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“First Hispanic Pope, First Hispanic Saint”: Whiteness, founding fathers and the canonization of Friar Junípero Serra

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Abstract

In 2015, Roman Catholic Pope Francis canonized eighteenth-century Franciscan Friar Junípero Serra, founder of nine California missions, after a long and controversial process in which the decision was opposed on the grounds that it expressed indifference to the human suffering precipitated by Spanish colonization of California. Contrarily, supporters of the canonization argued that the move represented an important and overdue symbolic endorsement of Latinos and the Hispanic roots of California. This article examines the polemics around the canonization that occurred in the popular media and discusses the implications of this case for an understanding of racial and ethnic dynamics regarding Latinos. Using Whiteness as an interpretive lens, I contend that the Serra controversy put on display a specific moment of the de-racialization of Latinos, in which Latinos are cast as foundational people in the history of the United States in a way that is typically reserved for White Americans.

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Notes

  1. In this article I use “Latinos” to refer to all people of Latin American descent regardless of gender. In cases where I am paraphrasing speakers who use the term “Hispanic,” I follow the usage of that speaker. I use “Whites” to refer to people of European descent, who in the US are commonly labeled in official and formal speech as “Caucasians.” I occasionally use the term “Anglo” when emphasizing that I am referring to Whites that are not Latino—given that in some frameworks for reckoning ethnic identity in the United States, Latinos can be Whites. When I refer to “Native Californians,” I am referring to indigenous peoples/American Indians who are from California. I also use the term “American” to refer to the people of the United States of America, but I don’t mean to downplay or oppose the objection that “American” also refers to all people of Central, South and North America.

  2. The Mission period in California corresponds with a drastic demographic decline of Native peoples. Those who level the accusation of genocide at Serra claim that the missions were directly responsible for this decline, while his defenders argue that the missions were relatively safe havens from hostile Europeans and the devastating diseases that they (or their animals) carried and that the judgment of the legacy of Serra should not be made on contemporary moral standards.

  3. In a 2007 edited volume about the Black Legend, noted historian Walter Mignolo said, “Racism dies hard, and the specter of the black legend is alive and well, contributing to diminishing Spaniards in Europe, marginalizing ‘Latins’ in South America, and criminalizing Latinos and Latinas in the United States” (Mignolo 2007).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Eric and Jane Nord Family Fund for its support of my work at Oberlin College.

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    Baron L. Pineda

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Pineda, B.L. “First Hispanic Pope, First Hispanic Saint”: Whiteness, founding fathers and the canonization of Friar Junípero Serra. Lat Stud 16, 286–309 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-0133-z

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