participate beyond the now obligatory opening welcome song and dance that demonstrates that the organizers aren’t anti-Native. This is a critique many of the conference organizers may be more aware of now than they were five years ago, but I’m not sure if that changes ix anything? From my experience at the conference I questioned: How can the logics of settler colonialism be disrupted if we continually recreate them by not re-centering the Native peoples whose lands we live and organize on? My dissertation project resulted from ideas sparked from this conference – unfortunately not from the presentations. The seeds were planted when I found out that many of the presenters were being hosted at the Mission Inn, a hotel in downtown Riverside located 2 miles from UCR. Perhaps more accurately named: the Mission Sin. How ironic was it that a conference analyzing, amongst other topics, genocide and settler colonialism would have its presenters stay in a hotel devoted to celebrating California Indian death? After attending UCR for five years I can now say that having guests stay at the Mission Inn is normative, was not exclusive to Critical Ethnic Studies, and few seem to find it as disturbing as I do. Previously I had never put much thought into the Mission Inn’s existence or its celebration of genocide, and what I have since named, the Spanish Imaginary. For the next couple of years after the Critical Ethnic Studies Conference I became more interested in the Mission Inn and its history. Through my research I found disturbing links to Sherman Indian School, Federal Indian policy, exploitation of Native labor, and the promotion of a discourse that erased Indians and simultaneously romanticized the end of their worlds. What follows is an analysis of what I have discovered about the celebration of genocide and settler colonialism that Critical Ethnic Studies spent money on to host its presenters for their inaugural conference. One has to wonder