Blessed with Tourists: The Borderlands of Religion and Tourism in San Antonio

                

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Blessed with Tourists         

Thomas S. Bremer

                                             

©  The University of North Carolina Press     Designed by Heidi Perov Set in Bembo by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. ;

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bremer, Thomas S., – Blessed with tourists: the borderlands of religion and tourism in San Antonio / Thomas S. Bremer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.  --- (alk. paper)  --- (pbk.: alk. paper) . Tourism—Texas—San Antonio— Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title. ..  '.—dc  cloth           paper          

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           , whose gentle persistence has kept the missions alive

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Contents

Acknowledgments xi           

Where Tourists Meet the Sacred   

Destination San Antonio          

Alamo City   

Preserving a Precious Heritage   

Religion at the Fair   

Inside the National Park          

Reburying the Past  Notes  Bibliography  Index 

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Illustrations and Maps

          Crucifixion of Jesus at the San Fernando Cathedral,   Mission San José, s  Engraving of Mission Concepción,   Tourists on walls of Mission San Juan,  or   Theodore Gentilz’s painting Fall of the Alamo, ca.   Engraving of the Alamo church,   Señora Candelaria  Hugo and Schmeltzer Wholesale Grocery at the Alamo,   Alamo Cenotaph  Father Francis Bouchu, ca.   Restored chapel at Mission Espada, late s  Restoration work at Mission San José, s  Ethel Wilson Harris, ca.   Archbishop Robert E. Lucey,   HemisFair  

Los Voladores de Papantla (‘‘Flying Indians’’) at HemisFair   Signing of the cooperative agreements to create San Antonio Missions National Historical Park,   Mission Concepción in   Mission San Juan in   Mission San José in   Wedding at Mission Espada,   Grave site offerings at Mission San Juan,  

 . Colonial Texas  . San Antonio in the eighteenth century  . The San Antonio Missions National Historical Park 

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the many people who have supported and encouraged me along the way. I first became acquainted with the richness of the San Antonio historical landscape while pursuing graduate work at Princeton University, and I am especially grateful to Davíd Carrasco for suggesting the city as an intriguing locale. Other mentors at Princeton who helped get this project off the ground include Leigh Eric Schmidt, Albert J. Raboteau, Robert Wuthnow, and James A. Boon. In addition, funding sources at the university allowed me ample opportunity to complete nearly all of the research for this book. These included the Center for the Study of Religion, the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project, the Princeton University Council on Regional Studies, the Latin American Studies program, and the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni. At Rhodes College in Memphis, I have enjoyed the support of my colleagues as I completed the manuscript of this book. My fellow faculty members in the Religious Studies Department were especially helpful as I worked through the details of turning my sometimes awkward ideas into a publishable work. Moreover, I remain grateful to the Office of the Dean, which provided funds for additional research in San Antonio and for the acquisition of photographs.

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My deepest gratitude, however, extends to the people of San Antonio who have contributed in untold ways to this book. Father Virgilio Elizondo hosted my initial trip to Texas, and I am grateful for his kind generosity and willingness to help with my project. He in turn introduced me to another San Antonio priest, Monsignor Balthasar Janacek, who first acquainted me with the missions. My appreciation of Father Balty, as he is affectionately known in San Antonio, extends beyond the invaluable insights he provided in our many conversations and the introductions he offered to key people at the missions; it reaches to his profound sense of humanity, which has earned him the abiding respect and affection of virtually everyone associated with the San Antonio missions. I am indebted to Steve Whitesell, park superintendent at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, whose cooperation made my fieldwork possible, as well as to Rosalind Z. Rock, the official park historian, and to Cherry Payne, formerly the chief interpreter at the park. Their enthusiasm and willingness to help made all the difference in my pursuit of the mission story. I benefited as well from the kindness and professionalism of librarians and archivists at the various collections where I completed the bulk of my historical investigations. These include the Texana Collection of the San Antonio Public Library; the archives of the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries; the Catholic Archives of San Antonio; the Catholic Archives of Texas, located in Austin; the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin; the San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation Library; the Institute of Texan Cultures Library, San Antonio; the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University, Dallas; and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo. Above all, I thank the many folks in San Antonio who volunteered their thoughts, remembrances, opinions, and impressions in our recorded interview conversations. Their contributions to this book have been invaluable, although my tinkering may have rendered their insights unrecognizable. Nevertheless, all of them have been my friends, if only for a brief moment. Finally, I am thankful for the support, encouragement, and insightful readings of Melanie Renee Bremer, who has always been the best traveling companion anyone could hope for.

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         

Where Tourists Meet the Sacred The crowd gathered early at El Mercado, the old market square in San Antonio, Texas. A celebratory mood suffused the plaza as a mariachi band struck up the sounds of Old Mexico in the bright morning sun. Several thousand onlookers staked out strategic positions for the best views of the stage set up for the morning’s festivities. Anticipation grew as the time of Jesus’ trial drew near. The guards led Jesus, nearly dragging him at times, before the Mercado stage to face Pontius Pilate. Jesus stood quietly, passively, answering his accusers’ charges with a simple reply: ‘‘Es que dicen.’’ Pilate, relenting to the crowd’s demands, ordered the young man to be killed. The guards then stripped Jesus of his cloak and commanded him to carry the large wooden cross, the instrument of his own execution, to the San Fernando Cathedral, a brutal trek of nearly a mile. As he dragged the onerous weight along the hot pavement, guards shouted orders and beat him with whips until blood streamed from his back. I left my vantage on the walkway above the Mercado plaza and hurried directly to the cathedral where Jesus would be nailed to his cross and hung to die. I had come to San Antonio as a scholar to observe the Holy Week celebrations at the San Fernando Cathedral. A decade earlier, the rector of the cathedral, Mexican American theologian Virgilio Elizondo, had transformed the seat of the local archdiocese of the Roman 

Jesus dies on the cross at the San Fernando Cathedral on Friday, April , . (Photograph by the author)

Catholic Church into a center of revived traditions for San Antonio’s Mexican American community. When Archbishop Patrick Flores appointed Father Elizondo to the rector’s position at San Fernando Cathedral, he told him, ‘‘Let’s show what our people have to offer.’’ 1 Elizondo accepted the challenge with, in his words, ‘‘a conscious decision to reclaim and recreate the religious traditions of my childhood and my barrio’’ at the cathedral, which was the center of Catholic life in San Antonio. These traditions, Elizondo explains, are ‘‘the basis of ’’ his parishioners’ ‘‘faith experiences as Latinos’’ and their ‘‘innermost identity as a people.’’ But more importantly, he maintains, they offer a much-needed salve for the spiritual health of the nation as a whole.2 My scholarly intention to investigate the ritual life of the cathedral soon vanished as the streets of San Antonio became the ancient city of Jerusalem, filled with a crowd that came to witness an execution. I stood before the cathedral as a tourist in a mythical time and place. The mob followed Jesus as he dragged the giant cross up Via Dolorosa and turned the corner at Main Street. Soldiers seized his sweaty, bleeding body as he arrived at the platform in the shadow of the picturesque old cathedral. They laid him down on the cross, and he cried out and moaned loudly as the guards drove heavy spikes through his hands and feet. Then they carried  ; 

the cross with his fragile body fastened to it onto the platform and set it upright between two crosses that bore condemned thieves. Jesus’ mother and her companions gathered at his feet and wept. A somber stillness fell over San Antonio’s Main Plaza as Jesus hung dying before the cathedral. Even the children stood motionless before the ghastly sight. Beneath the Good Friday sun of south Texas, we occupied a borderland of religion and tourism. The public space outside the cathedral doors drew a mixed crowd of Catholic parishioners, non-Catholic residents of San Antonio, tourists visiting the city’s historical sites, and at least one scholar, who was gathering his first impressions of San Antonio. During my introduction to the city, however, I vacillated between feeling the curiosity of an academic observer, actively participating in the religious traditions of San Antonio’s Mexican American Catholic community, and taking a tourist’s delight in the authentic experience of cultural performance. Both religious and touristic, my Holy Week experience drew me into the perplexing world where tourists meet the sacred.

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The Borderlands of Religion and Tourism

This book investigates the relationship between religion and tourism in the American context.3 It aims more specifically to explore a few of the ways that modern people imagine religion and its role in their modern world. A close study of tourism as a typically modern pursuit has much to tell us about how modern people think about religion and about the role of religion in modernity.4 In fact, religious adherents have more in common with tourists than one might imagine. Four defining aspects of tourism in particular indicate its close relationship to religious life. First, tourists and religious practitioners alike demonstrate a concern for space and maintain deep attachments to special places.5 The places that attract tourists and those that religious people regard as sacred both gain their special character from the respective cultural practices of tourists and religious believers. Often, these practices overlap in ways that make it difficult to distinguish between the touristic and the religious. For example, observations I made at several pilgrimage destinations in Mexico first alerted me to a confluence of religious pilgrims’ and tourists’ practices. I noticed at places like Tepeyac in Mexico City, where the Virgin of Guadalupe resides, that many of the pilgrims often participate in what can be described as touristic practices: posing for photos, buying sou ; 

venirs, and visiting other attractions in the vicinity.6 In addition, many of these pilgrims rely on the services of the travel industry, which caters to all sorts of travelers but especially to tourists, for transportation and communication systems, food and lodging, and banking and retail services. Similarly, tourists often participate in religious practices when they visit places of religion. They actively join in liturgical exercises, they stand shoulder to shoulder in line with pilgrims and other religious folk to view or touch sacred objects, and they find themselves emotionally overwhelmed by the charismatic power of religious spaces and moments. The result is a simultaneity of places, both touristic and religious. In other words, pleasure travelers and religious adherents make distinct places out of a shared space; members of each group make the space into either a religious site or a tourist destination according to their respective practices and their interpretations of the significance of the space. At the same time, however, they often move easily between touristic and religious interpretations of a single site as they shift from tourist to worshiper and vice versa. At Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, for example, parishioners and other local residents commingle with tourists in the cavernous spaces of the church’s interior. Parishioners participate in the sacramental life of the Church community, while tourists come to experience ‘‘the largest decorated gothic-style Catholic Cathedral in the United States[, which] has been recognized throughout its history as a center of Catholic life in this country.’’ 7 At Saint Patrick’s, local worshipers can join any of the fifty-three masses performed every week in the cathedral, go to confession, or pray before one of the many shrines that line the perimeter of the place. Tourists, on the other hand, tend to gaze at the architecture or photograph the decor before stopping by the cramped gift shop to pick up a few commemorative trinkets. If a religious service happens to be in progress, tourists typically remain passive spectators of the liturgical performances. Usually, however, a number of visitors submit to their own religious proclivities and take part in the sacramental exercises. They join the local parishioners in mass or kneel in prayer at one of the chapels before reassuming their touristic personas. Indeed, at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and thousands of other places throughout the Americas and around the world, visitors encounter spaces that slide easily between the touristic and the religious. The practices that produce and maintain these sorts of places, whether they be touristic, religious, or some hybrid of the two, also generate a second defining aspect of tourism that relates directly to religion: an articulation of identities. In fact, the making of place always involves the making  ; 

of identities, and, conversely, the construction of identity always involves the construction of place. Thus place and identity emerge together in a relationship of reciprocal meaningfulness. This inextricable convergence of place and identity holds true for both places of religion and places of tourism. Washington, D.C., for instance, ranks among the most obvious examples of places that provide touristic bolstering of identity for citizens of the United States. As parts of a city planned and built self-consciously as the symbolic center of American democracy, the spaces of Washington have been the clearest material articulations of American identity from the early years of the republic to the present. Thomas Jefferson anticipated this when he described ‘‘the true character of the national metropolis’’ in terms of what he considered to be the root ideals of a national identity; he regarded Washington as ‘‘the only monument of human rights, and the sole repository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government.’’ 8 These symbolic meanings did not subside in the subsequent centuries. Today there are a great variety of places within the space of Washington that generate and reinforce visitors’ understandings of a national identity. These include the Capitol, the White House, the various memorials (for example, the Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Vietnam Veterans memorials), the many museums dedicated to national themes, and the historic places where key events in the nation’s past took place (for example, Ford’s Theatre and the spot on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech). In experiencing these places, visitors reinforce them as places of significance while at the same time strengthening their own sense of an American national identity.9 Moreover, new permutations of that identity continue to emerge as events alter the meanings of particular places. For instance, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September , , the Pentagon has acquired a new significance in the national selfunderstanding, a significance that visitors reinforce as they seek to view the place of tragedy. A third aspect of touristic practices that relates to both place and identity has to do with aesthetics. Tourism involves a thoroughgoing aestheticization of the world. Tourists everywhere regard much of what they encounter in terms of the beautiful, the uplifting, the edifying. In fact, the historical rise of tourism closely parallels the history of modern aesthetics. The nineteenth-century notion of the sublime, in particular, inspired largely by the work of Immanuel Kant, informed much touristic experience at a time when railroads and other developments greatly expanded the numbers of  ; 

pleasure travelers.10 Today’s tourists continue to seek aesthetically pleasing experiences in their travels. For contemporary travelers, authenticity reigns as a primary aesthetic concern. In fact, the desire for authentic experience provides a central discursive framework for the practice of tourism. Most tourists pursue authentic experience in one form or another, whether they seek the exotic otherness of cultures tucked away in the isolated terrains of distant lands or they desire nothing more than a day in the sun and sand at a crowded beach. Either way, the success of their travels will be measured to some degree according to their expectations for what they consider to be a genuinely authentic experience outside the bounds of their ordinary lives.11 The touristic concern for authenticity also frames travelers’ experiences of religion. In places like Chimayó, the famous pilgrimage destination in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains northeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico, visitors insist on experiencing authentic religious practices. Most visitors to Chimayó are not satisfied with merely viewing the scenic setting or praying in the colonial-style church. Instead, their desire for authentic experience demands that they obtain for themselves some of the sacred dirt from El Posito, the ‘‘sacred sand pit’’ inside the adobe mission. Whether or not they believe in (or are in need of ) its miraculous curative powers, nearly everyone who comes to the shrine seeks to claim a bit of Chimayó’s dirt to rub on their bodies and to take with them when they return home. Without the authentic dirt right from the pit, their visits to the santuário would seem less than complete and might leave them feeling a bit unfulfilled. The desire for aesthetically pleasing and authentic experiences leads inevitably to a fourth defining aspect of tourism: commercialization. Tourists are exemplary modern consumers, and no experience or place or object or culture escapes their voracious appetites. Consequently, all things, all places, all experiences become potential commodities in the tourist economy. Religion is no exception. All across America and around the world, people perform their religions for the benefit of tourist audiences and sell their religious goods as souvenirs to the visitors who desire a commemorative token of their experiences. Religion may deal with the extramundane, but paying the bills at many places of religion also necessitates a concern for serving the mundane desires of tourist visitors.12 Tourists who visit places of religion bring with them these four characteristics of tourism: the making of distinctive places; the articulation of particular identities; the desire for aesthetically pleasing experiences; and the commodification of objects, experiences, and even people. Religious  ; 

people likewise demonstrate these same characteristics to some extent in the modern practice of their religions. Hence distinguishing between the religious and the touristic in the modern world can sometimes seem a futile task. The futility of drawing clear boundaries between religion and tourism became evident in New York City in the days and months following the terrorist attacks of September , . Ground Zero, the site of the fallen World Trade Center towers, quickly became one of the most visited places in the city, but did people go there as tourists or as pilgrims? 13 The touristic aspects of the place rapidly took form after city officials recognized the need to accommodate the crowds of visitors by installing viewing platforms. Visitors sought the best views for their photographs, and tour guides quickly incorporated the site into their offerings; in fact, all sorts of vendors rapidly capitalized on the appeal of the place. Yet the touristic elements did not diminish the religious experience. Very few visitors to Ground Zero in the months following September  could resist the overwhelming emotional gravity of the place; prayers and offerings of condolence and remembrance were common at the site.14 Indeed, the World Trade Center site remains a borderland of religion and tourism. Visitors there reconfigure their sense of identity in the wake of a collective trauma that they commemorate with intense emotional involvement. At the same time, however, they participate in an economy of images and experiences that holds Ground Zero in its commercial clutches and encourages visitors to leave their dollars with the purveyors of the sacred place.

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San Antonio as a Place of Religion and Tourism

The extensive reach of tourism allows it to touch nearly every aspect of modern life and to encompass an untold number of sites. This study, however, concentrates on one particular place (or set of places): San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio may not seem at first glance to be the most obvious choice for pursuing the topic of religion and tourism, but its history as a place and its diverse mix of identities, as well as the importance of both religion and tourism to these, makes it an ideal locale for this project. San Antonio, at least under that appellation, began as a religious place in the context of Spanish colonial expansion to secure the northern boundaries of New Spain.15 Subsequently, its transformation from colonial outpost to modern city was accompanied by an increased emphasis on its attraction  ; 

as a tourist destination; indeed, tourism ranks today as one of San Antonio’s leading industries, contributing more than four billion dollars annually to the local economy.16 Much of the city’s touristic appeal lies in its selfconscious effort to celebrate its colonial past and the Hispanic flavor of its culture. Religious history is celebrated as a central characteristic of the city’s heritage. More than a million visitors each year tour San Antonio’s places of religion. The meeting of tourism and religion in San Antonio occurs at multiple sites. Chief among these are the preserved and reconstructed buildings of the colonial missions, including the Alamo in the downtown area and the missions that are the main attractions of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park on the south side of the city. Spanish missionaries in the eighteenth century oversaw the construction of these places as religious sites, and all but the Alamo continue to serve the sacramental needs of active Catholic communities of worship even today. At the same time, they rank among San Antonio’s top tourist attractions, a distinction they have enjoyed at least since the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Consequently, San Antonio’s former missions exemplify the borderland between religion and tourism. My exploration of this borderland begins by recounting the production of San Antonio as a place. Chapter  starts with the precolonial, indigenous place of Yanaguana and then traces the colonists’ efforts to make it into a religious place by establishing a series of missions along the San Antonio River. It then investigates the modern transformation of San Antonio following the end of colonial rule by focusing on how the city became a favorite tourist place. This opening chapter highlights the role of travel practices in making places. The history of San Antonio demonstrates in numerous ways that every stable place is built upon the instabilities of movement and travel. The next two chapters address different perspectives on questions of identity, especially questions concerning places of religion and tourism. Chapter  considers the history of the Alamo as a tourist destination; it traces how tourists’ interpretations of the Alamo contributed to their selfunderstanding and their sense of national identity. Chapter , on the other hand, discusses the preservation and reconstruction of San Antonio’s other missions and how the retrieval of a romantic past serves to aestheticize identities, including those based on religious affiliation. Making the past attractive to tourist visitors also produces an attractive framework for shaping contemporary identities.  ; 

The last two chapters concentrate on the presentation of religion to tourists. Chapter  discusses the display of religion at San Antonio’s  world’s fair. It also explains how this global event provided the impetus for further developing San Antonio’s colonial missions as tourist destinations, culminating with the establishment of a national park a decade after the world’s fair closed. Chapter  discusses how the National Park Service has transformed life at the missions. Specifically, it explores issues of identity at a national park that features religion as a main attraction. At the missions, identities must contend with underlying tensions between the national and the local as residents struggle with the presence of tourists at their places of worship. San Antonio’s residents contend with tourists every day of the year. But they become tourists as well, both at home in the touristic spaces of their city and in their own travels to other destinations. Like the travelers who visit San Antonio’s places of worship, many of the city’s residents seek out distant sites of religion in their journeys, often traveling as both pilgrims and tourists. Indeed, San Antonio occupies just one node in a global matrix of sites that each expresses uniquely the intersections of religion and tourism. Despite their differences, these places all participate one way or another in the various discourses on the religious and the secular, on the traditional and the modern. Each in its own way has something to reveal about how modern people think about religion, about the role of the religious imagination in modern life and its place in discourses about modernity itself.

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 

Destination San Antonio On June , , a day in the Roman Catholic calendar that celebrated San Antonio de Pádua, Fray Damián Massanet recorded in his diary the creation of a new place. He wrote: ‘‘We entered a stretch which was easy for travel and advanced on our easterly course. Before reaching the river there are other small hills with large oaks. The river is bordered with many trees, cottonwoods, oaks, cedars, mulberries, and many vines. There are a great many fish and upon the highlands a great number of wild chickens. . . . We found at this place the ranchería of the Indians of the Payaya nation. This is a very large nation and the country where they live is very fine. I called this place San Antonio de Pádua, because it was his day. In the language of the Indians it is called Yanaguana.’’ 1 Fray Massanet headed the religious contingent of a Spanish colonial expedition sent to the northern borderlands of Spain’s American colonies. This small group of missionaries and soldiers traveled with the ambitious goals of exploring and describing this mostly unknown territory, establishing friendly relations with the native peoples there, and founding eight Christian missions in the region.2 On this particular day, the Europeans had entered a landscape that the military leader of the expedition, Governor Domingo Terán de los Ríos, described as ‘‘the most beautiful in New Spain.’’ 3 The Spaniards rapidly set about making it a Christian place by erect

ing a large cross and building an altar beneath an arbor of cottonwood trees. The priests celebrated Mass, and the soldiers ‘‘fired a great many salutes’’ as the indigenous Payayas watched. A translator explained to the native onlookers that the ceremonial display was for ‘‘the honor, worship, and adoration’’ that the Spaniards ‘‘owed to God . . . in acknowledgement of the benefits and great blessings’’ that he gave them.4 The indigenous Payayas, however, likely did not realize that they were relinquishing their own place of Yanaguana to a site that the Europeans claimed in the act of naming it San Antonio de Pádua.5 This place of abundant waters on the broad plain of the Texan space became something new on that June day; indeed, the Spanish expedition made it a Christian place, a European place, a colonial place. At the same time, however, it was also another place, a place that the Payaya people called Yanaguana. The indigenous site was an entirely different sort of place from the one established by the Europeans that day, even though they shared the exact same space in the same moment. In fact, this same space would become many places in the coming centuries. In these places, as in all places, there was something locative and something itinerant. In other words, all places include stationary features of location, what I refer to as the ‘‘locative’’ dimensions of place. These emphasize the power and stability of location, and they include architecturally constructed forms such as buildings, monuments, or enclosures as well as distinctive geographic features of the natural landscape such as rivers, caves, or mountains. Regardless of the nature of the markers that make a place recognizable, a locative understanding regards a particular place as a stable, ordered arrangement.6 On the other hand, the ‘‘itinerant’’ refers to the unstable, ephemeral dimensions of place that highlight mobility, movement, and contingency. Places, as they are created and maintained in the imaginations and practices of people who recognize them as meaningful, are never static: their inherent contingencies and the historical forces of change eventually undermine all pretensions to permanence. Moreover, places have their meaningful genesis in the itineraries of human movements. Indeed, undifferentiated ‘‘space’’ becomes a recognizable ‘‘place’’ in the movements of travelers who map the spaces they traverse into conceptual categories.7 Thus an itinerant understanding of space naturally regards travel practices as a key element in the making of places: travel practices situate places in space. I take an expansive view of what constitute these practices; certainly, travel practices include travel itself, but they also include the practices that motivate and facilitate travel. In other words, travel practices as I understand  ;                     

them encompass any practice, discourse, or circumstance that either necessitates translocal movement or generates desire for and encourages people to travel; moreover, they include modes of transportation, long-distance networks of communication, and various accommodations for lodging, food, currency exchange, linguistic translation, cultural interpretation, and other needs that travelers might have. Thus both traveling outsiders and resident insiders participate in the travel practices that make places. I contend that travel practices of one sort or another are associated with every place. A particular locale becomes a ‘‘place’’ only in relation to the movements of people who designate it as such, and therefore the practices that make such movements possible are an inherent dimension in the production of the place. The creation of San Antonio as a place demonstrates the fundamental role of travel practices from long before the first arrival of Europeans all the way up to the present. The places that make up San Antonio have always been sustained by movements—whether the itinerant patterns of early native peoples or the peregrinations of today’s tourists—and their associated practices. Certainly, the production of San Antonio as a distinct place on the map and in the minds of both residents and visitors has a complex and multifaceted history. But in this chapter I draw attention to the role of travel and the practices involved in travel, including those that make travel possible and desirable, as fundamental to the making of the place now known as San Antonio. In short, I recount the history of San Antonio in terms of the travel practices that have made it a place.

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The Native Place of Yanaguana

Travel and its related practices have defined what is now San Antonio from the very beginning of human experience in the region. Long before Europeans arrived in what they would come to call Texas, indigenous peoples traversed the region according to strategies for finding sustenance that patterned their culture of mobility. The earliest peoples in the area, whom archaeologists call ‘‘Paleo-Indians,’’ hunted the now-extinct mastodons and great bison, following them across the land as early as eleven thousand years ago. The presence of water in the Olmos Basin that San Antonio now occupies probably attracted these earliest indigenous hunters; the zone of active springs at the headwaters of the San Antonio River likely was a popular site for Paleo-Indian camps. Some of these camps may even have become                      ; 

semipermanent over time.8 In later millennia, as modern environments developed in the Olmos Basin, people in the area prospered. Their hunting and gathering way of life was semisedentary, with seasonal migrations. Favorable conditions throughout the region allowed this mostly itinerant culture to persist longer there than almost anywhere else in North America; the Paleo-Indians’ mobile lifestyle supported a substantial population in what is now Texas for up to eight thousand years.9 The cultural patterns associated with the native life of hunting and gathering were still very much evident when the Terán expedition (as it has come to be called) passed through the region in June . But the Spaniards encountered a locative place established within the context of the itinerant proclivities of the native people. According to Fray Massanet’s testimony, the Payayas who occupied the ranchería (or encampment)10 that the Spaniards came upon called the place ‘‘Yanaguana.’’ The exact meaning of the term has been lost, but it seems to have referred to the specific locale where the Indians were camped.11 Small kinship groups that lived and traveled together preferred to set up their encampments near both a water source and a supply of wood as they pursued a nomadic lifestyle that followed seasonal fluctuations in food sources.12 The wooded banks of the river were an ideal location for regular seasonal habitation. Consequently, the banks became a designated place with a specific name, ‘‘Yanaguana,’’ a place that offered a locative stability in the itinerant ways of indigenous life. But even in its locative aspect, the place contained no permanent structures; indeed, the only enduring evidence that there was a pre-European place there is the word ‘‘Yanaguana’’ recorded in the diary of the Spanish missionary Fray Damián Massanet on the occasion of the meeting between the Payayas and the Europeans. An encounter of this type had been anticipated by the Payayas for decades. Undoubtedly, an awareness of the advancing Spaniards and of the consequences of their incursions into indigenous spaces had reached the peoples of south Texas long before the Terán group came upon the place of Yanaguana. In fact, by the time Europeans began to appear regularly in the area, their impact was already being felt. European diseases decimated native populations as the infectious agents traveled along trade routes and through intertribal contact; by some calculations,  to  percent of the native population perished from these imported scourges, which probably first appeared several generations before the beginnings of Spanish colonization in Texas.13 An itinerant destruction quickly overran the locative touchstones of indigenous culture.  ;                     

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The Itinerant Making of a European Place

The arrival of Europeans in Texas brought dramatic changes to native cultures.14 The travel practices of Spanish explorers, missionaries, soldiers, traders, settlers, and others punctuated the Texan landscape with an entirely new set of places. During the final century and a half of colonial rule in New Spain, an elaborate network of roads, presidios (that is, military outposts), missions, and towns brought Texas into the sphere of European sensibilities of place. Consequently, indigenous peoples were forced to adjust to the colonization of their familiar spaces. The European creation of Texas as a place began when Spanish navigators on an expedition led by Alonso Alvarez de Pineda sketched a map of the coastline in .15 But the first Europeans to venture into what is now Texas came accidentally, by way of disaster. As recounted in the famous Relación of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, the expedition of Governor Pánfilo de Narváez set out from Spain in June  with a fleet of five ships and about six hundred men ‘‘to conquer and govern the provinces . . . found from the Río de Palmas to the cape of Florida,’’ that is, all of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from the present-day Mexican state of Tamaulipas to the tip of the state of Florida.16 The enterprise faltered from the start. A series of misadventures on the Florida peninsula left many of the party dead from hunger, illness, and battles with native peoples, while leaving the survivors without ships; accordingly, they built five rafts that carried them to the islands along the Gulf Coast of Texas. There they spent over six years living among the various indigenous tribes of the coastal and inland areas; much of the time, they served as slaves to the native peoples. Hardships, disease, and conflicts with their captors reduced the number of survivors to just four. Eventually, this surviving remnant of the original expedition made its way to what is now the coastal state of Sinaloa near the Pacific Ocean in the northwest region of Mexico, where its members encountered Spanish slave hunters. From there, the four weary travelers were taken to the colonial capital city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, thus returning to the familiar world of European civilization. Among the survivors was Cabeza de Vaca, royal treasurer of the original expedition, who returned to Spain, where he chronicled the fate of the expedition and the experiences of its survivors.17 In his account of their odyssey through indigenous spaces of North America, Cabeza de Vaca presented a landscape devoid of European places. He described the native world in great detail, but most of his descriptions lacked indigenous place names. In fact, Cabeza de Vaca tended to present                      ; 

a wholly itinerant world that lacked places altogether. He emphasized the movements of native people in seasonal pursuit of food sources. Without horses, ships, guns, ammunition, provisions, or any means of communicating with other Europeans, Cabeza de Vaca and the other remaining members of the Narváez group had been unable to avail themselves of familiar travel practices. Consequently, they had no means of establishing places of their own. They lived instead in native places and moved according to native practices of travel. Few Spanish expeditions followed the ill-fated Narváez attempt to conquer and govern the North American continent.18 Spain’s colonists in New Spain paid scant attention to the Texas area of their northern perimeter, and the region continued as an indigenous space. But in the later decades of the seventeenth century, the Spanish colonial administration took renewed interest in the northern borderlands when French colonists posed a threat to Spain’s previous claims on the Texas territory. In , RenéRobert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, established a small, tentative colony at what is now known as Matagorda Bay. In response, the alarmed Spanish colonial government initiated a series of expeditions aimed at consolidating its holdings along the northern frontier of its American colonies. These expeditions continued until the s, when the French transferred French Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to the Spaniards after the British defeated the French in Canada.19 European notions of place contrasted dramatically with indigenous understandings, primarily in that Europeans entered new spaces with a locative predisposition to build permanent settlements. When the Spanish colonial government learned that French colonists had established themselves in the vast territory that it claimed as Texas, it immediately set out to build places of its own to counteract any French pretensions to the northern borderlands. But the making of European places required decades of explorations; the establishment of travel routes and supply stations; dealings with native peoples, either in terms of pacification and colonization or of defensive measures taken through military means; and the construction of permanent, self-sufficient settlements populated by both immigrant colonists and native peoples adapted to European sensibilities of civilized life. The stable, locative places that the Spanish set out to establish on the Texan landscape relied first of all on a complex set of travel practices that initially brought Europeans into the region and then allowed them to stay there permanently, eventually incorporating the country into a Europeanconceptualized space.  ;                     

 . Colonial Texas

European space relied on Christian assumptions and ecclesiastical sources of authority. Thus it is not surprising that it was a missionary expedition led by the Franciscan Damián Massanet, with a military contingent under the direction of Governor Domingo Terán de los Ríos, that came upon the native place of Yanaguana in  on the banks of a scenic river ‘‘bordered with many trees, cottonwoods, oaks, cedars, mulberries, and many vines.’’ 20 The primary motive of the Terán expedition was to convert native peoples to Christianity. ‘‘It is our desire, first of all,’’ stated the official instructions to the Terán expedition, ‘‘that this undertaking shall have as its object the establishment of missions, and the spread of the Catholic Faith and the Holy Gospel.’’ 21 In practice, this also meant converting native peoples into European subjects according to the Spaniards’ understanding of what constituted a civilized people. In other words, religious conversion also involved cul                     ; 

tural, social, and economic conversions.22 The missionaries set out for Texas to bring the indigenous people there into the European world by inculcating in them not only the Christian religion but also European tastes, standards, and assumptions about the world. These objectives themselves relied on an underlying confidence in the portability of religion, culture, and society in general. Missionaries, more than most folk, profess a faith in the itinerant character of culture. They are, in the words of Inga Clendinnen, ‘‘translocal men par excellence.’’ 23 They travel with the conviction that religion in particular, but also many other dimensions of culture more generally, can be translated across the boundaries of historical, cultural, linguistic, and social differences, in addition to crossing vast expanses of actual geographical distance. In order to enact their itinerant faiths, missionaries deploy complex sets of travel practices. The instructions to the Terán expedition offer a glimpse of the practices of the  Spanish entrada into Texas. The travelers were to rely on the experiences of previous explorers; they were to go to the place of an Indian settlement visited the previous year by an expedition of ‘‘three missionaries and soldiers.’’ 24 It is likely that they were instructed to look for markings left on the landscape by their predecessors; these would have included road signs carved into trees and on stone and markers constructed as wooden crosses or as piles of rocks, or cairns.25 They also prepared for encounters with native people by bringing with them ‘‘supplies designated for use in gaining the friendship of the Indians and winning their affections.’’ These were described in their instructions as ‘‘the gifts and trinkets that are to be delivered to the governor and captain of the said settlement [of Texas Indians], as a reward for his friendship, his acceptance of the religion of the Catholic Church, and his allegiance to the king, as evidenced by his oath.’’ At the same time, the instructions warned the expedition’s leaders to set up their camp ‘‘at a convenient distance from the village’’ and reminded them of ‘‘the necessity and wisdom of maintaining an adequate guard.’’ 26 The earlier experiences of the Spanish in this and other territories reinforced the need for caution as the expedition traveled into Texas. In regard to exploration and reconnaissance, the instructions for the expedition explained what observations were to be made and required an official diary to be kept.27 Diary entries were to include information about ‘‘the character of the country explored’’; descriptions of plants and animals, climate, and geographic features; and an account of any indigenous people the expedition came upon, including a record of ‘‘their civilization, government, customs, religious rites, and other notable things.’’ 28 The members  ;                     

of the expedition also were instructed to ‘‘give names to such important places, rivers, and woods.’’ 29 Thus there lay a whole set of travel practices behind the name, San Antonio de Pádua, that Fray Damián conferred on the place beside the river where the Spaniards found the Payaya people camped that June day in . The Spaniards took heed of the experiences of previous European travelers in the region; they followed the signs that others had left to mark their route across the land. They came prepared for their encounters with the native peoples, carrying gifts for them, but also ready to defend themselves in case of attack. They closely observed the land, its flora, fauna, and people, and recorded their observations in diaries. And they named places with the names of saints, which not only bestowed a religious meaning on the significant features of the landscape but also marked their claim to those places on the Catholic calendar. Hence the name ‘‘San Antonio de Pádua’’ encompassed itinerant practices that, among other things, brought European religion to the place by the river and thereby marked the location both spatially and temporally. Fray Damián Massanet and his companions reiterated the religious underpinnings of the place they named San Antonio de Pádua by rehearsing a series of Christian rites to confer an extrahuman authority on their claim to the spot. By putting up a cross, building an altar, and celebrating Mass, the Spaniards consolidated the legitimacy of their assertion of sovereignty over the location. But then they moved on, confident in their claim and drawn by the urgent need to claim other places. With the help of the native Payaya people, the Spaniards gathered up their livestock and departed their newly founded place, leaving only the slightest evidence of having been there.

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The Locative Force of the Colonial Place

More than a quarter century passed before Spanish colonists returned to the place they knew as San Antonio to officially take possession of the site and to establish a permanent settlement there. In , the governor of the Province of Texas, Martín de Alarcón, led an expedition that was commissioned to set up a mission, a military presidio, and a civilian settlement on the San Antonio River and then to travel on with supplies for missions farther east in the province.30 On May  of that year, according to the official diary of the expedition kept by Fray Francisco Céliz, Governor Alarcón ‘‘took possession of the place called San Antonio, establishing himself in it, and fixing                      ; 

 . San Antonio in the eighteenth century

the royal standard with the requisite solemnity, the father chaplain having previously celebrated mass, and it was given the name of villa de Bejar.’’ 31 This time, the Spaniards came to stay, with the intent of building a locative presence on the site. The earliest Spanish colonial presence in San Antonio included a civilian settlement (the Villa de Béxar), a military outpost (the Presidio de Béxar), and the first of a series of religious missions along the upper San Antonio River (Mission San Antonio de Valero).32 With the establishment of these three places, locative structures began to take shape as the colonizers built churches, homes, military fortifications, workshops, stables for their animals, and other buildings to serve the small but growing population. But San Antonio still retained a distinctively itinerant character. Mission San Antonio, for instance, did not originate there. It came to San Antonio through a series of moves that typified the itinerancy of places in colonial Texas. The mission began in  as Mission San Francisco Solano near Mis ;                     

sion San Juan Bautista, not far from present-day Eagle Pass, Texas, on the Río Grande. It occupied three different localities before its transfer in  to the San Antonio River, where it took a new name, San Antonio de Valero. And even then, its first site in San Antonio was not to be its final location: a year later, it moved again to its present location on the east bank of the river, a more suitable site with better ground that was more easily irrigated.33 The peripatetic tendency of San Antonio’s first mission turned out to be the rule rather than the exception for all but one of the other missions that were established in the area. In fact, the only mission to survive in San Antonio that did not have itinerant beginnings was Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo (Mission San José), although it too moved shortly after its founding in  to a more permanent site across the river.34 The other three missions that eventually settled in San Antonio all came from elsewhere, much like Mission San Antonio.35 Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña (Mission Concepción) began in  in the eastern part of the Texas province as a mission to the Tejas Indians.36 Mission San Juan Capistrano (Mission San Juan) also was founded in  just seven leagues to the north of Mission Concepción; the missionaries named the settlement San José de los Nazonis.37 Mission San Francisco de la Espada (Mission Espada), on the other hand, began as San Francisco de los Tejas in  in what is now the northeastern corner of Houston County.38 All three of these missions suffered from hostile natives, from conflicts with the French, and finally from their own colonial government’s attempts to cut costs in the province. On March , , the missionaries gathered at the San Antonio presidio to formally reestablish their three missions at new, permanent locations on the San Antonio River. In a series of ceremonious performances, they took possession of three sites downriver from the presidio where the missionary friars hoped to build a more permanent presence.39 By the first of May, they were busy putting up temporary structures, digging irrigation ditches, and plowing fields.40 With the help of their native neophytes, the friars brought an end to the itinerancy of their missionary efforts as they set about expanding the locative presence of the Spanish colony on the San Antonio River. Enduring evidence of the missionaries’ locative efforts remains in San Antonio even today; the churches and other mission buildings that tourists visit by the millions each year stand as monuments to these early attempts to establish European civilization in Texas.41 But these were not the first structures built at the mission sites. Construction at San Antonio’s missions began with jacales, temporary wooden shelters of crude construction that                      ; 

were meant to house mission residents until permanent buildings could be put up.42 Once their temporary needs for shelter were addressed, the mission residents concentrated on planting their fields and providing for irrigation. Only after these first crucial projects were complete could they turn their attention to constructing more permanent stone and adobe buildings, usually beginning with the mission church and a convento to house the missionaries and their offices. These building efforts often progressed quite slowly and met with frequent setbacks. Nonetheless, the mission communities eventually constructed impressive places along the San Antonio River. Mission San José, for instance, seemed to Father Juan Agustín Morfi when he visited there near the end of  to be ‘‘in truth, the first mission in America, not in point of time but in point of beauty, plan, and strength.’’ There was ‘‘not a presidio along the entire frontier line,’’ he thought, that could ‘‘compare with it.’’ 43 But the missions were more than impressive buildings. Within a couple of decades after their establishment, all of the San Antonio missions were prospering as self-supporting communities; they operated sizable ranches that not only provided for the mission communities but also produced surpluses that contributed substantially to the economy of the northern borderlands of Spain’s American colonies. Thus the missions sent maize, meat, tallow, wool, cattle, horses, and mules to the presidios and towns in Texas as well as to other provinces. In return, they were able to import a variety of manufactured goods that included clothing, hats, shoes, knives, dippers, water jars, tobacco, glass beads, tools, bridles, saddles, and even luxuries such as chocolate and snuff.44 And besides goods, people also circulated through the San Antonio settlements; visitors frequently arrived from other locations in Texas and northern Mexico.45 The missions often served as hospices for missionaries passing through to other destinations.46 All of this movement of goods and people bolstered the missions as places; it supported the colonists’ locative inclination to build permanent sites that supported independent, autonomous communities. Indeed, the San Antonio missions became European places in the Texan wilderness, and they remained connected to the European world through travel practices that circulated the goods, languages, beliefs, and peoples of Europe throughout the colonized spaces. On the other hand, the missions were not entirely European places. The making of locative missions could not have been achieved without the active involvement of native peoples.47 Despite the emphasis typically given to the role of missionaries, missions took shape, at least in colonial Texas,  ;                     

because Indian peoples chose (sometimes under coercion that bordered on violence) to participate in the mission enterprise. Without native involvement, there would not have been any missions at all. Most of the native peoples who came to live at the various missions in San Antonio were there voluntarily. Some native groups even sent delegations to the Spaniards asking that missionaries be sent to set up missions for their people.48 The various hunter-gatherer groups that traversed the area around what is now San Antonio found that mission life provided a preferable option as European incursions into North America introduced new pressures on traditional ways of life and exacerbated warfare between various native groups. In short, the missions became a protective haven for Indian peoples caught in the deadly vise of colonial expansion and rivalry.49 But the missions, for many of the natives who came to live there, proved to be a regrettable choice. Most lethal of the hazards of their new lives were the deadly epidemics that swept through the mission communities from time to time. In , for instance, according to a report by the captain of the Presidio de Béxar, Toribio de Urrutia, disease left the missions ‘‘almost deserted, because many Indians died and some left on account of their fear of sickness.’’ Urrutia also noted that because of the devastation, the missionaries needed to replenish their populations; accompanied by soldiers, they ‘‘went in search for fugitives and also sought new converts from pagan tribes.’’ 50 Searching for fugitives and new converts often occupied the missionaries, and not only following the ravages of epidemic. In fact, the frequency with which Indians attempted to escape mission life reveals the harshness of the missionary enterprise for people accustomed to more itinerant lifestyles.51 In addition to the physical illnesses and even deaths brought on by newly introduced European diseases, native peoples in San Antonio underwent numerous hardships in their attempts to live with the locative demands of mission life. Europeans brought to the Texas landscape a different engagement with time, and their routines imposed perhaps the greatest burden on native peoples.52 Temporal patterns at the missions, especially for the religious missionaries, revolved around the ecclesiastical calendar. In contrast to the seasonal itinerancy that had structured their lives prior to the arrival of Europeans, native peoples at the missions had to conform to the imposed regularities of Christian time. In addition, the demands of maintaining economically independent agricultural communities also required strict discipline and closely observed routines. As natives at the missions                      ; 

gave their constant attention to keeping up with the demands of their locative pursuits, time became a palpable force that pervaded their lives in ways they had not imagined prior to the arrival of Europeans. But their locative lives at the colonial missions brought native peoples more than a new sense of time. They also introduced a new language. Most of the Indians who took up residence at the San Antonio missions spoke dialects of either the Coahuiltecan or Tonkawan language groups, although some Athabaskan speakers also entered the missions. But the relative isolation in which they had formerly lived had produced a great variety of languages within these groups, many of them mutually unintelligible.53 Consequently, the language of the European colonizers served as a lingua franca for the Indians gathered in the missions. For the missionaries, it was easier to teach their own Castilian to the neophytes than to attempt to learn the many different native languages they encountered. And the Indians’ proficiency with Castilian also served as evidence of their assimilation to the Spaniards’ standards of civilized life.54 Another indication of native progression toward European understandings of civilization was the ready acceptance of Christianity. Little is known about indigenous religions in south central Texas; the missionaries took little interest in the beliefs and practices of the native peoples and therefore left few records about native religions. In fact, one of the attractions of missionary efforts in Texas, at least for some of the priests, was the widespread perception that the Texas Indians had no religion at all, that they were tabulae rasae hungry for the Christian message that the missionaries brought.55 But experience taught them otherwise. The aspect of indigenous religions most commonly mentioned during the colonial period was what the Spaniards called ‘‘mitotes.’’ These lively celebrations often inaugurated a communal hunt, commemorated the summer harvest, or marked the successful conclusion of warfare; they involved colorful body decorating, feasting, the ingestion of hallucinogenic beverages, and ceremonial dancing.56 They continued long after the commencement of missionary efforts. Although most priests remained vigilant against the persistence of what they considered to be pagan practices, some took a more lenient approach; one missionary even argued, ‘‘When no superstition, no question of celebrating an enemy’s death, nor any sinful motive are present, then the mitote is not unlawful when done for mere diversion, because among the Indians it is the same as the fandango among the Spaniards.’’ 57 Such tolerance hinted at a chink in the missionary resolve to remake the native space into a locative place of European persuasion; indeed, something of the indigenous world survived  ;                     

the missionaries’ efforts to bring their native wards into conformity with European religious understandings and practices.

;

The Itinerant Force of History

Despite the limits of their colonial enterprise, the Spanish missionaries, soldiers, and civilians who entered the space that they knew as Texas had an irreversible impact on the region. European places gained a foothold there and changed the landscape at all levels, socially and culturally as well as physically. These places included not only Christian missions but towns and military outposts as well. Yet despite their apparent prosperity, especially the prosperity of the missions, the Europeans’ hold remained tenuous at best throughout the colonial period. Continued threats from hostile Indians, concerns about rival European powers, and eventually the encroachments of Americans from the newly established United States all imperiled the viability of the Spanish places in Texas. Hostile Indians, mainly Apaches, regularly attacked San Antonio from the early years of Spanish settlement there. According to one report from the s, the Apaches ‘‘spared neither life nor the important possessions.’’ 58 Their raids continued throughout the decades of the Spanish colonial presence in Texas, and defense of the missions remained a prime concern for the priests. Without sufficient military support from the presidio, the missions maintained their own militias to protect against attacks.59 In fact, when  Apaches descended upon the presidio and villa in , reinforcements from Mission San Antonio rescued the Spaniards from what likely would have been their certain destruction.60 Besides the threat of Indian attack, the Spaniards also worried about the encroachments of other nations onto their colonial claims. The French threat effectively ended in  when France ceded its Louisiana territory to Spain. The main concern for the Spanish then became the English. A reconnaissance and reassessment of their North American holdings convinced the Spanish of the need to implement new policies and to reorganize their northern frontier. In September , a royal order mandated three important changes in official policy for the Texas province: the abandonment of all missions and presidios in Texas except those at San Antonio and at La Bahía; the strengthening of San Antonio by designating it the capital of Texas and moving more soldiers and settlers there; and the institution of a new Indian policy that called for the extermination of the Apaches.61                      ; 

These mandates bolstered the importance of San Antonio as a place, contributing to a population boom.62 But they also foretold the end of the missions as key instruments in the colonial enterprise. New policies and rapidly shifting political realities made the missions largely irrelevant and somewhat burdensome for the colonial government. Moreover, drastically attenuated numbers of mission residents and the diminished prospect of new native converts gave the missions few justifications for continuing. In , the process of secularization began at San Antonio’s missions when the colonial governor of Texas, Manuel Muñoz, ordered the secularization of Mission San Antonio. The following year, a similar order came for the four other missions, although these relatively isolated and impoverished missions were only partially secularized.63 They struggled along in their partially secularized state beyond the end of the colonial period in , when Mexico won its independence from Spain. But the new Mexican government was anxious to distance itself from the colonial legacy of the Catholic Church, and in  it ordered the ‘‘full and complete secularization’’ of all missions; by February , the San Antonio missions were closed. Their ecclesiastical supervision fell to the pastor of San Antonio’s parish church, San Fernando, and their lands were soon parceled out to local residents.64 By the s, when a revolution brought about the creation of the independent Republic of Texas, the missions had lost their religious significance and had become little more than abandoned ruins. But by then, San Antonio had become more than a place of colonial settlement; it also served as a crucial way station for all sorts of travelers. In fact, travel practices continued to define Texas beyond the end of Spanish colonial rule in , through the volatile times of Mexican rule and Texas independence, and well after the annexation of Texas by the United States and the territory’s eventual attainment of statehood. Travelers to San Antonio included traders, government agents, filibusterers, land speculators, refugees, adventurers, prospective settlers, revolutionaries, soldiers, journalists, slaves, prisoners, artists, writers, and even a few tourists who came simply to satisfy a ‘‘traveler’s curiosity.’’ 65 Most of these people came for their own unique sets of reasons, but many shared common practices that facilitated their sojourns in the Texas landscape. Like their earlier counterparts in the colonial period, these nineteenth-century travelers relied on their travel practices to make new places that changed the character of the Texas space.

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For many travelers to and through Texas, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century, San Antonio ranked among the most popular destinations. Its designation as the colonial capital in  enhanced its importance for travelers, and as American settlers made their way into the eastern portions of the territory, San Antonio became the site of contact, trade, and conflict between Spanish-American and Anglo-American cultures.66 It also witnessed the settlement of European refugees, especially Germans, and it continued to attract Native Americans. Moreover, African American slaves became a more common sight on San Antonio’s streets as settlers from the southern United States moved into the region. Indeed, by the time Frederick Law Olmsted traveled there in , San Antonio’s ‘‘jumble of races, costumes, languages, and buildings’’ made quite a spectacle for visitors to the town.67 Over the course of the nineteenth century, San Antonio was transformed from a sleepy colonial outpost on the northern boundary of Spain’s American holdings to a bustling modern city in America’s largest state. A variety of travelers and travel practices helped shape this transformation of place. Among the most important of the travel practices was tourism; indeed, by the beginning of the twentieth century, San Antonio had become, as one promotional tract proclaimed, ‘‘the Mecca of the tourist.’’ 68

;

A Tourist Destination

San Antonio was not alone in experiencing the process by which touristic practices and sensibilities helped to transform American spaces into desirable tourist places; the forces that made San Antonio an appealing destination exemplify the history of tourist practices in the United States more generally. This history has its most significant roots in the travel practices of early modern Europe, especially in the eighteenth-century tradition of the Grand Tour, which reached its apex on the European continent in the decades prior to the French Revolution.69 When travelers found Europe safe again following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, American travelers began to join their European counterparts in taking the increasingly popular tours of the Continent. Although American elites had long participated in the Grand Tour, the number of travelers to Europe grew rapidly in the early part of the nineteenth century as a burgeoning American economy spurred the growth of the privileged class.

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Travel to Europe served this parvenu group; its members secured their new social position by making a claim to the possession of the sophisticated tastes of a cultured upper class.70 While Europe remained the most popular destination for these nineteenth-century travelers, Americans (and Europeans) toured in America as well. For the most part, the early tourists utilized notions of the picturesque and the sublime to make the natural landscape their main attraction. By the s, a standard ‘‘American Grand Tour’’ included such places as the Hudson River, the Catskills, Lake George, Niagara Falls, the White Mountains, and the Connecticut Valley.71 And as ‘‘Manifest Destiny’’ pushed the national boundaries ever westward, the vastness and variety of the newly encountered landscapes and cultures made them the popular objects of touristic representations. Indeed, the American West in the second half of the nineteenth century offered a vast region for the aesthetic ruminations of travelers, who found an unimaginable beauty and sublimity there. As tourist haunts in the northeast deteriorated and ‘‘dense, democratic, vulgar’’ hordes filled up the once-fashionable tourist hotels, the more discriminating travelers sought their sublime experiences elsewhere.72 The desires of nineteenth-century tourists and the travel practices that brought them into the Texas landscape played a significant role in making San Antonio into a modern American place. Indeed, touristic inclinations and practices facilitated the transformation of the colonial place into a desirable place to visit for all sorts of travelers. The growing availability of modern modes of transportation and of accommodations, along with an aesthetic that compelled travelers to seek out the beautiful in places of the historic past, contributed to making San Antonio a favored destination. Getting to San Antonio, however, was no easy feat in the first half of the nineteenth century. Most travelers in Texas relied on animals for transportation, mainly horses but also mules, oxen, burros, and even a few camels introduced on an experimental basis.73 But finding one’s way often proved frustrating; as an English visitor of the s complained, ‘‘Roads do not exist.’’ Travelers had to go by ‘‘plumbing the track,’’ that is, by following the path of previous travelers.74 A French traveler of the s remarked, ‘‘In the woods, simple notches in the trees indicate the road[, while] in the prairies and open country there is no marked path; and every one proceeds, according to his taste, along flat unbroken surface.’’ 75 Beginning in the s, stagecoaches were available for travel between important locations, but most travelers avoided them if they could. The wagons were often crowded and always uncomfortable, and they provided  ;                     

very little protection from the elements. In addition, they were usually quite unreliable. Many times, the passengers had to help when road conditions proved impassable or when the wagons broke down.76 Dr. Ferdinand Roemer, for instance, a German who visited Texas in , reported being soaked in a thunderstorm while riding in an uncovered stagecoach between San Antonio and Houston. The driver of the coach subsequently ordered all male passengers to walk in order to lighten the load so that the wagon could continue to pass along the muddy road. ‘‘We waded in this black mud, a foot deep, for about a half hour,’’ Roemer complained. A short while later, the stagecoach became stuck while crossing a creek, and the passengers had to seek help from the residents of a nearby plantation.77 Roemer found little to recommend traveling by stagecoach in Texas. Visitors to Texas in the nineteenth century also commented on the deplorable lodging. In fact, since finding a place to stay for the night was never a certainty, most travelers carried their own bedding, food, and other necessities, often camping out along the way.78 They sought out settlers’ cabins for a night’s lodging; along popular routes, many of the settlers turned their cabins into public houses or inns. But not all residents of the region welcomed guests, and many viewed travelers with suspicion. Travelers could be nuisances to the residents who hosted them, expecting food and a place to sleep, and many guests never offered to compensate their hosts. Indeed, more than a few settlers became innkeepers simply out of resignation, given the constant requests of visitors passing through.79 Over time, boardinghouses and even hotels became more common throughout Texas. Some were quite impressive, such as the Houston Hotel in Houston where Ferdinand Roemer stayed in , glad to indulge in its luxurious accommodations, including ‘‘its brightly illumined decorated barrooms, and various billiard halls.’’ 80 In contrast, Roemer decried what he considered the ‘‘exorbitant’’ cost of his hotel in San Antonio, where he received only the ‘‘simplest’’ of meals and had to share his sleeping quarters with ‘‘two unknown and unceremonious guests.’’ 81 In fact, sharing a room, and even a bed, with strangers was not unusual. As one traveler quipped, ‘‘No innkeeper in this country would dream of sending away a traveler with the plea of want of room as long as one bed remained in his house occupied by only two men.’’ 82 And humans were not the only ones sharing the beds. Robert Seaborn Jemison noted in his diary regarding his stay in Austin in , ‘‘Slept but little on account of Bed Bugs of which Texas seems to be infested.’’ 83 Yet despite infestations, hardships, and persistent inconveniences, increas                     ; 

ing numbers of travelers made their way to San Antonio. Most of the visitors in the nineteenth century saw the city through the aesthetic lens of a tourist’s eye, and many remarked on the beauty of its attractions. Word of ‘‘the beautiful country about San Antonio’’ reached Francis S. Latham, a newspaperman from Memphis, Tennessee, as he traveled in Texas in . He described his own first impressions of the city, which he viewed from a hilltop about a mile away: ‘‘The famous and sanguinary city of San Antonio de Bexar broke upon our view. The prospect from this summit is exceedingly grand and lovely, overlooking a fertile and verdant valley or basin comprising an area of ten or fifteen miles, girded on the north and west by an arc of mountains.’’ 84 Harvey Alexander Adams also arrived in San Antonio in  as part of a military expedition. His first impressions of the town included the image of ‘‘the Rude edifices lifting their spires into the air, . . . a beautiful prospect to the eye.’’ 85 A dozen years later, Robert Jemison found in San Antonio ‘‘many of the most beautiful Residences and Grounds’’ he had ever seen. ‘‘As to beauty and pleasantness,’’ he wrote, ‘‘San Antonio is unsurpassed.’’ 86 Among the most beautiful sights in San Antonio, according to most accounts, were the ruins of the Spanish colonial missions. During his visit in , Jemison rode ‘‘six miles South of town to the old Mexican San Hozie Mission.’’ He wrote of Mission San José, ‘‘We spent several hours most pleasantly Indeed—viewing and prying into the Ruins of that ancient & one magnificent building.’’ He went on to say: ‘‘I would advise every one visiting San Antonio not to leave without giving that venerable building a call— It will pay any one well for the trouble—I would also advise anyone desirous of seeing the curious not to come to Texas & leave without visiting San Antonio.’’ 87 The same year, Frederick Law Olmsted also visited the San Antonio missions, which he found ‘‘in different stages of decay, but all . . . real ruins, beyond any connection with the present—weird remains out of the silent past.’’ 88 Such aesthetic ruminations on the ‘‘silent past’’ of San Antonio’s missions helped to sustain these deteriorating sites as tourist places. Their ruinous state, and even the squalor of the conditions in which the few families that still inhabited the mission grounds lived, enhanced the aesthetic attractions that the nineteenth-century tourists expected to find there. Rutherford B. Hayes, for instance, described the missions in  as ‘‘ruined castles with statuary, carved work, and painting, built for worship and defence in the most magnificent style; now in heaps of ruins affording shelter to bats, Mexicans, and venomous and filthy reptiles.’’ 89 Like many early tourists in  ;                     

The earliest known photograph of Mission San José, taken in the s. By then, tourists regularly made the trip south of San Antonio to visit the mission ruins. (Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, CN.)

San Antonio, the future president of the United States found the missions both alluring and repulsive. Similarly, Ferdinand Roemer noted cacti growing ‘‘picturesquely’’ on the cupola of Mission Concepción, and he remarked that the presence of the ‘‘poor Mexican families’’ who were living at Mission San Juan added to ‘‘the impression of desolation and decay’’ given by the mission.90 Indeed, the picturesque scenes of desolation and decay brought a steady stream of visitors to San Antonio and its former missions. The aesthetic attraction of places like San Antonio were made all the more appealing by the hardships of travel. For most visitors, the difficulties involved in getting there made their experiences of San Antonio more meaningful and worthwhile. But all of this changed in , when trains commenced running between Galveston and San Antonio along the ‘‘Sunset Route.’’ Some eight thousand people turned out on February , , to welcome the first train and to celebrate with a parade and speeches by dignitaries; among the speakers was George Crow, president of the International and Great Northern Railroad, who congratulated the citizens of San Antonio for ending their notoriety as the largest city in the United                      ; 

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The establishment of railroad service brought more tourists to San Antonio, many of them encouraged to visit by images such as this pastoral depiction of Mission Concepción that appeared in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in . (Institute of Texan Cultures Library at UTSA, no. -)

States without railroad service. He remarked: ‘‘No longer does the uncomfortable stage coach bear passengers from the east to this city. No longer does the weary freight wagon crowd into San Antonio bearing its few hundred pounds of freight. But instead the iron horse now rushes in upon us comfortably bearing hundreds of persons and tons of burden.’’ 91 The steel rails opened San Antonio to the world, and it was not long before railroad promoters and local boosters beckoned the world to come visit the healthful, exotic, and always beautiful city in the heart of south Texas. In , William Corner published a book that typified the boosterism that helped to make San Antonio a popular destination for tourists. His San Antonio de Bexar: A Guide and History served as both guidebook and historical reference for visitors, just as its title promised, but it also represented a slick piece of promotion, including as it did abundant information on such fea ;                     

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Tourists Willie Pardue and Charles Gaddis pose triumphantly on the ruined walls of Mission San Juan in  or . (Institute of Texan Cultures Library at UTSA, no. -; courtesy of Zuleme Matthews)

tures as the transportation system, lodging and restaurants, military facilities, churches, schools, opera houses, public halls, newspapers, stockyards, buildings, social clubs, water resources, and even literary and oral history accounts of the city’s character. As Corner wrote in the preface, he wanted his book to be ‘‘a satisfaction to the inquiring visitor,’’ but he also hoped it would ‘‘furnish a few notes and suggestions to a future historian of Texas.’’ 92 Under the heading ‘‘What There is to See and How to See It,’’ Corner urged visitors to the city to tour the missions, an excursion that he promised would ‘‘repay a thousand times in pleasure any difficulty in getting to them.’’ 93 He exclaimed: ‘‘There is nothing of the kind of equal interest on this continent. It is an experience of a lifetime, especially so to him who                      ; 

is engaged in the rush and torrent of business life. Let him then sacrifice a little to this object and he may be sure that, far from regretting the time, it will be a memory to be long cherished.’’ 94 By capitalizing on tourists’ desires for cherished memories, the railroads and promotional tracts like Corner’s brought more and more tourists to San Antonio each year. What these visitors found, if one is to believe the propagandizing literature that flowed out of the city, was a romantic place steeped in history: ‘‘There is perhaps no more colorful place in all America than San Antonio . . . modern, gay Pan-American city where the romance of the past still lives. Constant reminders of its glorious centuries are all about you when you walk the sunlit streets once trod by Spanish Conquistadores or step into shaded missions built by Franciscan Padres.’’ The exuberant language continued on the back of this  promotional brochure: ‘‘Life is different in San Antonio . . . life is joyous! This charming, centuriesold city is filled with sights found nowhere else in the world. Here is color and glamour and romance you’ve known only in fiction. Here Mexican and American modes are in complete contrast. Here is the inherited pageantry of Spain. Here are new adventures for the travel-weary. You will feel that here is a land apart.’’ 95 Certainly, San Antonio became a land apart, far removed from the native place of Yanaguana that had begun to disappear when the Catholic Spaniards claimed the site in . Tourist practices catapulted San Antonio into the twentieth century as a modern city made up of modern places. But the aesthetic attractions that brought tourists to the city relied on the romantic imagining of a premodern time when conquistadores and missionaries traversed the Texas landscape. San Antonio has been many places over the centuries: the native place of Yanaguana; a colonial place of military presidios, civilian villas, and selfsufficient mission communities; and a tourist place of exotic appeal. Each of these has included an itinerant aspect that relied on the constant movements of people, goods, and ideas to substantiate its locative pretensions. The clash of places sometimes brought hardship and even tragedy, as when Native Americans lost their place of Yanaguana to the colonial place of San Antonio. Yet no place can endure indefinitely; the itinerant dimension compels change. All places eventually become, to echo the words of Frederick Law Olmsted, ‘‘weird remains out of the silent past.’’

 ;                     

 

Alamo City The Alamo, as Mission San Antonio is commonly known, has been the most popular tourist attraction in San Antonio, indeed in all of Texas, since . Almost immediately following the fateful battle of that year, visitors were drawn to the tragic site where a small band of besieged defenders had suffered annihilation at the hands of a far stronger force led by the Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna. Early tourists entered the battered stone walls of the mission compound to experience the drama of the battle, to wander through the rooms where Crockett, Bowie, Travis, Bonham, and their companions had met their violent deaths; in hushed silence, visitors stared with horror at traces of blood that stained the walls and floors of the ghastly ruins. Some of the pilgrims broke down in uncontrollable weeping, as did one traveler in  who described his emotional outpouring as ‘‘a pure, fervid and involuntary tribute to the memory of the fallen brave.’’ 1 An enduring sense of reverence for the site of the famous battle has made it more than a mere tourist destination. In , Edward King wrote: ‘‘The Alamo is the shrine to which every pilgrim to this strange corner of America must do utmost reverence. It is venerable as mission church and fortress, and was so baptized in blood that it is world-famous.’’ 2 Likewise, William Corner’s  guidebook told visitors that the 

Alamo was ‘‘a shrine before which every pilgrim to San Antonio bow[ed].’’ 3 And an article in Harper’s Weekly in  described San Antonio as ‘‘a very Mecca of American pilgrims’’ where visitors went ‘‘to be thrilled by the story of its Alamo, sad to gaze upon the wall that Barret Travis, David Crockett, and James Bowie, together with  others, scantily supplied with food and ammunition, successfully defended for fifteen days.’’ 4 Actually, the siege of the Alamo lasted only thirteen days, not fifteen. But getting the facts straight about exactly what happened there has long been a problem. In fact, accurate accounts were hard to come by just one year after the battle.5 Over time, conflicting stories arose about the fate of the Alamo’s defenders. Some accounts, for instance, place the famous Tennessean David Crockett sick in bed as the battle commenced, while most versions agree that it was James Bowie who lay ill as the Mexican forces attacked. And even today, historians continue to quibble over such details as whether Crockett died in combat or was taken prisoner only to be executed following the Mexican victory.6 But the absence of accurate sources has not hindered the proliferation of Alamo histories; indeed, there have been plenty of versions of the story told over the years. Most, if not all, of these stories about the Alamo, even the legitimate histories written by professional historians, have participated in the economy of touristic practices. In other words, to a large extent they have originated from and found their enduring force in a pervasive curiosity about the site of the  battle, and this curiosity continues to sustain touristic activities at the Alamo. The stories, however, do more than merely satisfy the whimsical curiosities of pleasure travelers. At a more fundamental level, they participate in the processes of identity formation. Narrating the events of  gives meaning to the storyteller’s sense of self as a Texan, as a southerner, as an American, even as a foreigner. The Alamo also serves, however, as a lightning rod for challenging these identities.

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A Sacred Ruin

As the first hint of daylight appeared on the horizon east of San Antonio de Béxar on the morning of Sunday, March , , the stillness of the dawn was shattered by the Mexican battle cry ‘‘Viva Santa Anna’’ followed by a bugle call that signaled the beginning of the final assault on the Alamo. Inside the battered walls of the former mission, the band of ‘‘Texian’’ revolutionaries who had held off the Mexican siege for nearly two weeks scrambled into  ;         

Theodore Gentilz’s painting Fall of the Alamo, ca. . Gentilz arrived in San Antonio in  and completed extensive sketches of the Alamo; his research for the painting also included interviews with witnesses of the Alamo battle and precise measurements of the battle site. A fire destroyed the original painting in . (Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, Gentilz file)

position. They met the onslaught of the Mexican army with a fierce resistance, dropping scores of the attackers with artillery fire, rifles, muskets, and even handguns. But the enemy kept coming, strengthened along the vulnerable north wall of the Alamo by reinforcements ordered into the fray by General Santa Anna himself. As their ammunition began running short and their defenses began to falter under the relentless surge of the far superior Mexican forces, the defenders eventually succumbed to the inevitable. Some resorted to hand-to-hand combat, while others attempted to flee only to be slaughtered with the lances of the Mexican cavalry patrolling the perimeter. A few retreated into the relative safety of the barracks, where they could cause even more enemy casualties before meeting their own deaths. Within a few short hours, the slaughter was complete. Among the dead Texians were William Barret Travis, the brash lawyer who had commanded the Alamo’s defense; the famous Tennessee backwoodsman and politician David Crockett, who had only recently arrived in San Antonio and who had joined willingly in the Texian cause; and the flamboyant land speculator and former slave trader James Bowie, already near death from illness at the time the battle commenced. General Santa Anna had ordered that no mercy should be shown and no prisoners should be taken; in fact, when          ; 

one of his generals presented a handful of prisoners captured after the battle had subsided, Santa Anna severely reprimanded him and had the prisoners executed on the spot. The only survivors allowed to go free were women, children, and an African American man by the name of Joe who had been the slave of William Barret Travis.7 It was not long after the historic siege ended that tourists began seeking out the scene of the battle. They quickly found that there was no shortage of local guides to show them around the site and to narrate for them the dramatic events that had occurred there. When, for instance, the English traveler William Bollaert visited the Alamo in , his party ‘‘met with an old Mexican.’’ Bollaert recounted: ‘‘As he traversed this sacred pile of ruin with us, [he] showed us where Crockett, Travis, Bowie, and others fell, recounting to us the brutalities of Santa Anna and his followers.’’ 8 Throughout most of the nineteenth century, visitors encountered any number of similar guides willing to show them around the Alamo site. By the s, an official ‘‘custodian’’ of the place served the dual role of protecting the site and greeting tourists. William Corner’s  guidebook described the tour this man provided to visitors. A visitor to-day at ‘‘The Alamo,’’ will be met at its entrance by the worthy janitor, Capt. Tom Rife, a Texan of pioneer days. He guards the building with a jealous care[,] it is indeed a pleasure to note in these days of the irrepressible relic hunter and wall scribbler. The visitor will be given in short the particulars of the foundation of the Mission and the church. A description will be given him of the desperate stand to the last man of Travis, Bowie (the inventor of the celebrated bowie knife), ‘‘Davy’’ Crockett, Bonham, and their companions, in defense of their countrymen’s liberties and the independence of Texas. . . . The captain will be found ever ready to answer the questions that naturally arise to those not too familiar with the Alamo’s eventful history.9 Indeed, tourists in San Antonio never lacked access to tales about the famous battle and the heroes who died there. But the eventful history that visitors heard at the Alamo often differed in its details depending on who told the story. In attempting to make the tours worthwhile and to appeal to the expectations of visitors, different guides came up with their own versions of the battle to dramatize the Alamo spaces that tourists experienced. In fact, the bewildering variety of stories told there led Alexander Edwin Sweet to comment on them with biting sarcasm in :

 ;         

This early view of the Alamo appeared in the February , , issue of Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion. Based on an earlier painting by Edward Everett, the engraving includes stylish tourists whose diminutive size exaggerates the proportions of the Alamo building. (Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, CN.)

There are a great many different and conflicting accounts of the battle; so many, in fact, that I, who have heard all of them, or nearly all, am harassed with doubts about any battle ever having been fought there at all. If what the old residents and the historians say be true, then there is not a spot within a quarter of a mile of the Alamo where Travis did not yield up his life rather than submit to the hireling foe, who would have shot him, anyhow. There is not a hole or corner in the whole building where Crockett, while he was sick in bed, did not offer up, with the butt of his rifle, from eleven to seventy-five Mexicans, most of them of high rank. Adding up all the Mexicans the historians have killed, it aggregates a number that is fearful to even think of.10 But conflicting accounts of the battle did not deter the local guides from capitalizing on tourists’ desire to visit the places where such heroes as Crockett, Bowie, Travis, and Bonham had fought and to learn the details of their deaths. As long as visitors kept coming and remained willing to pay for a guided tour of the Alamo site, local folks were willing to oblige them. And the guides were happy to spice up their stories in response to tourists’ expectations. Visitors to the Alamo wanted all the details of the battle to be

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related in the most heroic terms, and their guides did not hesitate to give them the most harrowing tales of heroism, regardless of their veracity. Yet despite the questionable accuracy of the stories that Alamo guides of the nineteenth century rehearsed for tourist visitors, the tales corresponded to and subsequently corroborated the meaning of the Alamo as a symbol of Texan, and by extension American, identity. The symbolism of the Alamo expressed this identity in terms of liberty, freedom, courage, bravery, sacrifice, perseverance, determination, and honor. Over and over again, tourist accounts have framed the Alamo experience in terms of what tourists regard to be the core values of the American nation. Chief among these are bravery and freedom; the stories have consistently characterized every one of the Alamo defenders as a brave patriot who was willing to die for the cause of freedom. John Russell Bartlett, for example, reported in the early s that the Alamo was ‘‘memorable for its brave defence by Travis, Crockett, Bowie, and others, who only gave up the contest with their lives.’’ 11 Likewise, a promotional booklet published in  suggested that its review of the battle would ‘‘be appreciated by many of the romantic turn of mind’’ and would remind readers of ‘‘the infantile days of America, when the struggle for independence was the ordained apportionment of every soul within the new and hoped-for land of general freedom.’’ 12 In all the annals of history, it concluded, one would not find ‘‘a more intense thrill, a more fervent prayer and a truer conception of innate bravery, honor and determination’’ than in the story ‘‘of Col. Travis and his men, their fate, their martyrdom.’’ 13 In the decades following the Texas Revolution, the core values of bravery, honor, and freedom that the martyred heroes fought for made the Alamo a particularly potent symbol of Texas identity. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine reported in its November  issue, ‘‘The Texan visits it as a shrine, and thrills with pride in a history that is more to him than all the Monmouths and Lexingtons and Cowpens and Yorktowns of the Revolution; for, after all, Texas is a domain by itself, with a past of its own, and although long a voluntary member of our federation, yet, like Hungary or like Scotland, it is hardly to be absorbed.’’ 14 Crucial to its unique history was the exceptional suffering of the Alamo heroes, which gave Texans their sense of purpose and meaning. Affirming a Texan sense of purpose and meaning involved more than merely repeating the tale of the Alamo battle. It also included the ritualization of commemoration. By the s, San Antonio had begun to host official Texas Independence Day celebrations that included parades and speeches; these celebrations gave official sanction to the Alamo events as  ;         

symbols of Texan and American identity. In , for instance, the Texas Independence Day events on the streets of San Antonio began with a parade of the Alamo Rifles and the San Antonio Fire Company, augmented by ‘‘a large assemblage of young Texans,’’ that processed to the Alamo. The famous church was ‘‘decorated for the day with a huge American flag, before which a platform had been erected for a group of distinguished citizens, including José Antonio Navarro and Samuel A. Maverick, signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, which Maverick read.’’ 15 Thus with a backdrop of the Stars and Stripes (symbol of American national identity) adorning the walls of the Alamo (symbol of Texan identity), the celebrants ritually affirmed Texas as an American place. Land of the free, home of the brave: this was the hallowed ground where Texan identity became American. Beneath this hallowed ground, however, lay a substratum of less honorable values. Lurking behind the symbolic meanings of courage, liberty, and freedom in the Alamo stories is the insidious specter of racism directed against both African Americans and Mexicans. Certainly, the defenders of the Alamo did not die for a general emancipation. In fact, a key issue in the Texas Revolution was the ownership of slaves; Mexico prohibited slavery, and slaveowners who were relocating to Texas from the American South found themselves at odds with the laws of their newly adopted nation.16 Hence the freedom that the revolutionaries sought was in part the freedom to own slaves.17 Slavery ranked as an implicit value in the symbolic meanings of the Alamo. Yet the voice of the enslaved is notably absent from interpretations of the Alamo. Even sympathizers with the abolitionist cause failed to notice the irony that the freedom to enslave others was one of the freedoms that the Alamo battle stood for. Frederick Law Olmsted, for example, went to Texas in  in large part to demonstrate the debilitating effects of slavery on agricultural production.18 But his visit to the Alamo elicited the familiar reverence that nearly all Americans felt at the site; he described it as ‘‘a monument, not so much to faith as to courage.’’ On the other hand, a hint of his larger project slipped into his assessment of the place as ‘‘a mere wreck of its former grandeur.’’ 19 Just as slavery was destroying the South, Olmsted’s comment suggested, the slaveowners who now controlled Texas had let the grandeur of the former Spanish mission slip into ruin. But Olmsted never made an explicit connection between the status of the Alamo as a symbol of liberty and the racist institutions that denied that liberty to slaves. The institutional racism of slavery remains an ironic subtext implicit in the symbolic import of the Alamo for Texan and American identity. But the          ; 

racist hatred of Mexicans quickly became an explicit feature of the Alamo story. Indeed, the Texas Revolution, and especially the barbarism of the slaughter at the Alamo, became justification for a popular racist hatred toward all Mexicans.20 Demonizing the enemy involved imagining all Mexicans as primitive, barbaric, backward, lazy, thieving, and thoroughly dirty ‘‘greasers.’’ Tourists’ comments reiterated this subtext of the Alamo story. The German traveler Ferdinand Roemer, for instance, wrote in the s, ‘‘The Mexicans of San Antonio, moreover, are a lazy, indolent race.’’ 21 His sentiments were echoed by the Memphis newspaperman Francis Latham, who reported in , ‘‘The Mexicans of Bexar are rather a diminutive, and a very ignorant, lazy, dastardly, treacherous, and yet, apparently a harmless people.’’ 22 Many visitors of the nineteenth century compared the Tejano people (Texans of Mexican descent) unfavorably with Anglo residents of the city, as did John Russell Bartlett in the s: ‘‘Mexican indolence cannot stand by the side of the energy and industry of the Americans and Europeans; and the new comers are rapidly elbowing the old settlers to one side. Some few Mexicans have the good sense to fall in with the spirit of progress; but the great majority draw back before it, and live upon the outskirts of the town in the primitive style of their forefathers.’’ 23 Related to the anti-Mexican sentiment expressed in the Alamo tales was an anti-Catholicism that was most often apparent in stories about the origin of the Alamo mission that emphasized the failure and moral deficiency of the missionaries who first built and occupied it. The Catholics, such narratives would typically explain, failed in their efforts to civilize the native peoples of the region. Moreover, they used ethically dubious means in their attempts to achieve their goal. As one visitor put it in , ‘‘By the exercise of great cruelty and duplicity, the holy fathers made but poor progress in civilizing the natives, although hundreds of them were taken and inveigled into the fortress and other missions established in the vicinity, and forced to adopt the lessons and views of their holy masters.’’ 24 The anti-Catholic tendencies became even more explicit with the rise of the Know-Nothing political party in the antebellum years. The party grew out of a Protestant nativist movement that flourished in response to massive immigration in the s, and its members were popularly dubbed ‘‘Know-Nothings’’ because they typically denied any knowledge of the party when questioned about its activities. In San Antonio, the Know-Nothings were able to win municipal elections in December  with an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic platform; subsequently, they instituted specifically anti-Mexican measures, including the repeal of a require ;         

ment for the city secretary to translate ordinances and other materials related to city business into Spanish. They also banned fandangos, the popular social gatherings of Tejano residents.25 Thus with an implicit subtext that justified slavery and the hatred of Mexicans while vilifying the barbaric incompetence of Catholic Mexico, the Alamo story reigned as a symbol of Texan and American identity, a symbol that affirmed the values of liberty and freedom gained through courage and self-sacrifice. But not everyone supported the dominant symbolism of the Alamo. Many of the visitors who toured the Alamo in the early decades following Texas independence came across informants of Mexican and Catholic descent who challenged the prevalent interpretations of the Alamo story and its meanings. William Bollaert, for example, met ‘‘an Old Mexican woman’’ in  who had been a lifelong resident of the Alamo neighborhood. This local woman looked on as he sketched the ruins; at last she remarked, ‘‘Ah Señor, had you but seen the Alamo on a Feast Day, as I have seen it, not like it is now, in ruins, you would have been delighted.’’ She continued, recalling fondly its days as the center of religious life: ‘‘Ah! Señor, the front of the church was so beautiful. On one side of the door way stood San Antonio, on the other San Fernando with other saints.’’ But the battle destroyed all that, ending the mission’s days as the center of Catholic life for residents of San Antonio; Bollaert’s companion lamented the loss, saying, ‘‘I never look into the ruins of the Church without shedding a tear; not half the walls are now to be seen and those grown over with weeds, moss, and even shrubs growing out of the cracks in its walls and what numbers of bats and snakes, but I have seen the Texas flag float over the poor old walls.’’ Before Bollaert was finished with his drawing, the woman gave him a crucifix made of stone taken from the Alamo. ‘‘Tis but ill-done,’’ she told him, ‘‘but [it] will serve as a remembrance of the Alamo.’’ 26 The Alamo she desired him to remember, however, was not the battlefield of ; it was the church that had served a community of worshipers long before the winds of war swept through its stone walls. Bollaert took with him from San Antonio a souvenir of the Alamo as a Catholic place. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat ran an interview in  that was the result of a similar encounter. Its reporter had met a woman whom most tourists would have regarded as the perfect informant: Señora Candelaria, who, at age , claimed to be one of the last living survivors of the Alamo battle. She was, according to the story’s headline, ‘‘The Brave Spanish Woman in Whose Arms Bowie was Butchered.’’ In her interview with special correspondent Walter B. Stevens, Candelaria told her personal version of the          ; 

fateful battle, offering an eyewitness account of Bowie’s death, and Crockett’s too. She said that the traditional story of David Crockett dying at the main entrance of the Alamo ‘‘almost covered with the bodies of Mexicans who fell at his hands’’ was not true. ‘‘[Candelaria] saw David Crockett come forward to the main entrance as an assaulting column approached. She saw him leap upon the barricade of sand bags as if to meet death half way, and she saw him fall before one of the first volleys,’’ according to Stevens’s account. Others fought on behind the barricades, Candelaria recounted, and it was these other defenders, not David Crockett, who wielded their guns as clubs when the Mexican attackers climbed over the sandbag barricade. Jim Bowie, on the other hand, took no part at all in the fighting; ‘‘He had the typhoid fever,’’ Candelaria said, and ‘‘when the Mexicans came in they killed him.’’ She claimed to have held him as he died, and she said that when a Mexican soldier thrust his bayonet at the dying Bowie, she was cut on the chin and left with a deep scar. She showed it to Stevens as evidence of the authenticity of her story.27 Señora Candelaria’s account of the Alamo battle attenuated somewhat the heroism of the defenders. She told a tale that represented an alternative imagining of the battle and its significance, subverting the anti-Mexican subtext of the dominant versions being circulated in San Antonio and across the nation. But her tale did not escape the scrutiny of the defenders of the dominant Alamo story. In fact, as the Globe-Democrat article acknowledged, it was Tom Rife, the Alamo’s official custodian and tour guide, who stood up to discredit the claims of the aged Mexican woman. Rife stated bluntly that her account of having nursed Bowie in his final moments at the Alamo was ‘‘a lie,’’ and he went on to dismiss her story with a skepticism that Stevens described as ‘‘more dogmatic than conclusive.’’ 28 Hence the guardian of the Alamo turned out to be the dogmatic guardian of its dominant narrative as well. By the end of the nineteenth century, tourist visits to the Alamo had taken on an almost theatrical air. A local newspaper spoofed the antics of visitors to the site in  with an article describing ‘‘a typical tourist party’’ that ventured into ‘‘the grim old citadel. . . . anxious to get inside and see the sacred spots, fraught with valorous reminiscences.’’ Once inside, they gazed upon ‘‘the spot in the little cell near the entrance where the sick Crockett was slaughtered on his cot.’’ The story described the fictional tour: ‘‘They are led along the dark, grimy walls and among the massive pillars to the spot where Bowie drew the death line over which the patriots unhesitatingly crossed and thereby became priests of their own sacrifice.’’ At that point, a  ;         

Señora Candelaria, who claimed to have held Jim Bowie in her arms as he died, is shown in a late-nineteenth-century portrait. (Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, CN.; gift of Eleanor Bomar)

portly gentleman interrupts the guide’s tale: ‘‘‘Do you know,’ he interposes in a lightly apologetic voice, ‘I have heard it questioned if this dramatic episode ever occurred. It is pointed out that—.’’’ But he is quickly admonished by his daughter: ‘‘‘Oh you mustn’t question anything here, . . . It spoils all the romance. Do hush papa.’’’ After they see where Bowie, Bonham, and Travis fell, where bullets shattered the walls, and where the patriots died in hand-to-hand combat, the climax of their visit is hearing the story of the ghosts of the Alamo: ‘‘The disturbing specters are supposed to be those of the errant monks who cried in chains for violating their monastic holiness in the old days when the Alamo was a Franciscan mission. . . . Some time ago, a number of prominent spiritualists held an all night seance there and are said to have had a very interesting and profitable conversation with the specters.’’ 29 The paper’s editors presented this account of tourism at the Alamo in jest. Nevertheless, it reveals the degree to which critical discourse was subsumed due to the romantic demands of the tourist site. The father’s questioning of the renowned ‘‘line in the sand’’ gave way to his daughter’s admonishment not to spoil the romance of the place. In much this way, tourists’ aesthetic sensibilities took precedence over serious discussion of the actual significance of the Alamo. Moreover, the popularity of nineteenth-century spiritualism did add ghostly entertainments to the tourists’ itinerary of attractions at the Alamo. The expectations of tourists for romance and entertainment, however, could cause the aesthetic attractions of the place to be attenuated by eroding its authenticity. A first-person memoir printed in the San Antonio Express in  recalled the Alamo of six decades earlier. In , the Alamo had ‘‘looked as it did at the time of the memorable siege,’’ the author explained. ‘‘Not a stone had seemingly been disturbed. The blood stains were visible on the walls. It was a veritable ruin, partly from the destruction caused by the battle, but mostly from its long abandonment as the abode of man.’’ But the aesthetic pursuits of the intervening years had all but erased that authentic version of the Alamo. ‘‘The church building as fixed up by the U.S. military authorities in  for Uncle Sam’s use, has been photographed, half-toned and painted until it has become a fixed idea that this was the Alamo that the eccentric Davy Crockett died in,’’ the author explained.30 But the fixed up and aestheticized Alamo that had become an icon for millions of tourists, he said, would hardly have been recognizable to Crockett, Travis, Bowie, and their companions who perished there in . Indeed, as the former mission changed hands and was subjected to a variety of uses throughout the  ;         

nineteenth century, it became a very different place. Behind these changes lay commercial interests that capitalized on the commemorative impulses of residents and tourists.

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Economies of Commemoration

From the very beginning, tourists brought to the Alamo a tension between commemoration and commercialization. This tension actually divided the site, so that by the end of the nineteenth century there was a clear distinction between the church building and the other surviving structures of what used to be the mission compound. This distinction made two places at the Alamo site, one for commemoration and another for commerce. The church, which had played a relatively minor role in the battle of , located as it was on the periphery of the main action, became the sacred center of the commemorative space, while most of the remainder of the battleground succumbed to commercial development. The division of space between commercial enterprises and the sacred ground of commemoration reflects an ambiguity inherent in touristic practices. Visitors have always expected to find at the Alamo a place preserved according to their imagined understandings of the past; they want, in short, a meaningful experience of the authentic scene where the Alamo defenders performed their heroic deeds. At the same time, tourists reign as the hyperconsumers of modernity, and they expect to spend their dollars at the attractions that they visit. Consequently, entrepreneurs quickly appeared at the Alamo to produce the goods that tourists came to consume. Tourists at the Alamo have spent money on souvenirs of the place for almost as long as they have been visiting it. The earliest visitors collected pieces of the stone walls and other relics from the site, and soon vendors were offering a variety of items for sale, especially figures carved from Alamo stone. In , Reuben Marmaduke Potter encountered stonecutter Joseph Cox and artist William B. Nangle, who were ‘‘engaged in manufacturing, from the stones of the Alamo, various small mementos, such as vases, candlesticks, seals, etc.’’ 31 In , Charles W. Evers wrote about the souvenirs he was able to acquire in San Antonio, including ‘‘two heavy fragments of shell which were found in the old Alamo where lay the dead led by Cols. Bowie, Travis, and Crockett.’’ 32 And at age fifteen, the future lawyer, historian, and writer Telamon Cuyler visited the Alamo, where, his diary exclaims, he ‘‘got a piece of stone from the room where Bowie was killed          ; 

and a piece from the doorway where it is said Crockett died.’’ Cuyler wrote: ‘‘I also got a photograph of this historic place.’’ 33 As tourists carried away a piece of stone here and a sliver of doorway there, they contributed to the precipitous increase in commercial activities that thrived in the vicinity of the site and turned the Alamo’s fame to advantage. By the s, one could find in San Antonio the Alamo Ice Company, the Alamo Drug-store, the Alamo Meat Market, the Alamo LiveryStable, the Alamo Cigar-Store, the Alamo Tin-Shop, the Alamo Bakery, the Alamo Brewery, the engine house of the Alamo Fire Company, and the rooms of the Alamo Literary Society, all in close proximity to Alamo Plaza.34 These ‘‘improvements’’ to the neighborhood nearly swallowed up the mission itself. There was some truth to William Corner’s exaggeration of : ‘‘Piecemeal, ‘here a little and there a little,’ the old Mission has been improved off the face of the earth.’’ 35 As Corner suggested, the encroachment of commercial activities occurred gradually at the Alamo. During the period of the Texas republic, the former mission remained more or less an abandoned ruin. The San Antonio City Council even sold stone from the walls and other structures for building materials.36 A soldier stationed in San Antonio in  commented, ‘‘[The Alamo] has mostly crumbled down now—it is not tenanted—except one room which is used for a Government Blacksmith Shop.’’ 37 It also served as temporary housing for a variety of itinerant groups; Rutherford B. Hayes, for example, reported in February  that he had discovered ‘‘a party of California emigrants cooking in the room where Crockett fell.’’ 38 In the s, the U.S. Army obtained the property for use as a supply depot. During its stay, the army made repairs and improvements that included adding a second floor, windows, a wooden roof, and the distinctive parapet of the now-famous facade of the church building. It also refurbished the former convent building, which housed offices and storerooms.39 But even when it was occupied by the army, the Alamo continued to receive tourist visitors, and many of them were disappointed by what they found there. John Frost visited the Alamo in the early s and found it ‘‘in ruins as [it] was left by the Mexicans . . . occupied by a few hundred soldiers, and as many thousand chattering swallows, forever passing in and out like bees around a hive.’’ 40 Similarly, Edward King complained in : ‘‘There is now but little left of the original edifice. The portion still standing is used as a Government storehouse; and the place where Travis and his immortals fell, which should be the site of a fine monument, is a station for

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the mule and ox-teams waiting to receive stores.’’ 41 King criticized the U.S. government for not showing adequate reverence for the place. As you see the remnant of the old fort of the Alamo now, its battered walls looming up without picturesque effect against the brilliant sky, and the clouds of dust which the muleteers and their teams stir up, half hiding it—perhaps it does not seem to you like a grand historic memorial. Indeed it is not so grand as in its old days, when, as a church, standing proudly under the shade of the noble cottonwood trees, it was the cynosure of every eye. It has fallen much into decay, and the Government, which would use Washington’s tomb for a storehouse rather than build a proper one, if Mount Vernon were a military depot, has cumbered it with boxes and barrels.42 A military supply depot was hardly what tourists expected to find at the end of their pilgrimages to the Alamo. Eventually, however, the Alamo proved inadequate for the army’s boxes and barrels, and the army moved its supply operations to another site in San Antonio in the s. It had been leasing the Alamo property from the Catholic Church, which had reacquired ownership in an  ruling of the Texas Supreme Court. When the army left the site, the Catholic Church sold land and buildings in the convento area immediately north of the Alamo church but held on to the church building itself. A local merchant, Honoré Grenet, bought the north section of the site and proceeded to build on top of the convento an elaborate fortresslike wooden structure to house his retail store. He also leased the church building and used it as a warehouse.43 Thus capitalizing on the interest in the battle fought on the site in , Grenet turned his business into a tourist attraction. An advertisement on the back cover of an  guidebook that was published shortly after his death displayed a rendering of the Alamo with the elaborate facade that Grenet had built over the former mission. The caption beneath the drawing explained: ‘‘The above is an admirable illustration of the historic Alamo as it is at present, together with the Convent Building adjoining the Alamo proper, as modernized and converted into a mammoth business house by the late Honore Grenet, and now occupied by his executor, Major Joseph E. Dwyer, for the same purpose. Strangers are cordially welcomed there and are shown the various points of interest about the historic buildings.’’ 44 With Grenet’s wooden monstrosity looming over the site, the commercialization of the Alamo seemed complete. This alarmed both residents

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Image Not Available

This view of the Alamo in  shows the Hugo and Schmeltzer Wholesale Grocery, formerly the retail store of Honoré Grenet, adjacent to the chapel. (Institute of Texan Cultures Library at UTSA, no. -; courtesy of Alamo National Bank)

and outsiders alike, all of whom feared the potential loss of the Alamo altogether. In the same booklet that advertised Grenet’s store on the back cover, author Stephen Gould took issue with the commercialization of the site. Gould wrote, ‘‘Hallowed as the site of the most memorable battle which has ever been fought on Texas soil, and being the altar on which William R. Travis, Davy Crockett, James Bowie, J. B. Bonham, and their heroic companions offered up their lives in the cause of liberty and popular government, it is the Mecca of Texas tourists, and is worthy of a more honorable fate than being converted into a grocery warehouse.’’ 45 Similar concerns had already precipitated a call for the preservation of the Alamo. A local journalist remarked in , ‘‘The dear old Alamo should be preserved; it is sacred to us, and although it is bound to be leveled with the dust some day, we should protect and guard it.’’ 46 The following year, the San Antonio Express urged Texans to assume responsibility for preserving the Alamo: The memories that cling round the Alamo are of such a nature that they demand more than a passing recognition. Nor are they bound within the narrow limits of this city, section, or State. The acts of which it is or should be the lasting memorial, are the common property of all lovers of liberty—a birthright upon which all have a claim, of whatever class, creed, or race. But its preservation should appeal especially to the heart of every citizen of Texas. . . . We hope that the  ;         

proper authorities may move in the matter, and the Alamo, the glory of Texas, will be insured from what will in time otherwise befall it.47 An influential group of San Antonians took up the challenge and organized the Alamo Monument Association in . It sought to build a monument to the Alamo heroes and also ‘‘to otherwise preserve and mark the spot upon which this great historic event transpired.’’ With the endorsement of the Texas Veterans’ Association, the Alamo Monument Association urged the state legislature in  to purchase the Alamo church. Three years later, the Catholic bishop sold the property to the state for ,; the city of San Antonio pledged to take responsibility for the care of the site.48 Thus, by evicting the tenant from the church building, the state reclaimed it as a place of commemoration to be preserved. Maintaining the Alamo church, however, proved to be more of a burden than the city of San Antonio had bargained for. As the years went by and no improvements were made, the Alamo deteriorated into an embarrassing eyesore that disappointed tourists and angered local residents. The  guidebook by William Corner, for example, lamented the disappearance of most of the Alamo compound: ‘‘Hardly a vestige of these enclosing walls of the Mission square could be found to-day.’’ Corner noted in his typically poetic style that the grocery built over the former convent of the mission had been condemned by the city in , ‘‘so that these remnants, too, [would] in all probability soon disappear before the mandates of improvement committees.’’ He continued: All that will be left of this once prominent and always most famous of the Texas Missions will be those walls in the form of a cross, which with ‘‘ears to hear,’’ caught to themselves the secrets of the closing scenes of sublime tragedy. They alone know the last personal results of a unanimous resolve of desperate but calmly deliberate heroism. Old, battered, time-worn, silent walls, no word of any single hero’s prowess, or separate and supreme feats do your portals tell. They are carved with emblems and signs of quite another story. Those deeds are your secret. Nevertheless, echoed from you, shall be heard the whispers adown the farthest ‘‘corridor of time’’ of a magnificent story of reckless and immovable self-sacrifice.49 Even Catholics joined in the criticism of the neglect of the Alamo. An article in Catholic World in  complained about the desecration of the Alamo property: ‘‘From that memorable th of March, , the mission          ; 

church, whose earthen floors were saturated with the blood of the brave, has not been used for sacred purposes. . . . We regret to add that the chief apartments on its ground-floor form at this moment a grocery warehouse— an adaptation which certainly does not enhance the charm of romance and chivalry with which the American heroes of the Lone Star State invested every part of the Alamo ‘mission.’’’ 50 Notably, the ‘‘sacred purposes’’ that this Catholic publication advocated had less to do with Christian sacramental life than they did with the ‘‘romance and chivalry’’ of nationalistic sentiment. Travelers to the Alamo, according to an  article in Harper’s Weekly, also lamented ‘‘the apathetic neglect’’ with which the site was treated. ‘‘From the moment that Texas achieved her independence,’’ the article argued, ‘‘this battle-scarred structure should have been sacredly preserved as an enduring monument to those who died within its walls that their country might be free.’’ But instead of being cherished and properly cared for, the building had ‘‘been treated with every indignity and put to every ignoble use.’’ Nevertheless, ‘‘this building, nearly hidden from view, defaced, shorn of its once stately proportions, and degraded by its environment,’’ was, the article argued, ‘‘of such remarkable character’’ that strangers, ‘‘ignorant both of its location and aspect,’’ recognized it as the Alamo, and it riveted their attention ‘‘to the exclusion of all surrounding objects.’’ 51 The remarkable character of the Alamo church did not compensate for the embarrassment that San Antonians felt about its shabby condition. ‘‘Hundreds of strangers visit the Alamo during the year, and what do they see?’’ one resident asked in . ‘‘A very untidy, dirty, negligently kept old building, in one room a crazy, smoky old stove, sticking its pipe out of one of the front windows to begrime the walls. Old lumber, rickety old floors and unsightly furniture greet the eyes.’’ 52 This was hardly a worthy monument to the heroes of Texan identity, and it was certainly not what tourists traveled so far to see. In addition to promoting the restoration of the Alamo itself, at least a few Texans advocated constructing some sort of official monument on the site. In fact, the idea of building a monument worthy of the defenders of the Alamo arose quite early. By , stonecutter Joseph Cox and artist William B. Nangle, the makers of Alamo souvenirs, had built a monument from Alamo stone that they hoped the Texas government would purchase. When the republic could not afford to buy it, they carried the monolithic memorial by wagon to several Texas cities and charged people to see it. Eventually, the state came up with the funds to purchase it and placed the  ;         

Alamo monument in the vestibule of the new Capitol Building in Austin, but only fragments survived an  fire.53 Yet even with this stone sculpture standing in the statehouse, some Texans felt that something more was needed at the site of the Alamo battle itself. Reuben Marmaduke Potter, author of both the widely known ‘‘Hymn of the Alamo’’ and a popular history of the famous battle, remarked in : ‘‘The Government of the State of Texas has never secured or preserved but one memento of the Alamo. . . . It now stands in the hall of the Capitol at Austin, but neither at the Alamo itself, nor at the forgotten grave of its defenders, does any legend or device, like the stone of Thermopylae, remind the stranger of those who died for their country’s rights.’’ 54 An organized effort to erect such a commemorative device did not take form until , when the Alamo Monument Association, headed by Mary Maverick, was incorporated. (Mary was the widow of Sam Maverick, who had been sent from the besieged Alamo as a delegate to the convention that produced the Texas Declaration of Independence just days before the final assault on the Alamo.) They succeeded in convincing the state to acquire the Alamo property as described above, but their inability to raise sufficient funds left their plans for a -foot-tall monument unfulfilled.55 At least some observers thought the association’s efforts were misdirected. Richard Harding Davis, for instance, an eastern tourist who passed through San Antonio on a railroad tour of the American West in , regarded the refurbished church building as monument enough. He expressed astonishment that city leaders felt they needed to build an additional memorial to the Alamo heroes: ‘‘As though they needed a monument, with these battered walls still standing and the marks of the bullets on the casements! No architect can build better than that. No architect can introduce that feature.’’ 56 Indeed, what could be better than the actual site of the battle itself ? A group of women preservationists in San Antonio agreed with the sentiment that no monument could memorialize the heroes who died at the Alamo better than the battered walls of the Alamo did. Led by San Antonio schoolteacher Adina De Zavala, the De Zavala Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas—named for Adina’s grandfather, Lorenzo de Zavala, the first vice president of the Republic of Texas—organized in  a ‘‘Congress of Patriotism’’ with the goal of reuniting the Alamo church and the convent area, which was still occupied by the grocery enterprise, by then under the name of Hugo and Schmeltzer.57 The congress proposed that a ‘‘Texas Hall of Fame—a Museum of History, Art, Literature, and Relics’’          ; 

be created in the restored convent building. But soon after the congress met, its delegates learned of plans for a major tourist hotel to be built on the property immediately behind the convent. Acting quickly, Adina De Zavala enlisted the help of Clara Driscoll, a wealthy heiress from south Texas, to secure an option to purchase the convent property from Hugo and Schmeltzer in order to prevent further development at the site. A subsequent fund-raising drive to cover the cost of the purchase fell short, but the group’s efforts convinced the state legislature to appropriate enough funds to buy the Alamo outright and to reimburse Driscoll for the money she had advanced to save the property from developers. In addition, the state awarded custody and care of the entire site, both the newly acquired Hugo and Schmeltzer property and the Alamo church already owned by the state, to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas ().58 Once it gained control of the entire Alamo site, the  set about repairing and restoring the former mission buildings. But an acrimonious dispute soon erupted between the group’s two most prominent leaders. In what has been dubbed ‘‘the Second Battle of the Alamo,’’ Adina De Zavala and Clara Driscoll fought bitterly over whether the convent building should be preserved as it was during mission days (De Zavala’s position) or whether the convent walls should be removed entirely, as Clara Driscoll argued, in order to ‘‘lend more prominence to the chapel, . . . the main feature in the Alamo mission.’’ 59 Driscoll’s supporters withdrew from the De Zavala Chapter and formed their own Alamo Mission Chapter within the . The two groups battled for control of the site until Governor Oscar Colquitt intervened. He sided with the De Zavala Chapter in , ordering that the convent be restored to its original condition as it was in mission days. But when funds ran out in , the lieutenant governor stepped in while the governor was out of the state and ordered that the arcaded second story of the convent be removed. Subsequently, Driscoll’s Alamo Mission Chapter assumed full custody of the Alamo; the De Zavala Chapter disbanded, and Adina De Zavala turned her attention to other projects.60 With the care and custody of the Alamo firmly in the hands of the ’s Alamo Mission Chapter, the chapel became the sacred monument to the martyrs of . In the s, the  joined forces with the San Antonio Conservation Society to acquire adjacent land for a park that would highlight the Alamo church as its center attraction. Together they were able to persuade the city of San Antonio and the state of Texas, with help from federal funds allocated for the Texas Centennial in , to purchase the lots surrounding the Alamo property and subsequently to clear the land for  ;         

what the president of the State Association of Texas Pioneers described as a ‘‘beautiful park, with the sacred Alamo its crown jewel.’’ 61 Acting as the state’s custodian for the Alamo property, the  succeeded in emphasizing the church as the key icon of the Alamo, providing an aesthetically pleasing setting for the memorialization of the tragedy of . But the ’s insistence on making the church building the sacred center of the Alamo provoked opposition from others who advocated a more historically accurate memorialization of the battle and the fighters who died there. One of the more conspicuous critics of the  in the s was Italian-born sculptor Pompeo Coppini. He objected vehemently to the ’s contention that the church warranted the sole attention of commemorative efforts at the Alamo. How many people realized, he asked, that ‘‘the real battlefield’’ was out in Alamo Plaza, not in the church, which ‘‘was nothing but a pile of debris during the battle’’? 62 Moreover, Coppini took issue with the wisdom of spending Texas Centennial funds for the acquisition of land adjacent to the church. Avarice motivated the , he contended, as it spent , of public funds ‘‘to satisfy the greed of landowners to sell land at a big profit around the Alamo, land that had absolutely no historical claim or connection with the fight that took place in the Alamo.’’ He complained: ‘‘They demanded to make a State Park of all that non-historical land, hoping that there would be no monument erected to the Alamo Heroes, and that no other sum would be appropriated. They absolutely wanted no monument, for fear that it would take away or minimize the glamor of the Chapel and destroy the chances to get more State money for custodians.’’ 63 As it turned out, though, Coppini himself hoped to land a chunk of the state’s money. He sought a commission to build a sculpted monument that would acknowledge the place as it was in . He first proposed that a wall be built along the east side of the original mission compound, decorated, as he described it, ‘‘very artistically with statues and bas reliefs, illustrating the Centennial patriotic events, so as to inspire not only future Texans but also the tourists with [Texans’] glorious history.’’ 64 But later he settled on the idea of a cenotaph, or ‘‘empty tomb,’’ to be erected on the spot where the largest number of Alamo defenders had actually perished. The sacredness of such ground, in Coppini’s estimation, was beyond dispute. ‘‘That tomb may be empty,’’ he wrote, ‘‘but the soil is sacred, as would have been their corpses, or after being burned, their ashes could have been preserved and buried there. That empty tomb should be venerated by the Daughters of the Republic and by the San Antonio people as much as is the spot on Calvary today where Christ was crucified.’’ 65          ; 

The Alamo Cenotaph, Pompeo Coppini’s monument to the heroic defenders of the site, dedicated in November . (Photograph by the author)

Few people in Texas would have disputed Coppini’s tendency to equate the sacrifice of the Alamo heroes with Christ’s. But many doubted his ability to create a monument worthy of such exalted figures. When he finally secured the commission to build his cenotaph, other critics besides the members of the  took exception with his work. Chief among his detractors was Texas historian and folklorist J. Frank Dobie. Upon viewing Coppini’s finished monument in , Dobie described it as ‘‘a grain elevator or one of those swimming pool slides.’’ Reiterating the ’s point, Dobie objected to the whole idea of placing a monument in the plaza that fronts the Alamo church, arguing, ‘‘The very idea of a monument to the Alamo, right beside the Alamo, bordered on the act of lighting a candle in order to illumine the sun.’’ 66 But Dobie reserved his most scathing remarks for Coppini’s renderings of the figures carved on the monument’s four sides. He said that the Alamo defenders depicted in marble by Coppini seemed to have come ‘‘to the Alamo to have their pictures taken.’’ David Crockett, for instance, reminded Dobie of ‘‘an old Texas cowman [he] once saw in a coffin’’ dressed up in a way that would never suit him in life, ‘‘with a shirt collar stiff enough to choke a  ;         

mule.’’ Travis wore a ‘‘Lone Star belt buckle’’ displaying a state symbol that would have been unknown to him; Dobie reckoned facetiously that Travis must have purchased the buckle at the ten-cent store across Alamo Plaza. The common soldiers carved on the cenotaph looked, according to Dobie, ‘‘about as much like the real thing as some pasty-faced, fat-legged, paunchy hair tonic salesman looks after he has come to a convention in Fort Worth and dressed up in a pair of rented boots and a -gallon hat loaned by the chamber of commerce for atmospheric effect.’’ 67 But most offensive to Dobie was the ‘‘Spirit of Texas’’ figure on the north face of the memorial. ‘‘This spirit,’’ he remarked, ‘‘is represented by a female figure, as demure as a little mouse, as modest as a chick in an unpipped egg.’’ This was a far cry from the rough-and-tumble Texas that Dobie had so eloquently celebrated in his writings, the Texas whose colonists planted corn with sticks, ate horse meat, and battled cannibal Indians; Coppini had failed to evoke the Texas that Dobie regarded as ‘‘an empire in vastness, compounded of starkness, toughness, loveliness, richness, bleakness and lushness.’’ 68 Coppini defended himself against the attacks of Dobie, whom he later described as ‘‘vicious’’ and ‘‘mentally unbalanced.’’ 69 According to Coppini, the overall design of the cenotaph had been decided by the architect, Carlton Adams. As for the figures, Coppini said that he would have preferred to depict them in action. Specifically, he had wanted ‘‘to immortalize Travis drawing the sabre in the patio of the Alamo, asking those who were willing to die with him to cross the line, and to portray Bowie asking his brave companions to help him to be carried in his cot across that line.’’ Instead, he said, the ‘‘modern historians’’ such as Dobie had prohibited him from including the dramatic scene. ‘‘So,’’ Coppini explained in a talk to the San Antonio Women’s Club, ‘‘I had to parade my beloved heroes to stand there for centuries to come to have their picture taken (as the modern historian wrote) by the admirers of their manly figures.’’ 70 The manliness of the Alamo defenders had great importance for both Coppini and Dobie; the gendered aspect of Texan identity is evident in their respective commentaries. But the two antagonists held very different views of what it meant to be a manly Texan. For Dobie, the ideal Texan followed the mold of William Barret Travis, whom he described as ‘‘wild as a mustang bull,’’ ‘‘as brave as a lion,’’ and ‘‘proud, strong, impetuous, daring, plunging in, generous, ambitious, the leader of rough frontiersmen.’’ 71 Coppini despised Dobie’s rough-and-tumble vision of the ideal Texas man. He sought instead to portray the heroes on his cenotaph ‘‘with sympathy and refine         ; 

ment.’’ The fierce Texan whom Dobie celebrated was more a product of a fierce imagination, according to Coppini, than it was accurate. ‘‘In all my travels over Texas,’’ he told the women’s club, ‘‘I have come in contact with but few, very few, of the wild types that someone erroneously may think our Texas pioneers and our heroes were. In my conception of things, no noble soul ever emanates from a wild brute.’’ 72 And for Coppini, history offered no better example of noble souls than the Alamo heroes represented on the cenotaph. Consequently, he took care to present them as paragons of the human spirit, ‘‘refraining to send them to posterity as a group of ugly, shabby, rough-looking men, looking more like cut-throats, drunkards, or individuals of the lowest type of humanity’’; he argued that ‘‘among them were many well educated, intelligent young and middle-aged men of noble souls and inherited culture.’’ Only the finest men could serve as symbols of the ideal Texan, in Coppini’s estimation. He said, ‘‘I could not conceive idealism, true patriotism or love of liberty and independence except among the highest type of manhood.’’ 73 Nevertheless, Coppini’s vision of the ideal Texan garnered little public support. Although he finished his monument on Alamo Plaza in the fall of , local leaders were reluctant to sponsor an official dedication.74 In fact, it was more than a year before a small crowd gathered in Alamo Plaza to dedicate Coppini’s cenotaph as part of the Armistice Day celebrations in November .75 The ceremony took on an ecumenical tone as Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders offered prayers for peace in the tumultuous days leading up to World War II.76 Coppini recalled being choked with emotion at the sight of ‘‘the monument converted almost into an altar of patriotism by being very artistically covered with cut flowers and decorative plants.’’ At last, he felt, the Alamo had a fitting memorial, a cenotaph that should have been regarded as ‘‘more sacred now than the Chapel’’ because it was sited ‘‘on the very soil that was bathed by the blood of almost all of [Texas’s] heroes, as it was there that nearly all were massacred.’’ 77 Supporters of the commemorative tomb, while they had sacred intentions, also expected it to draw more tourists to San Antonio. The New York Times reported in November , ‘‘This Winter the historic Alamo will have new interest for the visitors who walk through its hallowed gates during tourist season.’’ Among the new attractions there, the Times went on to explain, was ‘‘a , cenotaph of gray marble and pink granite to the Alamo dead’’ that stood ‘‘just outside the walls . . . as though on guard duty before a shrine.’’ 78 Coppini himself told San Antonio mayor Maury Maverick that he expected the dedication of the monument to bring ‘‘a Nation  ;         

wide publicity for the asking.’’ 79 The work of commemoration served the commercial efforts to bring more tourists and their dollars to San Antonio. But tourists took little interest in the cenotaph. Most agreed with Dobie’s assessment of the monument. ‘‘If the cenotaph is not precisely an eyesore,’’ wrote the author of a  guidebook, ‘‘it is unquestionably a dull memorial to such an inspiring event as the defense of the Alamo.’’ 80 Visitors continued to regard the Alamo church building as the more compelling memorial to the fallen defenders of . Moving through its spaces, tourists could establish an imaginary connection with the doomed combatants while at the same time reaffirming their identification with the values that defined for them the essence of Americanness.

;

Remembering the Alamo

By the final decades of the nineteenth century, San Antonio had unofficially adopted the moniker ‘‘Alamo City.’’ City boosters and tourism promoters alike touted the city as the birthplace of Texas independence, the cradle of liberty, and the sacred ground of ultimate sacrifice. San Antonians, for better or worse, linked their public image to the tiny church building that had become an icon of Texan and American identity. And with good reason, as pilgrims flocked to the hallowed ground situated on the banks of the San Antonio River. San Antonio became a destination where tourists crossed the line of religiosity, where touristic practices became a religious pursuit. Indeed, the Alamo became a popular tourist attraction precisely because tourists regarded it as a sacred place. Ever since the s, travelers have consistently described their journey to the Alamo as a pilgrimage. On the other hand, the sacredness of the place derives in part from touristic practices that sustain it as an attraction. The Alamo is sacred, at least in part, because it is such a popular tourist destination. Tourism made the Alamo sacred by making it a powerful symbol of national identity. At the Alamo, tourists came to understand their own identities as Texans and as Americans in terms of liberty, sacrifice, courage, and determination. These values, which tourists attributed to the Alamo defenders, expressed the ideals of Texan and American patriotic life. Consequently, the site of the battle became a potent symbol in nationalistic selfunderstanding. Tourists’ experience of the place in turn bolstered their sense of identity, especially as Texans and as Americans.          ; 

But the identity expressed in the symbolic language of the Alamo remains exclusive. The values it conveys tend to exalt white, Anglo-American, Protestant males. The Alamo defenders, according to the dominant symbolism that emerged in the nineteenth century, fought and died for a liberty that affirmed slavery, that vilified all things Mexican, that denigrated Catholicism, and that subordinated women to the prerogatives of men.81 For many people, the freedom that the Alamo represents was not particularly free. Nevertheless, those who enjoyed the liberty to travel to San Antonio found the Alamo a compelling affirmation of their most sacred nationalistic values. Their regard for the place as a sacred site had the ironic effect of commercializing it. Local entrepreneurs quickly recognized the value of the Alamo for capturing tourists’ dollars. Indeed, commemoration proved to be a profitable activity. The more sacred the place, the more money local businesses earned. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas turned out to be the ideal mediators between the sacredness of commemoration and the profits of commercialization. Since gaining custody of the place in the early twentieth century, the  has managed to focus the symbolic potential of the Alamo narrative on the church building. It continues to highlight the chapel as the central attraction at the site, maintaining it as a ‘‘shrine’’ for which all visitors must exhibit due respect. A sign at the front door even instructs those who enter to remove their hats and maintain a reverent silence. On the other hand, the  is not reluctant to exploit the commercial potential of its shrine. Visitors are invited into the large gift shop strategically positioned at the exit of the chapel. Here they are encouraged to purchase souvenirs so that they might better remember their experience of the Alamo. Remembering the Alamo inspired the Texian revolutionaries in their eventual victory over General Santa Anna.82 But it has also sustained touristic practices at the site where Santa Anna prevailed over the small band of defenders under the command of William Barret Travis. Consequently, remembrance of the Alamo has benefited from tourists’ enduring interest in the place. Remembering, however, has also involved forgetting. Remembering the sacrifice of Alamo defenders has meant forgetting the enslaved; it has meant neglecting the fact that the liberty they fought for turned out to be liberty for the few. It has meant forgetting that people of Mexican descent fought and died alongside the other Alamo defenders. It has meant forgetting that Catholics died at the Alamo. It has meant forgetting alternative ways of telling the Alamo story.83  ;         

Yet what is often forgotten in remembering the Alamo does not detract from the importance of the place. Even today, the Alamo remains an icon of Texan and American values, at least for those who understand national identity in terms of freedom, sacrifice, honor, and determination. For them, the Alamo endures as the sacred center of what is best about America; in their minds, San Antonio will always be the Alamo City.

         ; 

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 

Preserving a Precious Heritage The Alamo drapes San Antonio with a historical veil that tends to occlude the history of its places before the fateful battle of . But other sites in the city lift this veil in order to celebrate colonial and even Native American heritages that appeal to less militant selfunderstandings. In particular, the other four missions, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña (Mission Concepción), Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo (Mission San José), Mission San Juan Capistrano (Mission San Juan), and Mission San Francisco de la Espada (Mission Espada), pose alternative tales from San Antonio’s history and offer a variety of ways for residents and visitors to identify themselves with those histories. The various heritages encountered today in San Antonio reflect a long and sometimes combative history of preservation. Yet preservation efforts usually hide their own histories. Successful projects tend to efface much of the historical record in the very act of preservation; preserving the artifacts of bygone times usually involves rebuilding the past according to a narrow interpretation of historical reality. This results in both a unified vision of the past and a version of the present that appears more stable and preordained than the historical evidence bears out. In short, preservation makes the past into an unchanging present.1 At the same time, preservationists paradoxically cri

tique modernity even as they further modern tendencies. Their resistance to ‘‘progress’’ that would destroy old buildings and historical places preserves a refuge from the demeaning pressures of modern life that makes that life more bearable and gives it an aesthetic sense of meaning. Thus modern people can indulge themselves in the romantic fantasy of an imagined past as they wander through the very modern places of preserved ruins.2 In these ruins, modern visitors find a meaningful sense of identity preserved in places of history. Indeed, histories of all kinds narrate identities. Narratives of the past contribute to meaningful understandings of the present self, both collective and individual. Hence the places produced through the historical narratives of preservation generate specific identities. In San Antonio, we have seen how the Alamo consolidates regional and national identities.3 But other places play a part in making and maintaining other identities. The other missions, for instance, give voice to an aesthetic imagining of the past that contrasts sharply with the militaristic patriotism of Alamo narratives. They also allow Roman Catholics in San Antonio and elsewhere to claim a rightful place in mainstream American culture by celebrating the Catholic role in the making of the American nation. This chapter concentrates on the relationship between preservation and identity at the missions; it traces the history of the missions from their condition of utter ruin following Texas independence to their reemergence in the twentieth century as a popular tourist attraction where visitors can witness the preserved places of an imagined American past.

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Preserving the Catholic Heritage

San Antonio’s missions had become an attraction for tourists and other travelers as early as the first decades of the nineteenth century. But little attention was paid to their preservation as historic sites until the end of the century. The earliest preservation efforts were made by the Catholic Church, which attempted to rehabilitate the old remnants of its colonial churches not so much as historical monuments but rather as parish churches. The Church regained control of all of the mission sites but the Alamo in  by the legislative action of the Republic of Texas, and shortly thereafter it began efforts to restore the parish communities around the missions. With limited resources and a shortage of priests to serve the new Diocese of Galveston (comprising all of Texas), however, its progress remained somewhat tentative.  ;                           

The Catholic Church in Texas had suffered greatly throughout the wars fought for Mexico’s independence from Spain and later for the Republic of Texas’s independence from Mexico. By , only two Franciscan missionaries remained in Texas, and in  the last of the missionaries died near Nacogdoches.4 Following independence, the new Republic of Texas confiscated the missions in San Antonio and elsewhere in the republic, and they quickly fell into disuse and ruin. Meanwhile, Catholics in Texas remained under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Monterrey in northern Mexico, which left them for all practical purposes cut off from official ecclesiastical channels due to the heightened animosity between Texas and Mexico. By , the Church had reached its nadir in Texas.5 That year, Bishop Anthony Blanc of New Orleans brought the plight of the Church in Texas to the attention of Pope Gregory XVI. The pontiff requested a survey of the status of Church activities and properties in Texas, and Father John Timon was dispatched to gather information for an official accounting. His report had the result of making the entire Republic of Texas into an administrative division of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, with Timon serving as the prefect. He in turn appointed Father Jean Marie Odin as vice prefect and sent him off in July  to reorganize and revive the Catholic Church in Texas.6 When Odin arrived in San Antonio on July , , he found the missions in shambles. The Alamo had not been repaired since the battle of ; both San Juan and Espada lay in total ruins; and the churches at San José and Concepción both served as stables for horses, cattle, and sheep.7 The condition of the latter two missions especially aggrieved Odin; he wrote more than two decades afterward, ‘‘I suffered to see these two sanctuaries abandoned and profaned.’’ 8 Consequently, Odin set in motion plans to reacquire the missions for the Church. A petition to the Texas Congress instigated legislation to return the missions and adjoining lands to the Church; the legislature approved the act on January , .9 Odin also began acquiring, ‘‘lot by lot,’’ lands surrounding the missions. By , he had repaired the church at Mission Concepción and had turned it over along with ‘‘the ruins of the old monastery and the splendid land which adjoins them’’ to the Brothers of Mary; Mission San José went to Benedictines, who established a monastery there and cultivated the fields. In all, Odin reported, ‘‘it was necessary to spend nearly  francs to return [the missions] to their original purpose.’’ 10 Meanwhile, the two missions farther south benefited from the efforts of another French priest, who arrived in San Antonio in . Father Francis                            ; 

Bouchu served the Spanish-speaking Catholics in and around San Antonio before becoming pastor at Missions Espada and San Juan. He lived for more than forty years in the restored convento at Mission Espada, a residence described in his obituary as ‘‘a dilapidated stone house near the venerable mission church.’’ 11 Renowned for his frugality and self-sufficiency, ‘‘Padre Francisco’’ was portrayed by William Corner as ‘‘priest, lawyer, bricklayer, stone mason, photographer, historian, printer.’’ 12 He was also an adept entrepreneur, and he became an extensive landholder and real estate speculator.13 But Bouchu’s most lasting accomplishment was his preservation work at both Mission Espada and Mission San Juan. He began with repairs to the church at the latter mission before commencing restorative efforts at Mission Espada. National Park Service archaeologists credit Bouchu with restoring a postcolonial house at Mission San Juan, repairing the compound wall there, and putting the church into useable condition. At Espada, he restored the two-story convento adjacent to the church that remained in use until it was restored again in the s; while living in the Espada convento, Bouchu undertook his most renowned achievement, the restoration of the Espada chapel.14 Bouchu served the parishioners at the missions by rehabilitating the churches and building schools.15 He also composed, printed, and distributed a Spanish-language catechism that enjoyed wide use in Texas and New Mexico, going through at least four editions between  and ; it was adopted in  as the official catechism for Spanish speakers in the Diocese of San Antonio.16 Indeed, his dedication to propagating the Christian faith in Texas remains unquestioned. Much like the friars who first brought the Catholic tradition to the northern regions of Spain’s American colonies, Father Bouchu suffered the hardships of minimal support and inadequate resources as he struggled to serve the impoverished faithful who still resided near the remnants of the old Spanish missions. Bouchu’s insistence on maintaining a frugal, fiercely self-sufficient lifestyle seems to have been patterned after the celebratory popular images of San Antonio’s colonial missionaries that circulated in the Catholic press of his day and in the wider culture.17 The French Catholic priest who ventured to the hinterlands of nineteenth-century Texas revived the parish communities he found around the missions and set to work restoring their past glories in homage to the friars who had flourished there a century earlier. Bouchu not only patterned his life after the missionaries of old and worked assiduously to restore the past glory of their missions, he also actively promoted the sites. He distributed, for instance, reprints of docu ;                           

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Father Francis Bouchu shown outside his residence at Mission Espada about . (Institute of Texan Cultures Library at UTSA, no. -; courtesy of Catholic Archives of Texas)

ments from the missions’ history.18 He also offered opinions about the historicity of the surviving features at the missions, as when he spoke to William Corner about the frescoes that were quickly disappearing from the interior walls of the chapel at Mission San Juan. ‘‘These frescoes,’’ he told Corner, ‘‘I think are of later date than the completion of the Chapel and they were probably permitted, to satisfy the Indian nature’s love of color.’’ 19 Hence the pastor at the mission also served as informant and guide to the author of the guidebook; for tourists who read Corner’s book, the reverend father represented the authentic voice of the original missionaries echoing in the ruins of their missions. Corner assured his readers, ‘‘[Bouchu] has lived in this community for many years and is well versed in information pertaining to the history of the Missions, and being himself one of those Priests who join with their vocation a knowledge of practical handicraft, he enters into the spirit of the founders with more than ordinary keenness.’’ 20                            ; 

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Visitors pose in the late s at Mission Espada in front of the chapel that Father Bouchu restored. (Institute of Texan Cultures Library at UTSA, no. -; courtesy of San Antonio Conservation Society)

Bouchu certainly understood the ways of the tourists. In his own journey from France to Texas, he partook of tourist delights and frustrations, touring London, learning about the hotels of New York, awaiting a more cooperative tide in Galveston, and arriving at last in San Antonio after a rough overland journey.21 But he also contrasted fashionable travel practices with what he regarded as the more pious approach of a Mr. Borias, one of his ‘‘old schoolfellows’’ whom he met up with in Texas. Bouchu explained in a letter to his parents: ‘‘[Borias] travels the country on horseback without knowing where he will dine or pass the night, going sometimes for several entire days without encountering any living thing besides alligators and large reptiles, which sometimes wind up as his dinner. Received by some, rebuffed by others, he is truly the imitator of Our Savior, Jesus Christ.’’ 22  ;                           

This austere itinerant in imitation of Christ, it seems, remained Bouchu’s ideal traveler; likewise, the Franciscan itinerants who had come to build San Antonio’s missions seemed another worthy ideal for him to imitate and to redeem by restoring their quickly deteriorating structures. Father Bouchu’s tenure represents a pivotal moment in the career of San Antonio’s missions, a moment in which they were poised between catering to travel practices that produce the sacramental places of mission churches and those that produce touristic places for the pleasure of visitors. His primary objective, especially early in his career, focused on the well-being of the parishioners who lived in the vicinity of the missions. Like Odin before him, Bouchu sought to rebuild the dilapidated churches and return them to sacramental service. But his deep admiration for the Franciscan missionaries who had established the missions in Texas gave him a historical understanding that complemented the interests of tourists who actively sought out the mission sites. Thus Bouchu served as pastor, restorationist, and tour guide at Missions Espada and San Juan. Bouchu’s passage between pastoral duties and touristic concerns anticipated the growing involvement of ecclesiastical authorities in the public presentation of their historical mission churches. In the twentieth century, the Roman Catholic Church in San Antonio joined forces with preservation groups, the state of Texas, and even the National Park Service to transform the San Antonio missions into aesthetically pleasing tourist attractions. This transformation, however, was accompanied by its share of tensions and disputes as the pressures of tourist visitation conflicted with the prerogatives of parish sacramental life. Nevertheless, the coincidence of objectives outweighed the differences, and the various groups invested at the missions have enjoyed nearly a century of mutual accommodation.

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Landmarks That Made San Antonio First

By the time Father Bouchu passed away in , historical preservation had become an issue of public concern in San Antonio. Most of the attention centered on the Alamo, which became the first historic landmark in the United States west of the Mississippi River to be purchased by a governmental agency when the Texas legislature bought it in .23 When Bishop Jean C. Neraz transferred ownership of the former mission church to the state of Texas in , its deplorable condition brought an outcry in favor of ‘‘restoring the Alamo, placing it in proper condition and . . . making                            ; 

it a museum worthy of the wealth and importance of the city.’’ 24 But despite the public concern and the good intentions of government officials, the city of San Antonio made little progress in preserving and restoring the Alamo. It was not until , when the De Zavala Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas took action to prevent the destruction of the Alamo convento, that serious preservation efforts actually began.25 By the time Adina De Zavala turned the attention of her group to preserving the Alamo, its work had already had a significant impact on San Antonio’s historical landscape. De Zavala herself took enormous pride in her heritage as a native Texan of Hispanic descent (although three of her four grandparents were Anglo Americans). In , the young schoolteacher organized a group of local women to work on arousing interest in Texas history. De Zavala once explained, ‘‘I consider historic shrines of inestimable worth,’’ and when her group joined the Daughters of the Republic of Texas as the De Zavala Chapter, its bylaws specified that it would dedicate its efforts to ‘‘the marking out of historic spots in San Antonio and the preservation and recording of the true history pertaining to same in order to prevent their being forgotten.’’ It began by placing commemorative markers and monuments in the city, and De Zavala even convinced the Board of Education to change the designation of San Antonio’s public schools from numbers to the names of Texas heroes.26 By the turn of the century, the De Zavala Chapter had turned its attention to San Antonio’s missions. It solicited contributions of supplies and labor from local businesses and individuals, and in the spring of  preservation work began at Mission San José. Workers braced the arch over the mission’s front door, repaired the deteriorating walls, and erected a six-foot fence around the church and the adjacent square to protect it from vandals and curio seekers. Next, the chapter concentrated on the mission in the greatest need of repair, Mission San Juan. It received a five-year lease from Bishop John Anthony Forest of the Diocese of San Antonio that allowed the De Zavala Chapter to restore the mission, hire a custodian, and charge admission fees. The lease stipulated among other things that the bishop reserved the right to give his approval for restoration plans and that the mission had to remain available for worship.27 The Church was happy to encourage outsiders to help in reviving the mission churches, but it would not do so at the expense of parish needs. In February , Bishop Forest dedicated the restored chapel at Mission San Juan with an overflowing crowd looking on; following the ceremony, more than  guests enjoyed a ‘‘Mexican dinner.’’ 28  ;                           

A similar project followed at Mission Espada, where the church was restored ‘‘practically to its original condition.’’ The work included clearing the grounds of accumulated rubbish, removing brush from the premises, and leveling the surface. Workers rebuilt the rear wall of the chapel, put on a new roof, installed a new brick floor, and built an altar ‘‘exactly in the same style and of the same materials as were the altars in the first missions.’’ On Sunday, October , , ‘‘the ancient chapel was re-dedicated and the edifice was again blessed to the worship of God.’’ 29 The collaboration between civic preservationists and the Church served both aesthetic and sacramental objectives. The successful revival of the chapels at Mission San Juan and Mission Espada, as well as the other commemorative projects that the Daughters of the Republic of Texas were pursuing throughout the city, encouraged San Antonians to give greater attention to their historic heritage. In , the new bishop, John William Shaw, proposed a plan to restore all four missions under the Church’s ownership while bringing back the Franciscans to their former mission sites. Their presence at the missions would not only bring a more systematic approach to the reclamation of the missions but would also enhance the missions’ aura of historical authenticity. As the Reverend Father D. S. Phelan reported in the St. Louis Dispatch, ‘‘San Antonio’s historic sentiment and its gratitude to the brown-robed and barefoot friars who, in the cause of the cross, were the devoted forerunners of civilization in Texas, have prompted city officials, clergy and citizens to extend an invitation for the return of the disciples of St. Francis of Assisi to their ancient seats.’’ Emphasizing the independence of the Franciscans, he continued: ‘‘The Franciscans wish it understood that sentiment alone does not govern their motives in the reclamation of the missions. The entire program may not be completed unless the friars find abundant work for the order and an adequate ministry for them to perform in San Antonio. They could not endure to serve as mere objects of interest to sightseers—as enhancements of the picturesqueness of the old missions.’’ 30 Though its exact reasons remain unclear, it seems that the order did not find an adequate ministry to compel its return to San Antonio at that time. It did not come until , when the Franciscans of the Sacred Heart Province in Saint Louis took over Mission San José.31 Nevertheless, the Church continued its restorative efforts at the missions. Two years after the chapel at Mission Espada was rededicated, a similar project allowed for the reopening of the church at Mission Concepción. And in , an ambitious restoration of Mission San José commenced under the di                           ; 

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Restoration work continued at Mission San José in the s. Here workers rebuild mission dwellings along the north side of the church. (Institute of Texan Cultures Library at UTSA, no. L--C, San Antonio Light Collection)

rection of Rev. William Wheeler Hume that was funded primarily by Ethel Tunstall Drought, a private citizen who had wished for a long time to ‘‘take a hand in the restoration of this celebrated mission.’’ Workers stabilized the ruined structures, cleared the debris from the interior of the church, and used the stones from the collapsed dome to rebuild the north wall. By , the sacristy was in good enough condition for religious services at the mission to be resumed.32 Church efforts to save the missions focused mainly on the church buildings and for the most part disregarded the rest of the mission complexes. But a growing awareness of these spaces’ historical significance and aesthetic appeal to tourists precipitated public discussions about doing more to save San Antonio’s unique heritage. One local newspaper demanded in  that the city ‘‘Save the Landmarks That Made San Antonio First.’’ But at the time, the only civic organization actively pursuing historic preservation in San Antonio was the Alamo Mission Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. It had formed a Missions Committee chaired by Rena Maverick  ;                           

Green, who proposed that a thousand-acre state park be created around the missions to buffer the ill effects of the city’s rapid growth to within blocks of Mission San José. To promote her idea, Green even brought Texas governor Pat Neff and the entire Texas State Parks Board to San Antonio in  for a tour of Mission San José and a dinner sponsored by the Alamo Mission Chapter. But the state had other priorities, and her hope of obtaining government help was left unanswered.33

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Artist at the Mission: Ethel Wilson Harris

In addition to working on behalf of historic preservation and other civic projects, Rena Maverick Green spent much of her time as a watercolorist and sculptor. Her artistic endeavors and those of the other women responsible for historic preservation in San Antonio included them in what has been called the ‘‘arts and crafts movement,’’ which came to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This movement began in nineteenth-century Britain, inspired largely by the writings of John Ruskin. It gained widespread popularity through the efforts of William Morris, who not only became a renowned theorist, writer, and lecturer but also put his ideas to practical use with his decorative arts firm, Morris and Company. In , W. R. Lethaby, an architect and historian who also played a leading role in the arts and crafts movement, summarized the movement’s ideals in his book Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth: ‘‘The message will be of nature and man, of order and beauty, but all will be sweetness, simplicity, freedom, confidence and light.’’ 34 These ideals stood in contrast to the demeaning forces of modernity—as proponents of the movement understood it—in a rapidly industrializing world. Although neither Ruskin nor Morris ever traveled to America, their books were best sellers in the United States, and a number of their students and followers crossed the Atlantic to lecture, meet with American leaders of the movement, and tour with exhibitions of their work.35 In , Gustav Stickley of Syracuse, New York, inaugurated The Craftsman with tributes to William Morris and John Ruskin. The new magazine soon became the leading proponent of the arts and crafts ideal that swept across America in the early twentieth century.36 Caught up in the tide of this movement, Rena Maverick Green studied art in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and in San Francisco, California. Her artistic interests gave her an aesthetic sensibility that carried over to her                            ; 

passion for preserving San Antonio’s missions. In , she teamed up with another artist, Emily Edwards, to organize what would become one of the most powerful and effective preservation groups in the country, the San Antonio Conservation Society. Of the thirteen women who attended the organizing meeting of the fledgling preservation group, four were artists, and a fifth, Ethel Tunstall Drought, the benefactor of the Mission San José restoration work, was president of the San Antonio Art League.37 Organized efforts at historic preservation in San Antonio took a decidedly artistic and feminized turn as these women and their successors made their mark on the city’s landscape during the remainder of the twentieth century. Another artist who became an important force in the San Antonio Conservation Society made her most significant contribution to preservation at Mission San José. The renowned tile maker Ethel Wilson Harris moved with her children into the dwellings that made up a section of the newly restored walls of the mission in . Her husband, Major Arthur Harris, had died in , and living at the mission seemed to Ethel to be preferable to staying on as a young widow in her mother’s home. Harris kept up her residence at the mission for fourteen years, and she remained an active presence there for nearly four decades.38 Moving her family to the mission allowed Harris to integrate more fully her tile making operations with her aesthetic passion for colonial Mexico. Indeed, Mission San José proved the perfect setting for her continuing efforts to ‘‘translate’’ what she described as ‘‘the colorfully romantic gifts of the Mexican’’ into ‘‘useful and enduring’’ objects.39 By the time she took up residence at Mission San José, she had gained national attention through her company, Mexican Arts and Crafts, as well as through her work as the technical supervisor for the Works Progress Administration’s arts and crafts projects in San Antonio. Harris had exhibited her work at the  Texas Centennial celebration in Dallas as well as at the world’s fairs in Chicago (–) and New York (); the Christian Science Monitor had featured Mexican Arts and Crafts in a June  article, and in the same month the journal American Architect had carried photographs of the tiled panels she had designed for the officers’ club at the Randolph Field military base in San Antonio.40 Ethel Wilson Harris’s prominence as a tile maker in the s situated her as a late participant in the arts and crafts movement. Tile making emerged as a distinct branch of the American movement in the early decades of the twentieth century. Beginning in the s, producers of ‘‘art tiles’’ (in contrast to nondecorative tiles made for strictly utilitarian purposes) sprang up  ;                           

to meet the demand for the aesthetic enhancement of architecture through visually attractive tile work. Around , significant changes in the standards for production of these decorative tiles led to the creation of new styles and conventions. Among these changes was an insistence on hand craftsmanship rather than mass production. Consequently, the authenticity of traditional artisans became a valued feature of the completed tiles.41 Harris capitalized on the popularity of authentic art tiles and other crafts by linking the arts and crafts movement to a related interest of many North Americans of the s and s. Mexico and all things Mexican enjoyed widespread enthusiasm in the United States following the Mexican Revolution, which began in  and lasted until  and beyond. Demand for the products of Mexican culture, particularly Mexican arts and crafts, grew among American travelers and collectors, encouraged by cultural exchanges between the two nations as well as by promotional campaigns sponsored by the Mexican government to encourage tourism.42 Harris utilized San Antonio’s Mexican American heritage to translate the cultural legacy of Mexico onto tiles for American consumers. She authenticated her work by employing traditional tile makers from Mexico in her workshop. Harris’s affection for things Mexican actually began early in her life. Born in  in Sabinal, Texas, where her father was stationmaster for the Southern Pacific Railroad, Ethel was still a young girl when her family moved to San Antonio. Her father opened a lumberyard on San Antonio’s west side and soon became a successful home builder.43 It was in those mostly Hispanic west side neighborhoods that Ethel first developed an attraction for ‘‘the colorfully romantic gifts of the Mexican.’’ She used to tell a story about riding home with her father through San Antonio’s Military Plaza when she was about eight years old. It must have been fiesta time, she recalled, ‘‘because the lights were on and there were decorations.’’ She said: ‘‘I remember I had my head in his lap in passing these things, looking at them and being thrilled about it. What a thrilling thing it was to see all, hear the music and all this color.’’ When visitors would come to town, the young Ethel delighted in going with them to San Antonio’s West Side. She was ordinarily forbidden to venture into that part of town ‘‘because it was dangerous,’’ but she said that she would accompany out-of-town visitors on their excursions into the exotic areas of the city. ‘‘The first thing they would do,’’ she recalled decades later, ‘‘was go down to the West Side and buy things and listen to the pat of the tortillas which they thought was wonderful.’’ 44 Harris also developed a fierce sense of independence at an early age. She sometimes boasted of being the first woman in San Antonio to drive a car;                            ; 

she even took a course in automobile mechanics. She recalled some sixty years later, ‘‘I completely rebuilt a rusting old Maxwell of my father’s, repainted it blue with red wheels, and called it my Bluebird.’’ 45 Her driving ability allowed her to take a job at Camp Stanley, where she met Arthur L. Harris, an army captain stationed there with the Massachusetts Regiment. After a whirlwind courtship, they married in  and settled in San Antonio. Arthur Harris worked for a while in his father-in-law’s lumberyard, but eventually he became a high school English teacher. By the late s, Arthur had interested Ethel in ceramics and convinced her and a few of her friends to start a workshop to help provide employment for traditional Mexican craftsmen, who could offer apprenticeships in their crafts. They called the project ‘‘Mexican Arts and Crafts.’’ 46 Harris’s encounter with cultural difference in San Antonio’s Mexican American neighborhoods inspired her artistic vision as she pursued tile making and other traditional crafts. Mexican Arts and Crafts became the driving force behind a tile making revival emanating from San Antonio that capitalized on and promoted the city’s reputation as a place that was still a part of Old Mexico nearly a century after Texas had achieved independence. The Christian Science Monitor reported in : ‘‘That the traditions, life, and color of Old Mexico are authentic and vitally alive here in this American city is clear. From the primitive kilns of the natives come forth the decorative strings of brightly colored fruits and vegetables, the more colorful and vigorous because of the crudities of materials and methods used. They run through the Mexican section of the city in a sort of color motif that marks this part as still Mexico.’’ The article went on to commend Ethel Wilson Harris’s Mexican Arts and Crafts for surmounting the ‘‘almost insuperable difficulties’’ of working with the temperamental and fiercely independent ‘‘true Mexican artist’’ in order to preserve traditional crafts, which included pottery and wrought iron works in addition to tiles. ‘‘Throughout,’’ the Monitor remarked, ‘‘the ideal of perpetuation has paralleled that of authenticity of workmanship.’’ Lamenting the loss of traditional Mexican culture in San Antonio, the paper celebrated the preservation of authentic scenes from San Antonio’s Mexican past in the timeless forms of crafts: ‘‘Perhaps at some future time the Chili Plaza will have vanished. Perhaps the guitars and the twanging voice will be heard no more in the evening at San Antonio, the lanterns will have disappeared. But because of this fine adventure in art, that is the Mexican Arts and Crafts, the Chili queens will in years to come reign on the glazed tiles, the orange lanterns will glow, and the dancers will pose on pottery and iron work.’’ 47 Harris herself wrote that she sought ‘‘to  ;                           

take this culture that [was] so much the heritage of San Antonio and translate it, without marring in any way the inherent beauty, into objects that [were] useful and enduring.’’ 48 Mexican Arts and Crafts occupied what was known as the ‘‘Nat Lewis Barn’’ in downtown San Antonio, but Harris soon had her eye on Mission San José about five miles away.49 The conservation society acquired the granary at the mission in  with plans to restore it, and by the end of the year Harris had proposed to the group that she lease it. Her intention, according to the proposal she offered to the society, was to ‘‘conserve the Mexican art and local color in San Antonio’’ by retaining artisans who were ‘‘fast leaving for work in the fields and the mills of the north, . . . turning away from the skill and talent inherited through generations past.’’ Members of the society liked her proposal, and the following year they approved the lease; in , Mexican Arts and Crafts opened a second shop—Mexican Crafts—in the restored granary building at the mission.50 Within a decade, Ethel had taken up residence at the mission, and most of her energies were concentrated on the site. When the state of Texas gained control of Mission San José in , Ethel Wilson Harris became the state’s official custodian of the new state park, the first woman named a park manager by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.51 She did not serve as an employee of the state but instead contracted as a concessionaire; she received half of the state’s share of park receipts after expenses.52 In addition, she profited from her new enterprise, which operated at the mission. Its success was encouraged by the state’s recognition of her ‘‘unselfish interest in the revival and perpetuation of Mexican arts and crafts’’; indeed, Harris harbored bold ambitions for Mexican Crafts at Mission San José. She wanted to fill the mission with artisans who would live in the mission neighborhoods and ‘‘produce crafts in the same designs and manner as those produced over two centuries ago.’’ She described the potential positive effects of this transformation of the mission space: ‘‘The Mission population, a civilization that is distinct, almost untouched by modernism, and extremely interesting, would be united into the little world that long ago constituted life for the native.’’ The goal was not only to provide artisans with a place where they could keep alive ‘‘the old arts and crafts of Mexico’’ but also to allow them ‘‘to profitably market their crafts.’’ Taking advantage of the thirty-five hundred tourists who visited the mission every month, the artisans would have steady work while providing visitors with ‘‘a picture of the life in the old missions.’’ This picture would include craftsmen at work on ‘‘ceramics, weaving, wrought iron, furniture making, and                            ; 

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Ethel Wilson Harris rings the church bell at Mission San José about . (San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation, no. .)

the casting of mission bells’’; it was much the same work that the archetypal Pedro Huizar, a colonial artisan buried at the mission, had done. Enhancing the authenticity of the enterprise would be both ‘‘a true replica of an ancient kiln’’ for finishing the ceramics and a variety of designs on the tiles and pottery ‘‘borrowed from Mexican legend and story.’’ 53 By , Harris had convinced the State Parks Board and the Catholic Church to share the  ;                           

expense of providing for tourists on Sunday afternoons a ‘‘strolling minstrel’’ and a potter, who was ‘‘a popular figure in the eyes of the tourists’’ at the mission; on special occasions, she would also hire ‘‘a lady to make tortillas.’’ 54 In short, Ethel Wilson Harris sought to create at Mission San José an appealing, authentic attraction for tourists. At the same time, however, she resisted events and activities that she regarded as too commercial. She complained bitterly to Archbishop Lucey of the ‘‘junk’’ that the Franciscans were selling, and he soon put an end to it.55 According to an assessment the archbishop made in , Harris felt ‘‘that if any note of commercialism [could] be avoided,’’ the mission would in future years have ‘‘ever increasing crowds of tourists coming’’ to visit it. She did not regard Mexican Crafts as a commercial operation; as the archbishop went on to report, tourist visitors were never ‘‘urged in any way to make purchases,’’ but were ‘‘shown through the pottery shop as a part of the old mission picture.’’ He concluded: ‘‘Only those who desire to make purchases are permitted to do so.’’ 56 Keeping the mission free of crass commercialism and other appearances of the modern world became Harris’s avowed duty. She strove to create there a romanticized space of the mission past replete with native craftsmen, strolling minstrels, and elegant peacocks wandering across the compound. Her goal was to delight tourists and to draw them into her imagined world. Thus Ethel Wilson Harris sought to negotiate one of the many ironies of tourism, purposely avoiding commercialism in order to make a site all the more appealing to tourists, the hyperconsumers of commercial goods and experiences. The romanticized world that Ethel Wilson Harris imagined at Mission San José conflicted with the exigencies of devotional life for the parish community that worshipped there. She proved a tenacious—some might say ferocious—defender of her vision of mission life and had little patience with what she regarded as modern intrusions. In particular, she fought almost constantly with the Franciscans, who had responsibility for the church and for the parishioners worshiping there. As early as , the priests at the mission were encouraging the archbishop to replace Harris with a Catholic custodian. But she had won the archbishop’s support early on; instead of terminating her relationship with the mission, she later boasted, he replaced the priests. She reported that he told her, ‘‘I’ll get rid of them until I find one that will work with you.’’ 57 Cooperating with Harris meant giving priority to the touristic dimension of the mission as opposed to the sacramental aspect. She recognized religion as a key element in recreating a ‘‘living mission,’’ but religion for                            ; 

her involved church services and nothing more.58 She regarded any other religious activity or interference from members of the religious community at the mission as a corruption of the mission scene. For example, she complained strongly in  when cars participating in a funeral procession entered the mission compound and damaged some grass and shrubs; she reported to the archbishop’s representative that there had been ‘‘a lack of cooperation all the way around on the part of Father Francis,’’ the Franciscan priest in charge of the mission at the time. Archbishop Lucey responded by siding with Harris, who by then was not only the state’s custodian of the historical park at the mission but also president of the conservation society and a powerful ally in the archbishop’s efforts to restore San Antonio’s missions. The archbishop met with Father Francis and insisted that he cooperate with Harris.59 Harris wanted to impress visitors with her recreation of mission life as she imagined it had been in colonial days. But she realized that even by making immense efforts to purge the site of modern intrusions, she could never recreate perfectly the idyllic time of the mission’s greatest period. Nevertheless, in hope of inspiring visitors’ visions of how life used to be at Mission San José, she provided the cultural trappings of Old Mexico on the mission grounds, including craftsmen, strolling minstrels singing the spirited songs of the Mexican folk, and women baking authentic tortillas. And to give tourists an idea of the mission’s grandeur at the height of its colonial career, Harris hired two artists, Elizabeth M. Fraser and Evalyn Riebe, to build a scale model of the old mission that visitors could view in the restored granary building.60 Harris had scant historical documentation to rely on for her interpretive efforts at the mission.61 But authenticity for her, as for thousands of other Americans of her generation, could be found in what she regarded as the timeless cultures south of the border.62 Harris’s early enchantment with things Mexican on San Antonio’s West Side led to a lifelong pursuit of the charms of Mexico itself in annual trips across the border. She sought out the little-known and barely accessible corners of the Mexican landscape, often enduring great hardship and sometimes traveling by horseback, scouring the countryside for ideas to enhance the charms of Mission San José back in San Antonio.63 She even missed her daughter’s high school graduation because she was stranded in a remote village in the Yucatán, a place that her daughter recalls hearing a professor from Mexico City describe years later as a village where ‘‘the only foreigner that ha[d] ever been there was some woman from Texas named Ethel Harris.’’ 64 On the other hand, Harris  ;                           

had no objection to more conventional tourist accommodations; she liked to stay in Oaxaca, for instance, at the ‘‘clean and well-run Oaxaca Courts’’ owned by her friends Nita and Roy Jones.65 And like all good tourists, Harris brought souvenirs back from her sojourns in Mexico. The large peasant cart, for instance, that for years decorated the lawn in front of the Mission San José church came from a border town in Mexico.66 Ethel Harris’s Mexican adventures also inspired the grandest of her interpretive efforts at Mission San José, the Historic Theatre of Texas. In the s, Harris renovated the outdoor theater located just outside the north wall of Mission San José in a natural depression dubbed the ‘‘Huisache Bowl.’’ The Works Progress Administration had graded the bowl and built a small stage there in ; the following year, the San Antonio Conservation Society presented a pageant in the amphitheater as part of its Indian Harvest Festival.67 In the s, Harris secured National Park Service funds to renovate the theater. The improvement, according to Pete DeVries, her successor at the mission, went forward without the approval of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.68 Donations of land from a pair of benefactors allowed for a larger stage, and with help from federal, state, and local government agencies as well as a private contractor, ‘‘the pit was filled in and terraced.’’ By , the theater’s program could boast, ‘‘It was through the intense interest and planning of Mrs. Ethel Wilson Harris, Manager of San Jose Mission that the San Jose Outdoor Theatre became the magnificent amphitheatre we see today.’’ 69 This magnificent outdoor theater (described with the hyperbole that characterized Harris’s self-promotional efforts) became the venue for her presentation of ‘‘living history’’ at the mission. As DeVries recalls, ‘‘She wanted to interpret the history the way she thought history should be interpreted, and that was through plays, through living history.’’ 70 The conservation society’s production of Ramsey Yelvington’s play A Cloud of Witnesses inaugurated the new phase of historical pageantry at Mission San José with a six-night run in July .71 By , two productions, one of them coauthored by Harris, played nightly with a ‘‘colorful Old Texas Days Fiesta . . . held before each evening’s performance.’’ The goal of the performances was ‘‘to capture the atmosphere and spirit of San Antonio in the days before the actual battle of the Alamo.’’ The fiesta preceding the performances was designed to enhance the illusion; it was described as ‘‘a new concept in outdoor theatre’’ in which ‘‘the audience actually [became] part of the plays by taking part in the activities of the Fiesta.’’ The program went on to explain: ‘‘Authentic native costumes and activities of San Antonio during the pre                           ; 

Alamo era are captured in the Fiesta. Offered for sale are native foods and drinks. Picturesque atmosphere is provided by costumed women, Mexican candy sellers, tortilla makers, and the casts including Bonham, Bowie, Travis, and Crockett from ‘Drama of the Alamo’; and Father Morfi, Father Ramirez, Pedro, and Juan from ‘San Jose Story.’’’ Leading the audience from the festivities of the pre-performance celebrations to the dramas themselves were ‘‘candle-lit paths through the Mission Compound.’’ 72 The illusions of the mission’s authentic living history of San Antonio in the pre-Alamo days relied significantly on Harris’s sojourns in Mexico. For instance, her contributions to San José Story included facilitating the performance of ‘‘an authentic Indian dance which could only be performed by peyote-ritual Deer Dancers who lived in a remote region of Mexico.’’ According to Marlene Gordon, Harris ‘‘not only went to pick [the dancers] up in her car, but also delivered them back across the border when their performances were over.’’ 73 Her production in  of Los Indios de San José featured ‘‘a group of musical instruments representing one of the most unusual of the characteristically rugged trips Mrs. Harris [made] annually to Mexico.’’ Harris had purchased the instruments, which included ‘‘a marimba, an Indian harp and an Indian drum,’’ in San Cristobal, Chiapas, and she hauled them back to San Antonio on the roof of her station wagon.74 Thus the souvenirs of an old lady’s excursion into the exotic terrains south of the border lent an aura of authenticity to the staging of colonial life at the mission. Ethel Wilson Harris was approaching her seventy-first birthday when she arrived back in San Antonio with the souvenirs of Chiapas strapped to the top of her car. The previous fall, a mandatory retirement provision had forced her from her long-held position as the state’s custodian at San José Mission State Park, but it did not end her active role there. The indomitable will of the elderly artist would not be subdued, and she played an active part in overseeing the mission’s continued success for nearly all of the more than two decades remaining in her life. In fact, her handpicked successor at the state park frequently battled with her as he attempted, with varying degrees of success, to assert his authority as the new superintendent.75 She continued to impose her vision of how the mission should be right up to the end, most conspicuously from her position as the conservation society’s representative on the San José Mission Advisory Board. She voiced her adamant opposition to activities that she believed spoiled the romantic charm she wished to perpetuate on the mission grounds. In a  letter to the advisory board, for instance, she protested ‘‘the permission given to a group to conduct a  game within the grounds of the San José Mission  ;                           

State Park’’ during a parish festival on the Fourth of July. At the board’s next meeting, she explained that ‘‘she was in no way opposed to the Catholic Church, but that she felt bingo was not in good taste in a Texas State Park; that it was, in fact, breaking the law and amounted to a felony.’’ She went on to complain ‘‘that dunking booths, while perfectly harmless, were inappropriate outside the Rose Window of San José Church.’’ 76 By , Harris was lamenting the loss of the golden years of her reign at the mission; she ‘‘suggested that the mission needed more charm and gave examples of guitar players and pottery makers she once had on Sundays.’’ 77 Ethel Wilson Harris never backed away from her vision of the mission. Her tenacious, sometimes irascible personality kept her in the fight right up to the end.78 She bent for no one and even preferred ‘‘bucking heads’’ with men rather than women, whom she regarded as more likely to ‘‘hold it against’’ her.79 Yet despite slighting women for their tendency to hold a grudge after a good fight, Harris recognized the preservation movement in San Antonio as predominantly a women’s movement. In describing the peculiar character of historic preservation in the city, she once remarked, ‘‘The only thing I can tell you, it was all done over the dead bodies of the men of San Antonio! . . . It’s been a women’s movement; they’ve fought all the way.’’ 80 Nevertheless, Ethel Wilson Harris worked closely with at least one powerful man in her preservation efforts at Mission San José. When Archbishop Robert E. Lucey arrived to assume his position as the new head of the San Antonio Archdiocese in early , Harris had been living at Mission San José for only a year. Decades later, Harris described the archbishop as ‘‘my dear friend, a man I love and admire.’’ 81 And although their long relationship offered plenty of opportunities for disagreement, the archbishop proved to be one of Harris’s staunchest supporters as he embarked on his own program of preservation and restoration at the missions.

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Church Restorations: Archbishop Robert E. Lucey

The opportunity to establish the first officially designated national historic site in cooperation with the Catholic Church awaited Archbishop Lucey when he arrived in San Antonio. Even before his appointment, an agreement had been worked out between the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Texas State Parks Board, and the San Antonio Conservation Society to turn Mission San José into the first state historical park in Texas. During                            ; 

the period of sede vacante before Lucey’s arrival, Bishop Mariano Garriga of Corpus Christi, Texas, along with Rev. Laurence J. FitzSimon of Seguin, Texas, represented the Church’s interests for the proposed park. In the early months of , federal representatives were applying pressure to Church officials to execute the agreement, but without a new archbishop no authority existed to move ahead with the plans. ‘‘So the matter rests with Your Excellency,’’ wrote FitzSimon when he briefed the new archbishop on the matter.82 Lucey came to his new appointment predisposed to save San Antonio’s missions. He had served previously as bishop in Amarillo, Texas, but he never lost his attachment to his native California.83 Consequently, his great love of the California missions inspired an affection for the colonial missions in San Antonio.84 Almost immediately following his installation as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, Lucey consented to make a public presentation of the agreement that would turn Mission San José into a state park and national historic site. He also sought a legal opinion on the proposed agreement and moved quickly toward his decision to make the mission a historical park.85 But not everyone agreed that he should go ahead with the plan. For instance, Adina De Zavala, the preservationist famous for her early leadership in saving San Antonio’s missions, wrote two urgent notes beseeching the new archbishop not to relinquish the mission. The first begged him ‘‘to sign nothing giving away the Church’s title to San José or any other historic shrine.’’ De Zavala wrote: ‘‘Much has been stolen—and Mission San Antonio de Valero—the Alamo—and its Church have gone from us through lack of knowledge and appreciation of its historic and spiritual importance.’’ The archbishop, however, never met with De Zavala about her concerns. Instead, he had his secretary send a rather formal letter assuring her that the archbishop would ‘‘take no hasty action regarding San José Mission’’ and that ‘‘the interests of the Church [would] be safeguarded.’’ Ironically, the archbishop’s personal secretary also had expressed opposition to relinquishing any rights to the missions. Just six months earlier, Father James T. Lockwood had characterized the plan for establishing a national historic site at Mission San José as ‘‘a diabolical plot on the part of socialistically minded politicians, Maury Maverick, Judge Woodhull, and members of the Conservation Society, to get the missions out of the hands of the Church into the hands of the County, then to [be] presented to the Federal Government as a National Monument.’’ But apparently his new boss imparted to

 ;                           

him a less critical attitude; the surviving record offers no hint of any further opposition to the plan from the archbishop’s secretary.86 Archbishop Lucey saw no reason to impede the establishment of the new state historical park and national historical site at Mission San José. On May , , he joined in the signing ceremony in the restored granary building at the mission.87 The address he delivered there articulated his understanding of the Church’s motivation and justification for joining with the state and federal governments ‘‘in a spirit of friendship and cooperation to the end that lovely, historic San Jose [might] be fully restored and preserved for all time.’’ The historical narrative he presented traced the heritage of the mission all the way back to Saint Francis of Assisi; Lucey’s heroic version of the mission’s history recounted the miraculous life of the saint and the beginnings of the Franciscan order. He went on to tell of the valiant role the Franciscans played in Spain’s colonizing of the Americas. ‘‘These courageous missionaries,’’ Lucey told the crowd at Mission San José, ‘‘armed only with the shield of faith and the sword of God’s grace gave battle to the powers of darkness until at last the ferocious tribes of Mexico knelt in humble submission beneath the banner of the cross.’’ Eventually, Franciscans left Mexico City to travel north to Texas, where, Lucey said, ‘‘at last they planted the cross of Christ in this dear and sunny land.’’ Once established, Mission San José flourished under the Franciscans, yet by the nineteenth century the friars ‘‘were compelled to go,’’ and the mission fell to ruin. Lucey continued: ‘‘But it was not the will of God that Mission San Jose with all its beauty and charm should be forever forgotten or sink into the silent dust of oblivion. Too much had been invested in San Jose that it should continue to crumble and decay—too much of human labor and sweat, too much of faith and courage, too much of genius and grandeur that it should remain a broken and tragic ruin.’’ Lucey went on to promise that the mission buildings would ‘‘stand strong and beautiful through the years, eloquent of the faith that built them, and the artistry that made them immortal.’’ 88 Archbishop Lucey would spend the remainder of his career in San Antonio living up to this promise. His dedication to the missions provided the aesthetic side of his tireless efforts on behalf of social justice. Lucey’s ardent support of New Deal reforms and his political activism on behalf of Mexican American workers remain his most often touted legacies.89 These activities placed Lucey among those Catholics of the interwar and postwar years who held a positive view of the relationship between their Church and the ideals of the American nation. For such Catholics, the economic

                           ; 

abundance and political freedoms of America made possible the realization of Christian ideals of brotherhood and equality.90 Their position as adherents to a minority religion and their sensitivity to the long history of American anti-Catholicism, moreover, urged them to emphasize the compatibility between American and Catholic ideals in an attempt to demonstrate that Catholicism was squarely in the mainstream of American culture. For Lucey, San Antonio’s missions demonstrated the eloquence and artistry of the Catholic contribution to America. But Lucey’s vow to preserve the missions for the glorification of the Church’s heritage in San Antonio also had a touristic dimension to it. Indeed, the archbishop sought to praise the Church’s past by appealing to the needs, tastes, and desires of tourists. For instance, he insisted that religious services at the missions accommodate tourist schedules; he ordered the priest at Mission San José to have the ten o’clock Mass on Sunday mornings completed no later than eleven o’clock, when Ethel Wilson Harris would ‘‘be free to allow tourists to enter the chapel.’’ 91 Lucey also collaborated in Harris’s efforts to create a romanticized colonial mission scene that would appeal to the tourist visitors; he agreed, for example, to help pay for flowers as well as the ‘‘strumming and strolling minstrel’’ and the potter who demonstrated his craft at the mission on Sunday afternoons, in part because, as he put it, ‘‘the music, the pottery and the garden make San Jose very popular to tourists.’’ 92 Even when he acknowledged the primacy of religion at the missions, Lucey kept in mind the ancillary benefits of the missions for tourists. He once responded to the suggestion that the mission churches should be kept presentable for the sake of tourists by insisting ‘‘that the church ought to be kept immaculately clean for God’s sake and not for the tourists.’’ He continued, ‘‘If the tourists like to see it clean, that is fine but fundamentally it is God’s house.’’ 93 For the glory of God and the acceptance of the Catholic Church in mainstream America, but also for the pleasure of tourists, Archbishop Lucey embarked on nearly three decades of sustained preservation and restoration efforts at the San Antonio missions. His first task was to gain control of the mission grounds at all four sites; local residents held significant portions of the grounds at both Mission San Juan and Mission Espada. He worried that commercial establishments that would be incompatible with his vision of how the missions should look might be developed to serve those communities; in particular, he set out ‘‘to own the land for at least two or three hundred feet around the plaza [of the missions]’’ to discourage people ‘‘from building dance halls and honky-tonks in the vicinity of these sacred spots.’’ 94  ;                           

He wasted no time in buying up the plots of ground at and adjacent to the missions; he was able to report in September , ‘‘I have been able to purchase all the properties contiguous to old San Juan Mission and I am now in a position to send all the squatters on their way.’’ In , he confided that at Mission Espada ‘‘practically all of the land . . . [had] been recovered by the Archdiocese’’ with the exception of a single lot that he was pursuing at the time.95 Two decades later, he still worried about squatters encroaching on mission grounds; after noticing ‘‘a good deal of cultivated land’’ beyond the west wall at Mission San Juan, he wondered if someone was trying to claim land belonging to the mission. He wrote, ‘‘It cost me a lot of money and a great deal of time to buy back the old mission lands twenty years ago and it would be unfortunate if the Pastor out there allowed another squatter to walk in on us.’’ 96 By the mid-s, the archbishop was ready to go ahead with major restoration work at the missions. The first project was at Mission Espada. Work began there in May , with Archbishop Lucey and local architect Harvey P. Smith Sr. looking on as hydraulic jacks were put into place to brace up the mission walls and their gradually collapsing arches. The project, which aimed ‘‘to restore the crumbling ruins as a tourist attraction,’’ involved erecting walls three to four feet high around the foundations of former mission buildings and reconstructing portions of the fallen compound wall. The priest at the mission was notified that the dilapidated wooden buildings on the grounds would have to be dealt with, especially the parish hall, ‘‘which look[ed] pretty terrible to visitors at the Mission.’’ The archbishop also wanted the Espada Road, which ran right through the mission compound and past the door of the church, to be rerouted outside the mission complex so that the central plaza of the mission could be filled in and landscaped.97 A decade later, only the landscaping needed attention at Mission Espada, and the archbishop turned his energy to Mission San Juan.98 By then, talk of a world’s fair was being heard around San Antonio, and Lucey was able to interest a number of the city’s prominent citizens in helping him get the missions ready for the international event. He formed a committee to help guide the restorations and, more importantly, to raise funds.99 And even though the archbishop and his committee were not successful in completing the planned restoration of Mission San Juan before the big fair opened in , they were able to finish many of the most needed repairs and to make the grounds presentable for the tourists. Archbishop Lucey kept close track of his investment in restoring the                            ; 

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Archbishop Robert E. Lucey, center, reviews drawings as he inspects work at Mission Espada in . Flanking the archbishop are architect Harvey P. Smith Sr., right, and contractor Louis Guido, left. (Institute of Texan Cultures Library at UTSA, no. L-, San Antonio Light Collection)

missions, and he liked to boast about his contributions. As early as , he was telling the Conference on State Parks that he had spent , in just two years on maintenance, repairs, restorations, and improvements to the church at Mission San José.100 In , he had an assistant tabulate the exact amounts spent for property acquisitions as well as restorations, repairs, and improvements at the missions during his tenure as archbishop; the total amount came to ,..101 In fact, his last words on record concerning the missions came after a celebration in  honoring him as the first ‘‘Amigo of the Missions.’’ He wrote, ‘‘I do not believe that history will condemn me for spending more than , on these precious old missions.’’ 102 Lucey always used the first person singular when boasting of his contributions to the missions; he rarely thought of the restoration projects as the work of the Church or even of the many other folks who collaborated with him on them. In fact, he often complained that he was the only person to take even the slightest interest in the missions. He wrote, for instance,  ;                           

to Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez in , ‘‘I have been in San Antonio for twenty-two years and I regret to say that I am the only man in Texas who has done anything for the old missions during that period of time.’’ 103 Likewise, five years later he responded to public criticisms with a similar assertion, although by then the active collaboration of others on his San Juan Advisory Committee had attenuated his claim somewhat; he remarked, ‘‘I have spent well over , for the restoration and repair of these beautiful missions and with the exception of three or four persons not a citizen of Bexar County has ever given me so much as a dollar to help in the restoration work which has so great a value for San Antonio.’’ 104 Money for restorations, however, was not Lucey’s only contribution to the missions. He was constantly developing strategies for promoting them among wider audiences, both Catholics within the archdiocese and visitors from outside the area. For instance, in response to his ‘‘grave concern’’ over the ‘‘marked lack of interest in old Mission San Jose,’’ he inaugurated in  ‘‘an annual pilgrimage’’ for all Catholics in San Antonio. The first of these pilgrimages included ‘‘a Solemn Pontifical Field Mass, with Archbishop Lucey as celebrant’’ at the mission. Lucey instructed all parish pastors in the city to cooperate in publicizing the event in their churches, and he even arranged for the city buses to provide shuttles to the mission. The annual event proved successful and was well attended at least through the mid-s. In , about three hundred ‘‘pilgrims’’ participated, and plans were made to add ‘‘a city-wide novena to St. Joseph in all the parishes to wind up with the Pilgrimage to San Jose.’’ 105 But Lucey’s promotional efforts went beyond religious events that encouraged local Catholics to visit the missions. He also took a strong interest in gaining tourists’ attention. At one point, he even hired ‘‘some public relations experts’’ to help with promoting the missions.106 In the early s, Lucey commissioned Margaret R. Anderson to write a newspaper article touting his efforts to implement a ‘‘complex program of reconstruction and renovation’’ at the ‘‘famed missions of San Antonio.’’ The story was to be released not only locally but also to the  News Service for national coverage; as Anderson quipped, ‘‘Might as well toot a horn up in the east too.’’ 107 Lucey also thanked Pamela Ilott of  television for ‘‘the deep interest’’ she had shown by producing a television documentary on the missions that aired on  June , .108 Yet despite his interest in gaining the attention of mass media, Lucey knew that word of mouth remained the best promotional tool for bringing people to the missions. His almost obsessive attention to the details of the                            ; 

missions’ appearance was inspired in part by his understanding of the importance of tourists’ impressions for promoting the missions more widely. He wrote from Rome while attending the Second Vatican Council in , ‘‘Tens of thousands of tourists coming to San Antonio may not know very much about old mission architecture but if the restored buildings make a good appearance and if the lawns, shrubs, trees and walks are beautiful visitors will be pleased and will tell their friends about this old mission.’’ 109 Attempts of this sort to impress tourists reflected Lucey’s attention to aesthetics and authenticity. Like Ethel Wilson Harris, Lucey sought to restore the missions to an original condition that he imagined for them. To help him to make this vision a reality, Lucey had the able assistance of architect Harvey P. Smith Sr., whom the archbishop once described as ‘‘that great lover of the missions.’’ 110 In later years, the architect’s son, Harvey P. Smith Jr., succeeded his father as Lucey’s official architect in matters regarding the missions. Both father and son validated the archbishop’s vision of how he thought the missions should be, and in areas of authenticity, in particular, the archbishop said that he ‘‘always bowed to the knowledge and good judgment of Harvey Smith.’’ 111 Both Lucey and the Smiths agreed that modern intrusions should be absent from the missions. When the priest at Mission Concepción, for instance, proposed purchasing folding chairs to replace the pews in the church, Harvey Smith Jr. replied, ‘‘Purely from a historical and aesthetic viewpoint . . . I would certainly not like to see any modern metal chairs placed in any of these buildings.’’ He went on to suggest instead that they install ‘‘wooden pews that would simulate the type of seating that the early Padres must have used,’’ something similar to the seating installed at Mission Espada. He noted: ‘‘Even there we compromised with antiquity by putting kneelers on these pews which they probably never had in the early days of the missions. (No doubt, the Indians kneeled on the bare floor between the benches).’’ Smith concluded by stressing again, ‘‘It would seem to me to be a gross mistake to put in any ‘modern’ device in these ancient missions, which His Excellency [Archbishop Lucey] has tried so hard (and spent so much money) to preserve for posterity.’’ 112 Archbishop Lucey shared his architect’s concern for authenticity. He once suggested hiring an artist to ‘‘trace some of the original designs on an inconspicuous wall in order to perpetuate the appearance given to the Old Mission by the original artists.’’ He took exception to the policies of the National Park Service that privileged preservation over restoration; it insisted, according to Lucey, ‘‘that broken statues and faint tracery of frescoes [were]  ;                           

historic and should be preserved in their present condition.’’ He wrote of his fear that in a few years the frescoes would have faded from the walls ‘‘and the very memory of that part of the Old Mission [would] be lost.’’ 113 And like Harvey Smith Jr., Archbishop Lucey abhorred modern intrusions onto the mission scene. On one of his regular weekend visits to the missions, he commented that an arch that had recently been repaired was ‘‘standing up quite well’’ but noted with disappointment, ‘‘It does look quite modern.’’ On the same excursion, he complained: ‘‘In the wall over the altar there is a large fan which certainly does not add to the beauty of the place. I cannot imagine a venerable Franciscan missionary along toward  installing a large fan operated by electricity over the altar. I presume that Harvey Smith has a tendency to faint every time he sees it.’’ 114 On the other hand, when a project demanded modern conveniences, Lucey tried to comply by using materials that would enhance authentic historicity. Electric lights in the newly restored residence at Mission San Juan, for instance, came from Mexico because ‘‘the American style of illumination would never do in the historic friary.’’ 115 Lucey’s close attention to the details of authenticity was motivated by his desire to make the missions more beautiful; he struggled to keep up an aesthetic standard at all of the mission sites. Landscaping in particular made for an aesthetic presentation of the missions. In fact, ‘‘to beautify the grounds’’ remained the final step of restoration at each mission.116 At Mission Concepción, Lucey directed Bishop Stephen A. Leven to solicit the help of landscape architect Stewart King because, according to the archbishop, the grounds there were ‘‘certainly not beautiful.’’ He went on to note, ‘‘The steel wire fence around Conception is not too beautiful but it was rather costly and I think that Mr. King could advise us to the proper choice of a hedge or some shrubs to hide the steel wire.’’ 117 Underlying Archbishop Lucey’s nearly fanatical attention to aesthetic details was his insistence that the ability to derive pleasure from the missions ranked as the highest of aesthetic values. He once conceived a hierarchy of ‘‘values in human pleasure’’ that began with food and drink and worked upward through the enjoyment of newspapers, magazines, and cheap novels; clean sports; good literature, both prose and poetry; and the arts of painting, sculpture, music, and drama. Finally, at the very top, was ‘‘the capacity to enjoy a sunset, trees, hills, valleys, winding roads and Old Missions.’’ 118 In other words, the greatest of human pleasures derived, interestingly enough, not from religious pursuits or sentiments, but from enjoyment of the missions and similar spaces.                            ; 

Lucey’s desire to make the missions into aesthetically pleasing and plausibly authentic spaces coincided with his understanding of them as symbolic monuments to the ‘‘precious heritage’’ of Texas and the nation. He sought to make the missions not only sacred sites of the Catholic Church but also important tourist attractions where visitors could come to appreciate their heritage. Certainly, the missions served as reminders of the valiant Franciscans on the frontiers of civilization; Lucey spoke of the church at Mission San José as ‘‘a living symbol in stone and mortar of the faith and dedication of the early Franciscan Fathers in their efforts to bring the faith and culture of Christian civilization to the Indians of New Spain.’’ 119 But their significance reached beyond the glories of the Church’s beginnings in Texas. Lucey described the missions as ‘‘churches yes—but treasures of early Texas history; invested with a public interest.’’ 120 His efforts at restoration, according to the self-congratulatory article that Margaret Anderson wrote at his behest, sought to ‘‘keep the Missions of San Antonio a permanent part of our cultural heritage.’’ 121 By extension, Lucey sought to secure a permanent place for the Catholic Church in the cultural heritage of all Texans. By the end of his life, this growing emphasis on preserving a more broadly conceived ‘‘cultural heritage’’ had compromised Lucey’s early promise to protect the missions as eloquent monuments to ‘‘the faith that built them.’’ During what would be his last public appearance at the missions in , the former archbishop reminded the crowd gathered to honor him as the first ‘‘Amigo of the Missions’’ that while the missions belonged to the Catholic Church, they were also ‘‘invested with a public interest.’’ He elaborated: ‘‘They are a precious heritage—spiritual, religious and historic. They are deathless monuments of the early days of charming San Antonio.’’ 122 They are also monuments to the nearly three decades of Lucey’s own unrelenting efforts to build a tourist attraction that would rival the missions of his beloved California.

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Preserving Identities

Lucey’s wish to preserve the missions as ‘‘deathless monuments of the early days of charming San Antonio’’ reflected his desire to link the Catholic heritage of the missionaries to a national heritage in which all Americans hold an interest. For Lucey, making the missions into attractive, pleasing sites for tourists was part of a larger initiative among American Catholics to make the Church an acceptable institution of modern society. To this end,  ;                           

Lucey’s efforts to preserve and restore the missions did not conflict with his advocacy of New Deal social reforms or his later support of civil rights for Mexican American laborers and others. All helped to make the public voice of the Catholic Church heard in the political and cultural terrains of twentieth-century America, a concern that contributed significantly to the internal reforms deliberated at the Church’s Second Vatican Council in the s. Ethel Wilson Harris, on the other hand, had little interest in advancing the cause of the Church. Like Lucey, Harris worked hard to transform San Antonio’s missions, especially Mission San José, into charming, aesthetically significant tourist attractions. But she steered an antimodernist course that contrasted the beauty and tranquility of the missions with the harsh realities of modern industrialized society. And like other followers of the arts and crafts movement, Harris found the antimodern ideal in a bygone era, one that could still be found for the adventurous traveler in undeveloped areas like rural Mexico. Although Robert E. Lucey and Ethel Wilson Harris both focused on a romantic past at the missions, their efforts confronted the present. Each in his or her own way called on the past to articulate a contemporary identity. For Lucey, the missions gave historical legitimation to Catholic claims to having played a fundamental role in making the American nation, especially by blazing the trail of civilization in what Lucey regarded as the wilderness of the savage western lands. In contrast, Harris used the mission’s past to pose a critique of modernization and to demonstrate the quaint simplicity of a world quickly disappearing in the face of industrialization. Her vision suggested that a purer, more authentic American identity could be founded on the gentle ways of the missionaries who built the elegant structures that have endured the encroachments of the modern world for more than two centuries. Lucey and Harris also agreed that the significance of religion at the missions was primarily historical. Of course, Lucey maintained a concern for parish life in his capacity as archbishop, but his inordinate expenditure of money and attention at the missions underscored his commitment to preserving them not as sacramental spaces of Catholic worship but as monuments to the historical role of Catholicism in America. Harris, on the other hand, regarded religion as the historical motivation behind the missionary exploits that built the missions. To her, religion was part of the bygone era, and contemporary practices of religion something of a nuisance and a modern defilement of the mission scene.                            ; 

Ever since Father Francis Bouchu began serving as guide, historian, and interpreter at the missions in the late nineteenth century, contemporary religious practices at the missions have had to defer to the role of religion as a historical curiosity. The emphasis on the past derives from touristic interests in the missions; tourist audiences, even in the nineteenth century, took more interest in the religious life of the ancient past (which, ironically enough, was only decades removed from the earliest tourists) than they did in the needs of contemporary worshipers. Tourists had little interest in viewing contemporary Catholics at worship; they could see that in their own hometowns. They endured the hardships of the journey to San Antonio’s missions to see the crumbling ruins of a world far removed from the familiar. They came to marvel over the achievements of faithful Christians of a time long ago who toiled in a harsh land. The preservation, restoration, and reinterpretation of the missions in the twentieth century gave even more priority to the desires of tourists. Particularly because of the efforts of Ethel Wilson Harris and Robert E. Lucey, interest in the Spanish colonial missions continued to increase as more and more visitors made their way to the restored sites. In the s, moreover, touristic regard for San Antonio’s historic places reached global proportions when the city hosted a world’s fair. With more than six million visitors to the fair in , San Antonio stepped onto the world stage. Tourism at the missions would never be the same.

 ;                           

 

Religion at the Fair A crowd estimated at more than ten thousand people marched solemnly through downtown San Antonio, Texas, in the bright afternoon sun of Friday, April , . They had come to celebrate the opening of the  world’s fair, HemisFair ’, with a massive procession planned as an ecumenical dedication of the fair to God. The Roman Catholic archbishop Robert E. Lucey greeted the crowd outside the main gate of the fairgrounds on South Alamo Street, where the procession ended. He declared that the opening of the ‘‘world’s fair for God’’ would be followed the next morning by the official inauguration, at which ‘‘the fair [would] open for man.’’ 1 The religious celebration, however, marched to a somber beat under the weight of the tragedy that had struck the previous evening at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. An assassin’s bullet had cut down the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and the nation’s shock reverberated through the line of marchers that snaked through San Antonio’s downtown from the Municipal Auditorium past the venerable walls of the Alamo to the gates of HemisFair. The ecumenical procession, intended to bring together members of San Antonio’s diverse religious communities in a demonstration of the fair’s official theme, ‘‘The Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas,’’ became instead an expression of collective grief. Amid the colorful religious banners 

and symbols of the various faith groups participating in the procession, there appeared placards remembering the slain Dr. King. One displayed a portrait of the civil rights leader beside an image of the late President John F. Kennedy with the words, ‘‘They died for Peace Among Men.’’ Another read, ‘‘It really doesn’t matter now, I’ve been to the mountaintop.’’ Voices joined poignantly in spontaneous renditions of the song ‘‘We Shall Overcome’’ as the crowd gathered at the threshold of San Antonio’s grand spectacle of cultural unity. Meanwhile, in numerous cities across America, anger, grief, and a long history of racial discord erupted into violence, flames, and looting. Federal troops moved to quell unrest in Chicago, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C. By midnight on Saturday, April , the opening day of HemisFair ’, twenty-one people had died in the wave of violence that swept across the nation following Dr. King’s assassination. Yet despite the tragedy and violence that besieged the nation, HemisFair opened as planned, with San Antonio’s high society joining First Lady Lady Bird Johnson at the gala performance of the opera Don Carlo that capped the opening day celebrations.2 The smoke rising from the rubble of America’s anger and grief cast no shadows across the HemisFair grounds. HemisFair marks a pivotal point in San Antonio’s long history as a place defined by travel. The world’s fair put the city on the map as a worldclass tourist destination while giving residents a sense of coherent identity.3 This identity emphasized San Antonio’s unique historical, geographic, and cultural circumstance as a crossroads where different peoples have come together and contributed to a creative, syncretistic social milieu. The HemisFair project itself represented an inclusive undertaking during which differences could be set aside for the good of the larger community. The organizers envisioned the fair as a celebration of two and a half centuries of similar cooperation in San Antonio that had produced a ‘‘confluence of civilizations in the Americas.’’ But HemisFair’s thematic emphasis on confluence, inclusion, and cooperation ignored the contentious realities that underlay a particularly divisive moment in American history. Indeed, plans for the fair unfolded while battles over civil rights and opposition to American involvement in Vietnam divided the country. During the run of the fair itself, violence erupted around the world in the bloody year of . The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were followed by a hot summer of rioting in U.S. cities along with tragic outcomes to demonstrations in France, Czechoslovakia, and Mexico. But in San Antonio, the show went on ac ;                 

cording to plans, as if the turmoil elsewhere could not disturb  years of cultural confluence. Over the six-month run of the fair, more than six million visitors made their way through the anxieties and social turmoil of  to enter the HemisFair grounds. Like fairgoers before them had done for more than a century, they made the world’s fair into a sort of pilgrimage destination for modern industrialized society.4 But the pilgrims who passed through the fairground gates came not to venerate sacred relics or to fulfill holy vows. The seductive powers of the marketplace staged in their most alluring forms drew them into the space of the fair; they came, in short, to practice a sort of ‘‘marketplace piety,’’ one that honored the enduring triumph of market capitalism in the modern world.5 World’s fairs in general tend to accentuate the hyperconsumerist inclinations of tourists. As exemplary practitioners of market capitalism, tourists allow no sight, smell, taste, adventure, event, culture, object, or experience to escape their voracious appetites. Everything that tourists encounter becomes the object of touristic desire and is subject to aestheticization and consumption. This includes religion. Indeed, religion ranks as one of the most highly prized experiences in the touristic repertoire. Tourists flock to religious places all over the world: European cathedrals, Buddhist stupas, Hindu temples, the ruins of ancient religious sites such as Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes and Stonehenge in England. The forces of tourism turn all of these places, along with their respective religious practices and claims to holiness, into commodities of the touristic economy. This is not to suggest that religious people tolerate tourists and act as the unwilling victims of this economy. The relationship between religion and tourism has always been ambiguous. On the one hand, religion, especially in America, thrives on market forces. At least since the revivals of the First Great Awakening in the eighteenth-century American colonies, American Christianity has operated in a marketplace mode of religious competition. Moreover, religious leaders have been among the most sophisticated cultural marketers on the American scene, and their appeals to religious consumers have included the adept negotiation of touristic desires, values, and economic forces. On the other hand, religious people have long expressed a persistent uneasiness with their reliance on the worldly forces of market capitalism.6 This ambivalence becomes apparent when the role of religion at the HemisFair celebration in  is examined closely. Religion had its place at the fair somewhere between the exuberant promotions of commercial                  ; 

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HemisFair  opened in downtown San Antonio on April , , for a six-month run. (Institute of Texan Cultures Library at UTSA, no. Z-, Zintgraff Collection; gift of John and Dela White)

exhibitors and the cultural performances of more entertaining attractions.7 But San Antonio’s religious leaders had envisioned a different role for religion when they came together during the fair’s planning stages to devise an ecumenical display of religious confluence. In the heady days of ecumenism following the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council, San Anto ;                 

nio’s Protestants, Catholics, and Jews had a chance to demonstrate to the world that religious communities with very different outlooks could work together in cooperative efforts for the common good. Yet despite their enthusiasm for the grand opportunity that HemisFair presented, the city’s religious leaders had to choose between the seductions of the marketplace and the needs of their respective religious communities. They chose to pursue the path of compromise, but the locative demands of the marketplace relegated their efforts to near invisibility. By the time the fairground gates finally opened on April , , the role of religion at HemisFair had conformed almost completely to the conventions of market capitalism.

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Planning a HemisFairic Celebration

The idea for the HemisFair celebration began to take shape in early , when about forty of San Antonio’s civic leaders, mostly from government and the business community, gathered at the behest of U.S. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez to discuss the possibility of a ‘‘Fair of the Americas’’ to be held in conjunction with the th anniversary in  of San Antonio’s founding.8 From early on, fair supporters promoted HemisFair as a festive celebration not only of San Antonio’s founding in  but also of its subsequent history and rich cultural diversity.9 They also hoped to ameliorate the reputation as a provincial, backwater, ‘‘also-ran’’ place that had plagued San Antonio at least since it had lost the bid to host the celebrations of the  Texas Centennial.10 Thus they sought to stage an international exposition that would transform San Antonio into a fun-filled tourist destination and at the same time bring lasting benefits to the city. As early as , fair officials enumerated the permanent assets that San Antonio and its citizens could expect to gain from HemisFair: ‘‘A modern, large convention center– exhibit hall, theater and supporting buildings, permitting aggressive solicitation of major conventions which, because of their size and nature, today are beyond our reach. Permanent cultural and trade center, training and educational facilities to continue San Antonio as the focal point of Mexican and Latin American relations with the North. A prime tourist attraction, in an economically prosperous and progressive, internationally renowned community. An expanded and renewed self-assurance and pride as a community.’’ 11 In short, supporters looked to HemisFair as a source of civic pride that would promote San Antonio to an international audience. The success of such a global undertaking, however, depended in part                  ; 

upon the formulation of a concise thematic statement that would capture the imaginations of exhibitors and fairgoers alike. When HemisFair officials sought the sanction of the Bureau of International Expositions in Paris to designate their celebration a ‘‘world’s fair,’’ they found themselves at a critical juncture without an adequate theme. They needed to demonstrate their intention to include all the world, not just the western hemisphere, in the celebration. They quickly concocted what became the official theme of the fair, ‘‘The Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas.’’ 12 The theme summarized the organizers’ vision of HemisFair as a unique and distinctive exposition, ‘‘a ‘showcase’ of the diversified cultures of Pan America’’ that would investigate ‘‘the ancient and modern histories of the Americas’’ and display with pride ‘‘the cultural development and achievements of all her peoples, with their joint and separate goals as free, proud and independent citizens.’’ A world exposition, HemisFair officials contended, had to be ‘‘challenging in its vision, its Theme . . . magnificently carried out’’ in order to ‘‘earn world-wide attention and respect and thereby advance, at least a little, man’s never-ending quest for knowledge of his world and himself.’’ 13 HemisFair’s promoters had indeed found a useful slogan in the phrase ‘‘The Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas.’’ Planning for HemisFair initially included religion as a fundamental element of the fair’s theme. Fair officials convened a special committee made up primarily of leaders from San Antonio’s Christian and Jewish communities that met in early February  to consider a proposal for an ‘‘InterFaith Center’’ to be built on the HemisFair grounds. The Reverend C. Don Baugh, chairman of the Religious Exhibits Committee, called the meeting to order by posing the crucial question for the committee members to resolve: ‘‘Can we establish a religious experience (at HemisFair) which we can all share?’’ 14 Thus, under pressure from HemisFair officials to come up with a ‘‘combined religious statement’’ that would express the ecumenical spirit of San Antonio’s Christian and Jewish communities, the committee decided that an appropriate ‘‘religious experience’’ could best be achieved by putting up a permanent building.15 But the structure they hoped to erect as a combined effort of the various religious communities would have to generate experiences for HemisFair visitors that the various factions could all agree upon as appropriate. In other words, the proposed Inter-Faith Center would have to satisfy the needs and purposes of a diverse group of religious leaders under the guise of a single combined statement that would demonstrate the ‘‘confluence of civilizations in the Americas.’’ The committee members turned with enthusiasm to the initial proposal  ;                 

for the Inter-Faith Center, which addressed the need to coordinate the efforts of the religious communities with the overall theme of the fair.16 It began by noting that HemisFair’s official theme would be demonstrated in exhibits that showed ‘‘the achievements of industry, the arts and crafts, medicine, health, education, recreation, and all the material things that go to make up great nations.’’ The proposal then insinuated religion into the fair’s theme: ‘‘It will also be an expression of faith and hope in the innate goodness of man and the part God plays in his life.’’ It went on to propose that the interfaith exhibit should demonstrate the relationship between religion and significant world problems: ‘‘The major problems of our day— poverty, prejudice, peace, social justice, education, population, communication—are subjects to which religion should responsibly address itself, not ‘peddling answers’ but offering hope. It is to these problem areas that our presentation should be addressed. The weaknesses of religion have been those of men, not of God, and it is only through an appeal to man’s spiritual nature and reason that our faults will be corrected within our time.’’ 17 The mode of the Religious Exhibits Committee’s appeal, according to the proposal under consideration, would be a building. Committee members demonstrated great initial enthusiasm for the idea of a building. They decided to make some minor adjustments to the original proposal—they agreed, for example, to call the project a ‘‘Religious Center’’ instead of an ‘‘Inter-Faith Center’’—and then launched into a discussion of cooperative participation.18 Regarding the involvement of the various religious groups, William V. ‘‘Bud’’ Porter of the Christian Scientists insisted that they stage individual exhibits in addition to a collective ecumenical exhibit. The Christian Scientists, he said, were pleased with the success of their exhibits at both the Seattle and New York world’s fairs, and while they would support a group exhibit, they wished to have an individual exhibit at HemisFair as well. After some discussion, the committee members agreed that the proposed Religious Center would include a collective exhibit at its center, with exhibits by members of individual faiths around the perimeter. Committee members also agreed that funds from private foundations should be pursued to finance the project. They decided to approach their foundation benefactors with a cost estimate of  million. After the committee members agreed to raise , in seed money to complete a feasibility study, print a brochure about the Religious Center, and pay expenses related to procuring a funding source, the Most Reverend Stephen A. Leven, representing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, immediately announced that his Church would contribute , to the seed money.                  ; 

Bishop Leven expressed high hopes for the Religious Center at HemisFair. In his letter authorizing the Church’s contribution, he emphasized the ecumenical nature of the endeavor and expressed commitment to its success. Likewise, Reverend Baugh, in noting the joint involvement of the Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant faiths, claimed that the proposed religious pavilion at HemisFair  would be a first-ever ecumenical effort involving all three religious traditions working together cooperatively at a major exposition.19 The enthusiasm for the Religious Center translated into a flurry of activity. Richard E. Miller, manager of educational, religious, and cultural exhibits for HemisFair  and official corporate liaison to the Religious Exhibits Committee, flew to Philadelphia to meet with the widely acclaimed architect Louis Kahn.20 Kahn later traveled to San Antonio to meet with the entire committee, view the HemisFair site, and begin planning the Religious Center. Chairman Baugh solicited contributions for the seed money from religious groups throughout the San Antonio area, and by the end of May, , had been received.21 Official statements from HemisFair  began to mention the Religious Center as a key feature of the exposition.22 But just as momentum for the Religious Center seemed to be gathering strength, doubts began to emerge from within the Religious Exhibits Committee itself. Six members of the committee met at Bishop Leven’s office in late March  to reconsider the advisability of erecting a costly building on the HemisFair grounds. They agreed that the focus on a building had caused them to stray from their original understanding of the goals of religious expression at the exposition; ‘‘Our principal concern,’’ they stated, ‘‘has been witness and service,’’ a concern that had been subordinated when undue attention was given to constructing a Religious Center. ‘‘To erect a large and costly structure,’’ they wrote, ‘‘is out of keeping with the concerns of religious faith, particularly when so much of our community is in the poverty group of which we are so aware these days. Even should the funds be given by foundations from out of the city, the religious community cannot conscientiously be a part of it.’’ The needs of local congregations and the expansion of Church-sponsored hospitals in the San Antonio area were already overtaxing their Churches’ resources. They reaffirmed their interest in ecumenical religious expression at HemisFair but stated that they would prefer to develop programs that could utilize existing facilities.23 In what appears to have been a reversal of his earlier support, Bishop Leven took a clear stand against the proposed building. But the loss of his

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initial enthusiasm for ecumenical efforts to build a first-of-its-kind Religious Center does not seem so surprising in light of the deliberations that the Roman Catholic Church had recently concluded at the Second Vatican Council. Bishop Leven had argued forcefully at the council in November  in support of the chapters on ecumenism.24 Indeed, his commitment to ecumenical dialogue went far beyond the need for religious expression at HemisFair. At the same time, however, the idea of making an unnecessary investment in a grandiose structure conflicted with changes the Church hoped to pursue. As Bishop Leven explained in a public lecture not long after stating his opposition to the Religious Center, ‘‘We are trying to get away from the centuries-old tradition of triumphalism in the Church and a  million pavilion would not be compatible with these efforts.’’ 25 In short, it was the million-dollar pavilion that the bishop opposed, not the ecumenical cooperation that was to produce it, and he went on to demonstrate strong leadership in the continuing effort to bring ecumenical religious expression to HemisFair ’. The initial reaction from HemisFair officials signaled their incredulity. But despite their efforts to move forward with plans for the Religious Center, the Church leaders refused to relent. Persuaded by the dissenting arguments of Bishop Leven, the leaders wrote to fair officials, stating unequivocally: ‘‘We do not favor the erection of a building as part of our religious expression.’’ Instead, they said, they preferred to put their efforts into ‘‘an expression of religion that would have some form of ministry to the bodies, minds and souls’’ of the fairgoers.26 At about the same time that they received word of the Church leaders’ refusal to cooperate, HemisFair officials heard from the Lilly Endowment that their application for funding for the Religious Center had been declined.27 They now had to accept that their hope for a centerpiece building that would express a confluence of religions was effectively dead. Richard Miller notified the architect, Louis Kahn, to discontinue work on the Religious Center plans, and then he sent an urgent message to Bishop Leven conceding that the plans for the building were not feasible and asking for the bishop’s advice on ‘‘how best to proceed with a less ambitious, but effective and meaningful, expression.’’ 28 A new direction for religious expression at HemisFair  had been taken. Rather than erect a single Religious Center, religious groups eventually built three pavilions and two outdoor stages. Thus religious expression had its run at the fair, although not necessarily in the ecumenical mode suggested by HemisFair’s theme.

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Religion on Display at the Fair

Even without a Religious Center, religion made its appearance every day of HemisFair ’. Yet most people who attended the fair do not recall the presence of religion there at all.29 Its invisibility was partially the consequence of the fact that the religious places and events at the fair blended seamlessly with the marketplace emphasis of the fair’s key attractions. In short, religion seemed right at home among the more commercial displays of market capitalism. Despite the efforts of San Antonio’s local Church leaders to resist commercialization in favor of ‘‘effective and meaningful’’ religious expression, they could not avoid playing to tourists’ expectations. Even the most intentional religious event of the fair, the dedication procession on the eve of its opening, appeared as a parade of religious stereotypes displayed for fairgoers. Although the event’s planners originally conceived of it as an ecumenical religious gathering to bless the fair and dedicate it to God, they attempted to adapt the Roman Catholic liturgical tradition of procession to ‘‘include other elements within the community.’’ 30 By the time the participants gathered at San Antonio’s Municipal Auditorium on April , , they included over two hundred clergy and represented more than one hundred religious communities. The marchers carried symbols of their respective faiths: the Jewish section displayed the Star of David, a representation of Moses and the Ten Commandments, the menorah, and the Torah; Catholics displayed a papal flag, a group of Franciscans representing New World missionaries, and an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe; the Greek Orthodox community marched with an icon representing Christ; Protestants carried a Christian flag and featured representations of frontier circuit riders and a reverent display of the Holy Bible; and Mormons depicted the pioneers’ trek to Utah. Choirs sang, and at one point all of the participants joined in unison for three verses of ‘‘Faith of Our Fathers.’’ 31 Besides the dedicatory procession that preceded HemisFair’s opening, the committee charged with religious expression also organized a ‘‘Chaplain of the Day’’ program. In a small, out-of-the-way space inside one of the general-use pavilions, it set up a ‘‘meditation corner’’ staffed by local clergy on a voluntary basis.32 The chaplains, on hand from opening to closing every day of the fair, offered pastoral help for spiritual as well as more mundane needs. In addition to providing a site for prayer and spiritual guidance, their booth served as a first aid station, a place to retrieve lost children, and a

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quiet spot to rest away from the Texas sun.33 Thus the ecumenical practice of religion had its own place at HemisFair . But the vast majority of the more than six million visitors at HemisFair did not witness the dedication procession and never had any contact with the chaplains. They never noticed these efforts at ecumenical religious expression at the fair. Many of the visitors, however, encountered religion in commodified forms. Indeed, religious groups marketed their religion right alongside the array of other products being promoted. The Mormon pavilion, for instance, received at least as much attention as those of Ford, , Eastman Kodak, Gulf Insurance, and Lone Star Brewing. The official guidebook noted its location beside the General Electric pavilion and close to General Motors.34 The Mormon presence at the fair could hardly be distinguished from a commercial presence. Mormon participants focused on selling their religion to fairgoers. They made their investment in building, furnishing, and operating a pavilion with the expectation of winning converts to their Church. In their earliest inquiries to HemisFair officials, they sought assurances that their proselytizing efforts would be allowed at the fair. Site selection itself involved careful considerations regarding visitor traffic and visibility.35 They placed a shiny statue of the angel Moroni outside the pavilion atop a pylon that became a landmark at the fair, enticing visitors to partake of the Mormon story. Inside, the pavilion featured a dramatic presentation of Mormon beliefs, history, and art. The visitor experience concluded with the short film ‘‘Man’s Search for Happiness,’’ which raised the questions ‘‘Where did I come from? Why am I here? and Where am I going?’’ Visitors could discuss these questions with one of the more than fifty missionaries who staffed the Mormon pavilion.36 Enhancing Mormons’ visibility and drawing even larger crowds to their pavilion (and thereby into their evangelistic marketing process) were not one but two special days dedicated to honoring Mormonism. HemisFair officials designated Wednesday of the first week of the fair as ‘‘Mormon Founder’s Day’’ to recognize the formal dedication of the Mormon pavilion by high-ranking Church officials from Salt Lake City. Activities for the day included an official welcoming of Hugh B. Brown, first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the three members of the Council of the Twelve Apostles who accompanied him. Following a flag-raising ceremony, the delegation moved to the Mormon pavilion for the dedication, where Brown delivered the main ad-

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dress.37 And then on July , HemisFair commemorated Mormon Pioneer Day. The day’s events included a parade on HemisFair grounds in which Mormon children dressed as pioneers and pulled covered wagons in commemoration of Brigham Young’s journey west. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir also performed at HemisFair that day.38 The general approach of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to marketing its religion integrates multiple institutional efforts, from art exhibits and narrations of its sacred history to one-on-one study sessions with missionaries in the field. It therefore remains difficult to gauge the results of any single effort to sway potential converts. But another religious group at the fair kept close track of its marketing results. In a pavilion built adjacent to the Mormons’, a nondenominational, nonprofit group of Texas businessmen operating under the name ‘‘Christian HemisFair Committee of Alive, Inc.’’ presented ‘‘Sermons from Science.’’ This program, produced by the Moody Institute of Science and featured at the world’s fairs in Seattle, New York, and Montreal before coming to San Antonio, included a series of short films, each depicting ‘‘scientific wonders of the world.’’ Simultaneous translations in five languages made the films accessible to a wide international audience. At the end of the films, audience members were offered the choice of leaving the pavilion or moving into a second theater to view another film that emphasized a religious message. At the end of the second film, viewers could go on to a counseling room where they were invited to participate in discussions about science and religion. Counselors hoped to steer participants to make a decision about their religious commitment.39 The Christian HemisFair Committee of Alive, Inc. kept precise records of its results, even determining the exact cost in dollars of every successful ‘‘registered decision.’’ At the halfway point of the fair, a total of , viewers had seen at least one of the films, an average of , per day that represented . percent of the pavilion’s capacity. Of the total number of viewers, , went on to see the second film ‘‘dealing with the specifics of salvation.’’ From these, there were , ‘‘personal inquiries’’ made (presumably by visitors who proceeded on to the counseling rooms for a discussion of science and religion), and these led to , registered decisions (apparently made by people who decided positively to make a religious commitment in their lives). A footnote to the report stated exuberantly, ‘‘Based on figures to date . has been invested for each registered decision.’’ 40 Making such an exacting calculation of return on investment may seem a remarkable exercise for a religious group practicing its faith. But for this committee of prominent businessmen chaired by a banker, it seemed as  ;                 

natural as checking the Wall Street Journal for the latest market news. In a world of balance sheets, risk calculations, and investment strategies, a precise accounting of the religious return on the dollar just made good business sense.41 More to the point, however, it made explicit the reliance of religion on the conventions of market capitalism. Maintaining a religious community costs money and demands attention to the finer points of marketing, investment, and asset management. But astute business practices did not exhaust the role of religion at HemisFair. Religion was also performed as entertainment to the millions of visitors who passed through the fairground gates. The Southern Baptist pavilion, for instance, served primarily as a performance space for Church musical groups and included a theater where the short film ‘‘Tour Fourteen,’’ narrated by the actor Burgess Meredith, was shown. Despite audiences’ enthusiastic reception of the film, a number of lay Baptists expressed disappointment that it was not more like the kind of marketing performed by the Mormons and members of the Christian HemisFair Committee of Alive, Inc.; the Baptist laypeople, according to one observer, ‘‘wanted an evangelistic film that sold the Baptist Church.’’ 42 But the Baptist pavilion, located in the restored nineteenth-century Eagar House and sponsored jointly by the San Antonio Baptist Association, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and both the Foreign Mission Board and the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, instead emphasized religious performances staged for visitor audiences. Hundreds of Church choirs and other musical ensembles appeared on the Eagar House stage over the course of the fair to inspire and entertain visitors.43 Entertainment also took priority at the Lutheran Oxcart stages. Sponsored by the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America, and the Lutheran Church of the Missouri Synod, these two outdoor performance areas were arranged in the shape of huge oxcarts (lacking the oxen to pull them, they were mounted on stationary wheels); they were meant to recall itinerant performers who once traveled through England pulling the wagons on which they performed. Featured in twelve to sixteen daily presentations were dramatic skits, music, and poetry aimed at delivering a Christian message in an entertaining format.44 But the most powerfully entertaining performance of the entire HemisFair show, at least according to a consensus of commentators in Marlene Richardson’s commemorative documentary about the fair, was that of the ‘‘Voladores de Papantla,’’ the famous flying Indians of Mexico. Their purely performative enactment of religious ritual captivated audiences; four Indi                 ; 

ans, garbed in authentic costumes representing elaborately plumed birds, bound securely around their waists, leapt from the top of a -foot-high pole and plummeted gradually downward, rotating around the pole in everwidening circles as the ropes that fastened them to the pole unwound. Before this ‘‘death-defying act of the fearless flying Indians,’’ another of the native performers danced on a twenty-inch disk atop the pole while playing his flute.45 Yet as breathtaking and colorful as the feats from on high were, the crowds reserved the greater part of their attention for the ritual sacrifice that followed. Certainly, the antics at the top of the pole provided plenty of excitement, ‘‘but what attracted the crowds to the Voladores was not the flying Indians.’’ San Antonio radio and television personality Henry Guerra, who served as director of international relations at HemisFair , explained: ‘‘It was the fact that they had a bare-breasted beauty who was sacrificed three or four times a day. That was the attraction.’’ Randy Allee recalls from his visits to HemisFair as a child, ‘‘During part of the ceremony they brought out what I guess was the ‘ceremonial virgin’ for the ceremony, and she took her top off.’’ 46 This sacrifice involved no blood, agonizing screams, or dying moments—only the tantalizing and salacious display of a young woman’s breasts bouncing blithely before the incredulous stares of visitors, who packed the theater five times daily. The staging of Mesoamerican human sacrifices at these performances, which were sponsored by Frito-Lay and Pepsi Cola, evacuated all religious meaning in favor of pure entertainment. The official fair guidebook promised a ‘‘truly unique, truly Latin American’’ entertainment event: ‘‘Los Voladores, performing in an Aztec amphitheater, offer a brilliantly colorful production climaxed by recreation of an ancient Aztec ritual sacrifice.’’ Some allusions to indigenous religion remained in the mention of Tlaloc, the Mesoamerican fertility deity, and in the Voladores’ costumes, which, as the guidebook explained, were ‘‘based on the belief that the dead return to earth as birds.’’ But these elements only added to the theatrical air of the event. The real goal was to please the crowd and, of course, to sell products: ‘‘At the show,’’ the guidebook promised, the audience could ‘‘enjoy both Pepsi-Cola products and Frito-Lay snacks.’’ 47 The performers, however, did not leave their religious understandings at home. When it came time to erect the Voladores’ pole several months before the fair opened, the Indians insisted on sacrificing a chicken at the pole’s base; they promised that if they were forbidden to do so, they would refuse to perform. But Frank Manupelli, general manager of HemisFair,  ;                 

Image Not Available

Los Voladores de Papantla, the ‘‘Flying Indians’’ from Mexico sponsored by Frito-Lay and Pepsi Cola, descend with flares at HemisFair . (Institute of Texan Cultures Library at UTSA, no. Bell-vol. )

would not allow them to kill an animal on the fairgrounds. Eventually, the performers let the issue drop. But, as the story goes, they carried out the necessary sacrifice surreptitiously during the night just before the pole was to be set in place.48 The Voladores example—including as it does both the evacuation of religion in favor of entertainment and product sales and the return of religion in the demands of the performers—hints at the intricacies involved in the conjunction of religion and market capitalism. The Voladores, moreover, represented an extreme example of deviance from the aims of the Church leaders who hoped for ‘‘effective and meaningful’’ religious expression at the fair. The demands of the marketplace, and in particular the need to put on a good show that would draw fairgoers through the turnstiles, militated against the presentation of an ecumenical program that would have invited fairgoers to have a meaningful religious experience.

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Beyond HemisFair

At HemisFair, San Antonio’s prominent religious leaders faced a critical choice: whether to create a locative or an itinerant mode of religious expression.49 Corporate officials from HemisFair pushed for the locative in the form of a Religious Center, a million-dollar centerpiece building that would have showcased the place of religion in their theme of confluence. But the religious leaders, faced with a pastoral obligation to the very real needs of their respective communities, opted for an itinerant approach. The result played itself out in numerous ways at HemisFair. Most obviously, the goal of presenting an ecumenical display of religious expression was almost completely subsumed. But even in the individual exhibits and performances of religion at the fair, the locative and the itinerant often traded on each other. The Lutheran Oxcarts, for example, projected in multiple daily variety shows an explicitly itinerant image that masked their locative reality. The Mormons built their seemingly locative pavilion with itinerant motives: they designed the building to be dismantled and removed to San Marcos, Texas, following the fair.50 Indeed, to a certain extent, the play between itinerant and locative defined the entire HemisFair enterprise, an ephemeral, itinerant, six-month celebration that nevertheless required permanent facilities to be erected that cost tens of millions of dollars. In retrospect, the fair was a mixed success. From a short-term, purely financial perspective, HemisFair was a disaster. When officials finally closed  ;                 

the books, the fair had lost more than seven million dollars.51 On the other hand, most commentators agree with Marshall Steves’s assessment, made a dozen years after the fair closed, that for the city of San Antonio, HemisFair was a ‘‘howling success.’’ 52 Even at the end of the century, San Antonio residents continued to acknowledge the importance of the fair for their city’s subsequent development and economic growth. It marked the beginning of the type of commercial development that has made the downtown Riverwalk what it is today, and it sparked explosive growth in tourist and convention business for the city. Regardless of whether one judges these changes as positive or negative, no one doubts that HemisFair changed the course of San Antonio’s future.53 The touristic display of religion was a part of that future. In fact, HemisFair was not the only tourist attraction in San Antonio that opened in . On the opening day of the world’s fair, the San Antonio Express carried an announcement that the Catholic Church would be charging admission to the sites of its colonial-era missions. According to Father Balthasar Janacek, whom the Express described as ‘‘the man in charge of cleaning up the missions for HemisFair,’’ the institution of admissions fees reflected the Church’s desire to host fairgoers who wanted to visit these venerable monuments of San Antonio’s colorful past. ‘‘With tourists coming in and out,’’ Janacek explained, ‘‘we must man the missions with guides, ticket takers, and extra maintenance people.’’ 54 The occasion of the fair motivated the San Antonio archdiocese of the Catholic Church to repair structures and clean up the mission sites for the unusually large crowds of visitors anticipated in . More important, the attention and investment bestowed on the missions in response to the HemisFair event initiated the momentum that would culminate with the establishment of an urban national park a decade after the fair closed. Performances of religion of the sort that occurred at HemisFair would find an even larger audience at the missions when the National Park Service took responsibility for interpreting their religious history for tourist visitors. The park service, however, did not entirely wrest the interpretive authority for narrating the missions’ religious life away from the Church. The process that led to the authorization of the park in  and its subsequent opening in  required close cooperation between Church and state, specifically between the San Antonio archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church and the National Park Service. But the creation of the national park established the federal government as the presiding authority at the missions. As a result, it also had repercussions for local people who worshiped at                  ; 

the missions, as they became historical artifacts displayed for the edification and pleasure of tourists. Although HemisFair lent impetus to the establishment of a national historical park in San Antonio, the park represents just the latest chapter in the long history of the federal presence at the missions. In the nineteenth century, federal troops actually used the mission structures for a variety of military purposes: as storage depots, as stables, and as camps. The government’s interest in the missions primarily as historical sites, however, began with the involvement of the Civic Works Administration () in restorations at Mission San José, Mission San Juan, and Mission Espada in the s. Its assistance came to an end when the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration () replaced the ; guidelines for restoration work by the  required that political entities actually own the sites.55 It was  when the federal government returned to the missions. That year, the National Park Service established a permanent but limited presence by designating Mission San José as a national historic site.56 Its role involved only oversight and technical assistance in restoration efforts, while responsibility for actually maintaining the mission fell to the state of Texas. The attainment of national historic site status at Mission San José coincided with the establishment of the state historical park there.57 A set of formal agreements between the state, the federal government, the Catholic Church, the San Antonio Conservation Society, and others allowed for joint ownership while preserving the Church’s control of worship spaces. But the increased attention that HemisFair brought to the missions in the s gave momentum to calls to reassess the management and care of all four mission sites controlled by the Church. Giving the National Park Service an expanded role with primary responsibility for day-to-day operations became the favored solution, and the U.S. Congress approved the creation of the new national historical park only a decade after the closing of the world’s fair. The Catholic Church remained at the missions as a cooperative partner with the federal government. But the collaboration between Church and state had a mixed impact on religion at the missions. The members of the parish communities developed an ambivalent attitude toward the new alliance that produced a popular tourist site in the same space where they continued their sacramental practices. On February , , dignitaries gathered to finalize arrangements for the creation of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. Archbishop Patrick Flores of the San Antonio archdiocese, National Park Service director Russell Dickenson, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department director  ;                 

Image Not Available

Archbishop Patrick Flores speaks on February , , at the ceremonial signing of the cooperative agreements that made the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park a reality. Shown seated behind Archbishop Flores are ( left to right): Robert Kerr; Bishop Charles Graham; San Antonio Conservation Society president Lynn Bobbitt; Texas Parks and Wildlife Department director James Bell (partially obscured behind lectern); Patsy Light of the San Antonio Missions Advisory Commission; San Antonio city councilwoman Helen Dutmer; and Mary Lou Grier, National Park Service assistant director. (Photograph by Mike Cappelli; San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation, no. .)

James Bell, and San Antonio Conservation Society president Lynn Bobbitt all sat before the famous rose window at Mission San José to sign the respective agreements that would turn the missions, the acequias (colonial water ditches), the Espada Aqueduct, and the Espada Dam over to the National Park Service; the federal government took formal custody of these sites and responsibility for their maintenance, their protection, and the interpretation of the grounds and all their appurtenant structures. (The church buildings and other Church facilities remained for the exclusive use of the parishes.) It was a historic day, culminating a long and often difficult struggle to make the missions into an attraction of national appeal. Their status as a national park continues to lend the missions a level of national priority that borders on the sacrosanct; national parks have ranked among the nation’s most sacred places from the time that the first parks were created in the nineteenth century.58 Their priority has allowed the missions                  ; 

to receive budgetary appropriations that have in fact rescued them from certain extinction brought about by deterioration, encroachment, and abuse. The park service not only brings with it the financial resources and technical expertise needed for the continued preservation and restoration of the missions, it also crystallizes the political will at both the local and national levels to give the missions the greatest degree of support. National park status secures their place in the national heritage and alleviates fears about protecting them in the future. Indeed, the missions have joined the ranks of America’s most sacred sites.59 But their newly found prestige is not without its consequences for local communities. In particular, the shift in the significance of the missions from the local to the national has involved an ‘‘archaicization’’ of the mission communities that continue to practice their religion there. In other words, the mission communities have become archaic artifacts in the context of the focus on their historical importance; their presence at the missions as ongoing, contentious communities of worship pales in contrast to their value as archaic relics of the past. Thus entrusting the missions to the National Park Service folded them into a national narrative that elides their role as contemporary sites of religious worship. They have become instead monuments to a national heritage based upon an unchanging past that visitors can still observe every week in the mission churches. The result has been significant for the local parish communities at a variety of levels. Physical displacements are among the most obvious effects on local folks. The National Park Service has actively pursued acquisition efforts to secure lands in and around the mission sites. This has meant the loss of homes and businesses for numerous residents of the mission communities, some of whose families had been there for generations. Many of these residents encountered confusion, misunderstandings, and frustration in the process. Some even resisted their relocation, but to no avail. Esther Pacheco, for instance, was forced out of her home adjacent to Mission San José to make way for a parking lot at the new visitor center. She had shared the house for twenty-five years with her husband Daniel and their children; it had been in her husband’s family for generations. She expressed relief that her husband did not live to experience the eviction. Daniel Pacheco died less than a year before the fifteen-year battle with the government came to an end.60 A more subtle but perhaps more momentous result has been the National Park Service’s tendency to make the parish communities into historical artifacts designated as ‘‘living parishes’’ that animate the historical spaces of the  ;                 

missions. The distinction between contemporary communities of worship and archaicized living parishes carries implications for balancing the needs of parishioners with the expectations of visitors. Moreover, it is not a simple matter of balancing religious needs with secular needs, for parishioners and Church officials themselves cross the boundaries between worshipers and tourists. The National Park Service has long viewed the continued presence of religious communities at the missions as a positive cultural resource. A feasibility study that it commissioned in  noted that the continuance of active Roman Catholic churches at the missions was ‘‘generally desirable’’: ‘‘Not only do the missions function as centers of religious worship, they also serve as social and cultural foci of the surrounding communities. Thus, they continue in much the same role as they did historically. To eliminate these functions would not only reduce these monuments to dead relics of their past, but would also precipitate serious repercussions within the communities themselves.’’ 61 In other words, from the perspective of the park service, archaicizing these parish communities facilitates the display of religious heritage in south Texas without disturbing local interests.62 Church officials encourage the archaicization of the parish communities at the missions, transforming them into museum pieces that enhance the park service’s efforts at historical interpretation. At the same time, however, they recognize the religious needs of these communities and of the individual parishioners who make the missions their religious homes. Certainly, officials of the archdiocese profess a sincere interest in perpetuating these communities of worship while promoting the missions as historic treasures.63 Thus on the one hand they have sought to eliminate anything that might inhibit religious life at the missions. But at the same time their desire to preserve the missions as monuments to the Church’s long history in south Texas requires a pragmatic approach toward balancing visitors’ expectations with parishioners’ needs. In his role as the Church’s representative at the missions, Father Janacek has always sought to balance the uninhibited practice of religion with the practical realities of religious life at popular tourist attractions; indeed, he has been a constant force for compromise, and he has made the arrangement with the park service work.64 His testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Parks and Recreation in September  indicated his willingness to concede that the reality of maintaining parishes in a national park means limiting the use of the churches for parish purposes. But he views these limitations merely as inconveniences, not as irreconcilable problems.65                  ; 

Despite the threat of inconvenience and occasional disputes, a new era began for the missions in . Successive ribbon cuttings at all four missions on the Christian holy day of Good Friday, April , beginning at Mission Concepción in the morning and ending with Mission San Juan in the early afternoon, officially opened the new park.66 Later that afternoon, a ferocious thunderstorm swept through San Antonio and tore the roof off of a storage building in the compound at Mission San Juan. Inside were materials belonging to the parish, although as of that day the building had become the responsibility of the National Park Service. Father Janacek took it as a sign from above, ‘‘a good kind of omen,’’ an initial test of the cooperation between Church and state. Neither the park service nor the archdiocese had work crews available to repair the damage on that Good Friday afternoon, so the park superintendent himself climbed up on the damaged building alongside the parish priest, and together they covered up the gaping hole. ‘‘And so,’’ Janacek recounts of that first challenge that initiated the new relationship, ‘‘to me it seemed like Jesus was saying, ‘All right, you guys, if you’re going to work together, then better have at it.’’’ 67 At least to those of a faithful mind, divine consent seemed to sanction the cooperation of Church and state at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. It also gave blessing to the situation of the missions and their religious communities in the marketplace of the tourist economy. Continuing down the path established unequivocally at the HemisFair celebration, religion at the missions today finds itself allied tangibly with the spirit of capitalism. Not unlike the famous flying Indians, religious life continues to bring the tourist crowds to San Antonio.

 ;                 

 

Inside the National Park Following decades of neglect and deterioration—and decades more of preservation and restoration—the missions of San Antonio have come alive again. The compound yards reverberate beneath the tired feet of weary tourists, the convento corridors echo the slick enthusiasm of tour operators leading attentive visitors through the mission story, and the churches fill each week with worshipers gathered to celebrate the Catholic Mass. Visitors come by the busloads, on foot, in cars, pedaling bicycles; well over a million of them arrive at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park each year.1 As they traverse the spaces of the park, the tourist visitors encounter the communities that frequent these missions year round. Most of the community residents and parishioners of the missions live in ambivalent relation to the visitors who come to see their churches and who sometimes join the resident congregations in worship. On one hand, residents display great pride in their mission churches and willingly share their enthusiasm with outsiders. On the other hand, worshiping inside the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park puts a strain on the parish communities in terms of both their religious practices and their financial well-being. Nevertheless, most Catholics of the missions would never consider giving up their mission for a more tranquil and less burdensome place to live and worship. Nor would the National Park Service encourage pa

rishioners to abandon their churches at the missions. Certainly, the presence of these communities of worship complicates the management of the park and generates what sometimes seems to be a never-ending series of crises. Yet these communities lend an interpretive force rarely found at historical sites; they represent a key cultural resource of the park. In fact, the living parish communities were crucial to the park service’s initial interest in the San Antonio missions in the s, and they continue to add an animating dimension to the mission churches.2 As a cultural resource, the living parishes at the park contribute to the production of a civic space in which a national identity can be narrated. But as dynamic communities of worship, they produce their own spaces of sacramental practice at the missions. The inhabitants of these two sets of spaces, the civic and the sacramental, share the missions—sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in conflict, often quietly disregarding one another. As visitors move through the mission spaces, they encounter a multiplicity of places and a variety of characters. In fact, part of the park’s appeal is the range of experiences produced in it. But this multiplicity is also a symptom of the ambivalence of the identities that underlie the production of the missions’ spaces. National identities, ethnic identities, and religious identities all intersect in these spaces and in the lives of those who inhabit them. These identities sometimes complement one another but at other times conflict. An ambivalence results that generates within the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park a simultaneity of civic spaces, sacramental spaces, aesthetic spaces, and endless other spaces. These spaces and identities, along with their multivalent meanings, proliferate unevenly; their prioritization shifts with changes in authority, but also with the expectations and experiences of the people who encounter and interact with the spaces of the park. A tour of the park highlights the interplay of ambivalent identities and spaces there. Civic spaces controlled primarily by the federal government under the agency of the National Park Service appear as a museum that narrates a national identity, making the missions’ histories a prominent part of the story of the American nation. Of particular interest is the role of religion in the park service’s official interpretive efforts, and especially the status of the ‘‘living parishes’’ that continue to worship in the mission churches in these interpretations. Concerns about the separation of Church and state continue to inflect the park service’s approach to dealing with religion at the missions. The park service finesses this dilemma by archaicizing the contemporary religious communities, in effect depicting them as ethnographic  ;                     

 . The San Antonio Missions National Historical Park stretching along the San Antonio River on the south side of the city

objects for display that conform to the interpretive narratives proffered by park rangers. The living parishes serve as relics of an archaic past.3 But the religious communities inhabit another set of spaces, the sacramental spaces that sustain them at the missions. The individuals who constitute these communities sometimes dispute the official interpretations of the National Park Service. They claim a more authentic attachment to the missions, and they regard the representatives of the park service as outsiders who could never understand the history and communities of San Antonio’s missions as intimately as those whose roots go back for generations. Competing interpretations and outright conflicts also lurk within the parish communities. Bound as they are by the sacramental purposes of their association, factions within these groups nevertheless differ on questions of practice, meaning, and the interpretation of their religious lives. On occasion, their differences erupt in vitriolic, sometimes violent confrontations. The lines that delineate factions within the parishes also become the lines by which the factions attempt to demarcate insiders and outsiders. At stake in these disputes are questions of identity, the answers to which also respect lines of religion and ethnicity. A third set of spaces produced at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park emerges in the intersection of its civic and sacramental spaces. These are the aesthetic spaces that draw tourists to the missions. The thoroughgoing aestheticization of these sites makes the missions exemplary modern places where the civic and sacramental dimensions commingle with marketplace forces to produce alluring spaces that appeal to visitors and residents alike. Emotional responses to these spaces generate aesthetic attachments that make San Antonio’s missions something more than merely an instrument for narrating national civic discourse, celebrating a Catholic religious heritage, or articulating various ethnic identities. The multiplicity of places, identities, and purposes at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park resonates with James Clifford’s view of the modern museum as ‘‘an ongoing historical, political, moral relationship.’’ 4 Certainly, like all places, museums begin and end in social relationships. Consequently, they are never static. As historical, political, and moral circumstances continue to unfold, the inherent relationships that constitute museum displays change as well. The ambivalence of the changes produces multiple spaces and identities in what Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls ‘‘the agency of display.’’ 5 Something more than old buildings is on display at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, where living religion finds ways to live with living tourism.  ;                     

;

Civic Space: A Place to Narrate the Nation

‘‘I was born here. My family has lived nearby for countless generations.’’ Thus begins the narration of the film shown every half hour in the main visitor center at Mission San José.6 A history of continuity, visitors quickly learn, makes the missions a part of the heritage of all Americans. Their buildings are older than the nation itself, and the people who inhabit the communities surrounding the missions have been here even longer, perhaps for as long as a thousand centuries, the film suggests. On display at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park are the buildings, the culture, and the people that have survived the centuries and have forged the American experience of south Texas. The sweet voice of the narrator, San Antonio singer Tish Hinojosa, returns in the closing sequence of the National Park Service film: ‘‘I hear many voices here on the grounds of the mission, and I ask my daughter, ‘What do you think happened to the mission Indians?’ She says, ‘Oh mama, they all died.’ Then I tell her to go look in the mirror.’’ The theme of continuity pervades the official narrative of the missions as it is presented by the National Park Service. The park service’s film begins and ends by emphasizing that today’s mission inhabitants descend from ‘‘countless generations’’ of people who lived in the area around San Antonio. The ‘‘Official Map and Guide’’ that the park service distributes to visitors exclaims: ‘‘Today, these missions represent an almost unbroken connection with the past. Carrying the legacy of generations of American Indians and Hispanics, they live still as active parishes.’’ And even the park’s interpretive rangers allude to continuity as the legacy of most compelling interest offered at the missions. Unlike old buildings elsewhere in the American Southwest, the San Antonio missions continue to host vibrant communities even today.7 Stressing the theme of continuity solves two interpretive problems for the National Park Service. First, it makes the colonial past relevant by projecting the communities worshiping today at the mission churches into an earlier era. In other words, the colonial mission communities are seen as directly relevant to contemporary American life because they bequeathed a heritage to the people who can be observed there today. At the same time, the emphasis on continuity solves the problem of explaining the presence of Catholic parishes operating inside a national park. These parishes appear not as contemporary communities of worship, which would raise questions about the separation of Church and state, but as archaic relics from the past; they become, in effect, living museum pieces. Thus the theme of continuity                      ; 

archaicizes the contemporary worship communities, which in turn lends authoritative relevance to the old buildings while dodging the sticky issue of Church and state separation.8 The official interpretations of the San Antonio missions by the National Park Service focus on the colonial period, when the missions first flourished. According to the park service’s general management plan and development concept plan, prepared in  and still used today to guide park development and operations, ‘‘The primary interpretive theme is The Historical Significance of the San Antonio Missions on the Texas/Coahuila Frontier during the Spanish Colonial Period.’’ Interpretation at each of the four mission sites emphasizes a different aspect of this general theme. Thus at Mission San José, interpretation concentrates on both ‘‘the Mission as a Social Center’’ and ‘‘the Protective Character of the Missions’’; at Mission Concepción, ‘‘the Mission as a Religious Center’’ dominates the interpretive narrative; interpretation at Mission San Juan highlights ‘‘the Mission as an Economic Center’’; and at Mission Espada, ‘‘the Mission as a Vocational Education Center’’ is the focus. Interpretative efforts at the individual sites relate these subthemes to the park’s general theme ‘‘so that visitors will understand that each of [the themes] is only one aspect of the Spanish frontier mission.’’ In addition, the displays and guided tours at the park present ‘‘the chronology, architectural history, archaeology, and the general sitespecific history of each individual site, including the farmlands and ranches.’’ The goal, according to the general management plan, is to leave visitors with ‘‘not only an appreciation of the mission’s unique history and resources but also knowledge of how that mission relates to the other three missions and to the park’s primary interpretive theme.’’ 9 Religion enters the interpretive matrix at multiple points. Interpreters of the missions cannot avoid the simple fact that these places were, above all, religious missions. Whether the narrative focuses on the social, economic, or educational aspects of mission life, it always relates back to the religious impetus of these communities. After all, religion motivated the missionaries who established the missions, and it is the main reason that visitors continue to come today; as park superintendent Steve Whitesell points out, the church buildings are the key attraction that visitors expect to see.10 With the churches receiving the most attention, park service interpreters cannot ignore the religious underpinnings of the colonial enterprise. But the delicate issue of the separation of Church and state remains a constant concern. Employees of the National Park Service reveal an acute awareness of the fine line between interpreting the historical, architectural,  ;                     

and social roles of religion at the missions and advocating (or denigrating) the religious precepts, practices, and beliefs of the Catholic Church and its adherents. The challenges of discretion, moreover, are felt at both the institutional and the personal levels. At Mission Concepción, for instance, the interpretive narrative concentrates on the mission as a religious center. But rather than discuss religion in terms of a particular community’s system of beliefs and practices, interpreters depict religion at Mission Concepción as an underlying sociological force that contributed to a cohesive harmony. The descriptive brochure for Mission Concepción includes a section on ‘‘Religion: Teaching a New Sense of Community.’’ It suggests that the Franciscans used religious sacraments to teach native neophytes how to get along harmoniously in the mission community. Baptism, for instance, tied a child to his or her padrinos, or godparents, who became responsible for the child’s welfare if the child’s parents died. ‘‘This practice,’’ the interpretive brochure explains, ‘‘connected the larger community through a shared responsibility for its members.’’ 11 Interpretive rangers reiterate this relationship between religion and community harmony by mentioning in their guided tours of the mission how the sacraments contributed to the community’s well-being.12 The emphasis on harmony also appears implicitly in the visual images displayed at the mission. The park service’s permanent display at Mission Concepción includes color illustrations portraying romanticized visions of mission life. One of these shows strong, healthy Indians listening with rapt attention while a Franciscan missionary, sitting in the lush prairie grass and leaning against a tree, reads from the Bible. It strikes the viewer as a gentle pastoral scene of a religious community built upon the missionaries’ benevolent paternalism. Interpretive rangers try to avoid presenting an entirely romanticized picture to visitors at the park, however. Katie Bliss, formerly the site advocate for the National Park Service at Mission Concepción, told me that she would close her tours by talking about the disadvantages for native peoples of living in mission communities; she would ask visitors to consider the rapid spread of diseases that decimated indigenous populations and how mission life meant the loss of indigenous religious traditions and cultures. Bliss hoped to leave her tour groups with a balanced picture of colonial mission life.13 The sort of picture that interpretive rangers leave visitors with depends a lot on the individual ranger. Rangers take seriously their role as agents of the federal government, but they do not leave their personal sense of national,                      ; 

Mission Concepción in . (Photograph by the author)

ethnic, and religious identity at home. For some, like Daniel L. Cantú of Mission San Juan, all of these identities are tied up with the missions. A park service employee, a Catholic, and a descendent of Native American peoples, Cantú says of his position, ‘‘I’m in the center looking three directions.’’ He continues, ‘‘I’ve got a three-way split here that I’m working on, that I’m having to deal with on the personal level.’’ 14 The personal challenges of split identity can become particularly acute when park rangers address the issue of religion. Attention to the separation of Church and state tends to encourage interpreters to be constantly conscious of their own attitudes concerning religion in general and Catholi ;                     

cism in particular. But sometimes their personal views slip unconsciously into their interpretations. Cherry Payne, formerly the chief interpreter at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, tells of auditing a volunteer docent who referred to the Virgin Mary as ‘‘the Blessed Virgin.’’ Payne explains, ‘‘That’s not a neutral position to take. . . . But by the same token, he himself may feel uncomfortable not referring to it that way.’’ 15 Katie Bliss mentioned her own efforts to cultivate self-awareness regarding religious biases. She was raised as a Catholic, and although she no longer actively practices Catholicism, she says of her religious upbringing, ‘‘[It] makes it more difficult for me to separate what I’m saying as religious or secular.’’ 16 Anna Martinez-Amos, who served as site advocate at Mission Espada, also brought a Catholic background to her work, although she says that now she’s ‘‘Catholic-light,’’ by which she means Episcopalian.17 She spoke of the anxiety she felt in discussing religion with park visitors, especially when inside the church. Martinez-Amos regards the church at Mission Espada as a sacred place; hence she would always remove her ranger hat when entering the church, and at times she would even pray when she was there alone. But she also took seriously the separation of Church and state and preferred not to accompany visitors into the church. When she did happen to go inside with visitors, she would limit her discussion to architecture or restoration. But sometimes visitors would put her on the spot. She tells of one such incident in which she came upon two older couples sitting in the church one afternoon. They asked her about the stations of the cross displayed on the church walls; they were unfamiliar with Catholic practices and wanted to know what the images were used for. Martinez-Amos tried explaining the use and significance of the stations of the cross, but she ‘‘was just getting more and more uncomfortable.’’ She recalls: ‘‘I was trying to answer their questions[, but] I was being rude. . . . [Finally] I said, ‘I’m uncomfortable talking about this because I don’t like talking about the religious aspects of the church, etc., because of the separation of Church and state.’ Thank God these people [replied], ‘Oh, well, sure, I can see why.’ And thank God they weren’t rolling their eyes in their heads like so many people do [when we explain the separation of Church and state].’’ 18 Uncomfortable encounters like this one made Martinez-Amos reluctant to take groups of visitors into the church. She preferred to avoid having to explain why the separation of Church and state applies to the mission churches. For her, it was simply easier to stay away from the church whenever visitors were inside. Martinez-Amos’s reluctance to accompany visitors into the church building was not unique among the rangers at San Antonio Missions National                      ; 

Historical Park. In fact, only in recent years have rangers been permitted to take tour groups into the churches. Until , when Superintendent Steve Whitesell began working at the park, guidelines established by the National Park Service prohibited its employees from entering any ‘‘non-secular’’ buildings while in uniform. Concern about the separation of Church and state made early park officials exceptionally cautious about giving the appearance that the park service was promoting the Catholic Church. Even the park superintendent did not dare enter church buildings while in uniform.19 But Superintendent Whitesell realized that unreasonable concern about the separation of Church and state impaired visitors’ experiences of the park. Rangers were taking tour groups to the church doors and then leaving them on their own to go into the church. Usually, the guided tour would continue as the visitors exited the church, but the pace of the narrative had been interrupted. The new superintendent regarded this situation as unacceptable. He instituted a policy that allows the park rangers to accompany tour groups into the churches as long as they limit their discussions to architectural features. ‘‘We’re very careful,’’ Whitesell insists, ‘‘not to promote Catholicism in that effort, but rather simply to point out the features of the church and take the visitors through and let them see the insides of those churches and keep the continuity to the visits.’’ 20 The change in policy, however, did not mean that the interpretive rangers rushed to guide tour groups through the churches. In fact, a number of rangers still resist entering the churches. Mark Tezel, for instance, finds that after years of working under the old rules, the new policy causes him some discomfort. He explains that he regards the church sanctuary as a sacred place that should not be disrupted.21 But not all the rangers exhibit reticence about taking tour groups into the churches. On the tour I took in December  at Mission San José, Ranger Alfred G. Davila took us into the church, where he pointed out some of the architectural features. The tour actually ended inside the church sanctuary. Davila admitted that ‘‘some rangers don’t bring people inside the church,’’ but he told us that going into the sanctuary helps to ‘‘establish a physical connection to the history of the s’’ while at the same time reminding visitors that these churches remain active religious communities.22 Likewise, Daniel L. Cantú of Mission San Juan has no hesitancy about going into the church building. ‘‘To me it’s completely secular,’’ he says, and he explains that during the park’s regular hours, the church ‘‘becomes a prop, a building which enhances the story of the site.’’ He is careful to respect any religious uses of the space, but he says,  ;                     

‘‘If there’s no one in there [worshiping], then I have no problem walking in there and talking to [visitors].’’ For Cantú, however, this attitude requires him to delineate his various identities. With his park service uniform on, the church becomes an auditorium: ‘‘As an auditorium I can stand in there and give the history of the missions, talk about how this church was established, how they were built, how the architecture was done, the paintings on the walls, without crossing that line. But I have to . . . erase from my mind that I am Catholic and that I am part of the Indian people here.’’ 23 The park administration realizes that the rangers bring their personal identities to their work. The guidelines are therefore purposely flexible, giving discretion to each individual regarding whether or not to take tour groups into the mission churches. Park officials acknowledge that rangers with Catholic backgrounds in particular may feel ‘‘caught between what the bureaucracy wants and what their personal faith dictates.’’ 24 If a ranger feels uncomfortable taking visitors inside, then he or she is not forced to do so. As the former chief interpreter put it, ‘‘I want people to have autonomy. I want them to figure out their own programs. I don’t want us to script it for them, and I want them to do things within the constraints of their personal values.’’ 25 The rangers’ individual values, however, acquiesce to the collective values of a national identity. The space of the park is a civic space where narratives of national unity and common heritage find currency. Individual ranger presentations may not be scripted, but they conform to certain guidelines and particular narrative goals. In fact, the interpretation of religion at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park makes an emphatic statement that bolsters a nationalistic American identity. Even concern over the separation of Church and state serves to consolidate the state’s role as sole arbiter in matters of religion; ultimately, the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court has the final say about what forms of religious expression are legitimate in the national park. Furthermore, the careful separation of Church and state tends to privilege national citizenship over religious allegiance.26 Thus when rangers refuse to cross the church thresholds and accompany their tour groups into the spaces of religion, they reinforce the nationalistic purpose of the park. But the nationalism performed and narrated in the civic spaces of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park is not nativist. Park service officials seek to refute any nativist claims on American identity. They dispute the assumption that American history involves only northern Europeans who settled first on the East Coast and moved westward. They em                     ; 

phasize ‘‘the incredible influence that the Hispanic culture brought to North America, not just here but nationwide.’’ 27 In other words, the park service at the San Antonio missions envisions an inclusive national identity that recognizes multidirectional histories and the contributions of America’s diverse peoples. In presenting its inclusive interpretation of diversity in American history, the National Park Service purposely avoids another San Antonio narrative that has played a key role in American identity: the story of the Alamo and the war for Texas independence.28 The Alamo’s separation from the other missions, then, turns out to be more than physical; the Alamo and the other missions have come to represent two very different historical narratives that advocate two opposing views of national identity. In the most vulgar interpretations of the story of Mission San Antonio, the Alamo represents a nativist, often racist, sense of Anglo-American triumph and superiority, whereas the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park presents a multicultural, multiracial picture of harmony and shared heritage.29 Thus, drawing on closely related, interdependent historical contexts, these two places narrate two very different identities for the American nation. At San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, the effort to revise widely accepted narratives of American national identity often leads interpreters to complicate these narratives, or at least to emphasize the complexities of a purported historical reality. The park service, according to park superintendent Steve Whitesell, does not want to leave visitors with a static, ‘‘freeze-frame’’ impression of history at the missions, one that suggests that history ended at some point in the distant past. What visitors find at the park is not only the eighteenth-century story but nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century stories as well.30 The park service’s emphasis on the dynamism of history is sensible, because in so-called living parishes, the dynamics of history are unavoidable. These dynamics become most apparent when visitors venture into the church interiors. Rangers who choose to take their tour groups into the church spaces are faced with the challenge of explaining the disjunction between the historical and the contemporary. Active Catholic communities of worship occupy all four mission churches, and the buildings must accommodate their liturgical and practical needs. Hence visitors see liturgical objects and seasonal decorations reflecting the religious life of these communities. Yet church services, weddings, funerals, and parish festivals all invoke an authentic mission life that facilitates, rather than hampers, the park service’s interpretative efforts. They provide park rangers with a living  ;                     

reality that enlivens the history of the missions. As Mark Tezel told me, ‘‘These places are not dead.’’ 31 The inclusion of living parishes in official interpretations accentuates the theme of continuity by archaicizing the contemporary communities, making them into historical artifacts that have survived from the era of Spanish colonial occupation. ‘‘There’s still people here,’’ Tezel notes. ‘‘They’re still living here. Their descendants are still living here. And that’s what I always use the church for . . ., to explain to the visitors that this is not a stagnant place, this place is still living and the people that come here will claim ancestry to them. Their ancestors were the first ones to worship in these churches and they’re still worshiping today. It’s a living, breathing story.’’ 32 More importantly, however, this story serves the nationalistic imperative of the park service; it subsumes the actual present by emphasizing that it is the heritage of the past. In doing so, the narrative of continuity works to simplify mission history through erasure. By ignoring both the decades in which the missions were abandoned and the more recent displacements of local people, the park service situates the present as an extension of the past. Looking at the faces of children at play on the mission grounds today, visitors see that the mission Indians did not in fact all die. The parish communities that still worship in the mission churches seem to legitimate the story of the American people’s historical diversity by recalling the romantic days of the Spanish colonies along the northern border of New Spain.

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Sacramental Space: A Place for Communities of Worship

The parish communities that worship inside the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park do not occupy only the romanticized civic spaces of the park. These communities also inhabit their own places at the missions, places distinct from the civic spaces that are part of park service narratives. The spatial layout of the missions reinforces the distinction of places there. At three of the four mission sites, parishioners use separate parking areas and separate entrances to the mission compounds; moreover, they do not share office spaces or other administrative facilities with the park service. Consequently, within the mission spaces there are two very distinct places, one for visitors and the other for parishioners.33 The spaces that parishioners occupy at the missions are sacramental places of religious practice and communal interaction. They encompass a variety of buildings and structures, including rectories, community social halls,                      ; 

classrooms, and administrative offices, but parish life remains focused on the mission churches. They are small, even cramped places, especially the churches at Mission Espada and Mission San Juan. But they reign as the sacred ground of the missions. Indeed, inside each of the four churches the Blessed Sacrament remains reserved at all times, even during periods dedicated solely to visitation by tourists. The holy interiors of the mission churches defy the nationalistic narratives proffered by the National Park Service; consequently, the local parishioners who occupy these places of religion speak in voices that sometimes unsettle the official versions of mission life. Many of the residents and parishioners at the missions have their own interpretations, and some regard them to be more accurate and authentic than those narrated in park service displays and tours. Mission San Juan parishioner Janie Garza asks, ‘‘Why does the national park have to ‘interpret’? Why can’t we interpret? I’m sorry to say this, but why do gringos have to interpret our culture?’’ She sees the National Park Service ‘‘interpreting the missions their own way, from their own history books, and at times not interpreting correctly what was here.’’ 34 A parishioner of Mission Espada, Margie Jimenez, also complains about the park service’s pretensions in narrating the mission story. She states: ‘‘Sometimes we would hear the rangers telling a group of kids or the tourists here, ‘And this is what happened here, and blah blah blah.’ And we would [ask], ‘. . . What does he know about that?’ My mother-in-law would say, ‘Why don’t you ask me? I know about it.’’’ 35 Parishioners and other local residents do know about it. Or at least they have a particular perspective that sometimes contradicts and sometimes affirms the official story told by the National Park Service. The most informative and revealing mission tour I experienced in San Antonio was guided by longtime resident and devoted parishioner of Mission Espada Bruno J. Martinez. Martinez and his siblings went to school at the mission in the s when it still housed a lively community. His wife lived as a child in one of the dwellings that made up the mission walls. He remembered his own childhood experiences: buying soda water at the tiny mission grocery; being sent by the nuns to the old bastion as punishment for misbehaving at school; interacting with the various animals that roamed the compound yard; and seeing the old pool hall outside the walls illuminated by lights, their electricity generated by a noisy car engine that ran late into the night. He told me about the variety of characters who populated the mission grounds in the first half of the twentieth century.36 In the archive of Martinez’s mind, the mission of old remains alive. But that archive remains  ;                     

untapped by the National Park Service. Martinez prepared note cards for our interview; he confided that it was the first time he had given a tour to an outsider. No one from the park service has asked to hear his story. Nevertheless, the representatives of the National Park Service at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park are beginning to understand the value of the immense cultural resources lodged in the memories of local residents. They have made attempts to mine these resources with oral history projects.37 And folks on both sides note the warming of relations between park service employees and local residents. For instance, despite her sometimes harsh criticisms of park policies and attitudes, Margie Jimenez concedes that to some extent ‘‘they’re getting the story.’’ 38 And Anna Martinez-Amos, formerly the park service’s site advocate at Mission Espada, describes the closeness of her personal relationship with the parish community there. ‘‘There’s some of the parishioners,’’ she relates, ‘‘where when I see them or they see me, it’s not just a hello, but it’s a hug, and a ‘How are you?’ and they ask about my kids and I ask about their families and that kind of thing.’’ 39 But besides the informal, personal relations between individual park employees and local residents, little work has been done to include parishioners in the interpretive effort at the missions. Park officials note that a few parishioners have worked as volunteer docents at the park, bringing with them ‘‘their long personal history.’’ Still, they concede, not enough has been done to integrate local voices into the official mission story.40 These local voices, moreover, do not always aspire to bolster the official presentation of the park. From the beginning, some people have resisted the intrusion of the National Park Service into their mission homes. When the archdiocese and the park service signed their cooperative agreements in February , Father Manuel Román led parish members at Mission Espada in what he called ‘‘a day of mourning for the missions.’’ They draped the little church in black cloth and held a news conference to announce, as parishioner Janie Garza remembers it, that ‘‘the day the national park took over was the beginning of the end of the San Antonio missions as communities.’’ 41 The intervening years have to some extent vindicated such dire predictions. At Mission San Juan, the residents have dispersed as the national park has absorbed their former homes and farms.42 The congregation has remained active despite the relocation of many of its members, but the attention of tourists has exacerbated internal conflicts that at times have grown exceptionally bitter, pitting brothers against sisters, uncles against nephews and nieces, even parents against their children.43 At the heart of the acri                     ; 

Mission San Juan in . (Photograph by the author)

mony is a struggle involving attachments to place and disputes over who can legitimately claim the mission for themselves.44 It brings into painful focus the complexities of identity within these parish communities. On one side of the dispute at Mission San Juan are Native American dancers, a group of ‘‘Aztec performers’’ whom Father Jorge Baistra, once the priest at the mission, had seen performing in San Antonio and invited to worship at the church when he was assigned to the newly established parish in .45 On the other side are individuals who have long worshiped at the mission. Some of these people trace their ancestry to the Coahuiltecan Indians who inhabited the missions in colonial times; others are Hispanics and Anglos. Most have affiliations with the mission church that go back several generations. The dispute pits an imagined historical community against the present community, which is cemented by cultural practices. The Native American dancers defend their right to participate in the religious life of the mission on the basis of an ancestral heritage that links them to the Coahuiltecans who originally inhabited the mission. This indigenous identity, however, rests on genealogy rather than on a specific cultural tradition. And genealogies can be disputed.46 But cultural practices, especially those of a religious nature, raise trickier issues that suggest the ambivalences of identity. The obvious question, one voiced by parishioners opposed to the Indian  ;                     

dancers, is whether the dancers should even have a place in the Catholic Church. Their dances and other religious practices, according to their detractors in the parish, amount to ‘‘pagan rituals.’’ But the dancers, supported by Father Baistra, finesse the ambivalence of their religious identity by insisting that these practices demonstrate the diversity within the Catholic Church; Father Baistra suggests that Pope John Paul II himself condones and encourages this sort of ‘‘liturgical diversity,’’ which celebrates ‘‘the genius and culture of the different peoples.’’ 47 Although they look like natives, Father Baistra seems to imply, these dancers are Catholics. But their practices emphasize native elements more than Catholic traditions. On the first Sunday of every month through much of Father Baistra’s tenure, they performed ‘‘ceremonial dances’’ at Mission San Juan following a ritual of purification that they carried out in a sweat lodge behind the church on the banks of the San Antonio River. Their dances would begin inside the church during the regular Mass, and then they would move outside into the compound yard. Dressed in a colorful, eclectic mix of nativeinspired costumes, the group’s members would perform what they claim are ‘‘religious dances’’ that date to ‘‘the Maya and Aztec empires’’ and ‘‘have survived the ages through Spanish colonialism, the independence of Texas, and into the millenium.’’ 48 While the dances may have survived, they did not escape Christianization. In defense of their participation in Catholic religious services at the missions, these Indians characterize their native performances as fundamentally Christian. In , for instance, when park service officials complained about a tipi set up in the Mission San Juan compound over Memorial Day weekend, Isaac Alvarez Cardenas, a ‘‘Native American Parishioner,’’ responded by explaining (in a letter also signed by Father Baistra), ‘‘Father Jorge Baistra invited my tribal family and relations to celebrate the ‘Great Spirit’ on the Pentecost, this is a holy day of obligation, and we were in vigil adoration, to share with the parishioners this cultural lifeway in the Catholic church.’’ 49 When questioned about the appropriateness of their presence in the religious places of the mission churches, these Indians became members in good standing of the Catholic Church by couching descriptions of their practices in a Christian language. But sometimes it seems a bit of a hermeneutical stretch, as when Alvarez Cardenas went on to explain that following their ceremony, the coals from the fire were ‘‘spread to represent the Sun and the Moon, that also represent the Virgin of Our Lady of Guadalupe.’’ 50 The reference to Guadalupe, the linking of native ceremonies to the                      ; 

Christian celebration of Pentecost, the ceremonial dances that begin inside the church and continue outside in the compound yard, all of these seek to create a place of Native American identity within the religious space of the Catholic Church. But other parishioners deny the legitimacy of this identity; they regard the dancers as Native American pretenders. They maintain a degree of vigilance to keep their place of religion free from the illegitimate intrusions of non-Catholic elements; according to eight parishioners who wrote to Archbishop Patrick Flores, the Native American dances and ceremonies represent ‘‘a theatrical presentation that has no meaning or right in [their] Holy mass.’’ 51 Keeping the Indian dancers out helps to sustain these parishioners’ sense of Catholic place at the mission. Even as they seek to keep apparent intruders out, these communities must also contend with their own ambivalent identities as they strive to retain the people whom they regard as their legitimate members. Generational differences, for instance, take their toll; young people are drifting away from the missions. According to anecdotal perceptions, this is due in part to demographic trends driven by economic needs. The erosion of the farming economy around the missions, in particular, drives many young people to find jobs elsewhere in the city, in other counties, and even out of state. They go where the jobs are, and they take their families with them. The older folks remain behind to perpetuate whatever is left of the mission communities.52 The mission communities remain largely Hispanic.53 But generational linguistic differences also erode the traditional communities. Children of Hispanic families often lose the native language as they assimilate to the majority culture of anglophone America.54 In Hispanic Catholic communities, linguistic obstacles keep young people out of the churches. Margie Jimenez laments the fact that her children stay away from church services at Mission Espada because, as she emphatically states, ‘‘It’s in Spanish and they don’t understand it.’’ 55 Jimenez explains that her son avoids the Spanishlanguage masses at the mission because he finds them ‘‘boring’’ and difficult to understand. He prefers the English-language Protestant services at his friends’ churches. Jimenez would not object if her children wished to change their religious affiliations, but she would prefer that their choices be based on legitimate religious grounds, not on language preference.56 Some parents within the parish communities are willing to give up Spanish-language liturgies in order to keep their children in the churches. They at least want to make the masses more accessible to their children’s lin-

 ;                     

guistic proficiencies. At Mission Espada, a petition circulated among parishioners for the Sunday noon Mass to be made bilingual because, according to Margie Jimenez, ‘‘that’s when all the kids go.’’ 57 Rather than dilute the communal bonds, it appears that the intrusion of English might work to keep the Hispanic parish community together. The challenge, then, for the communities of worship at the missions is to maintain a sacramental place of religion within the civic space of the national park. In these religious places, parishioners can reaffirm their religious identity as Catholics. But permeable boundaries mark these spaces, and the religious communities see outsiders crossing those lines every day. They share their churches with others, with the National Park Service in particular, and with the endless stream of tourists that flows through the mission spaces.

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Shared Space: A Place for Tourists

Parishioners who grew up at the missions have always seen tourist visitors in their churches.58 Since , however, visitation has intensified due to the efforts of the National Park Service. The cooperative agreements that turned management and interpretation of the missions over to the park service also ceded the priority of religion at the missions to the priorities of tourism. The parish communities have been willing partners in this shift, although some community members have regretted, and even resisted, its consequences. But despite their early skepticism, most parishioners have learned to live cooperatively with the National Park Service. Many, in fact, express their appreciation of the care and protection that the rangers provide the missions.59 The presence of these rangers and the constant flow of visitors remind parishioners and local residents that they share the spaces of their mission churches with tourists. In fact, to a large extent, touristic values and practices determine the parishioners’ own experiences of the missions in both positive and negative ways. Parishioners serve as willing hosts for tourist visitors; they perform their religion for the benefit of visitors seeking authentic experiences of the missions; they collect the dollars left by the tourist crowds passing through their churches; they put up with constant intrusions into the intimacies of their religious practices; and on occasion, they become tourists in their own spaces of worship. Indeed, parishioners at the

                     ; 

four mission churches of San Antonio Missions National Historical Park can never escape the pervasive force of tourism that has justified the missions’ continued existence. Certainly, the invasion of touristic practices into the sacramental lives of parish communities brings about moments of consternation, tension, and at times even open conflict. Tourists come to the missions every day of the year; the largest crowds arrive on the weekends, when the religious life of the church communities is most active. For parishioners, there is no avoiding contact with outsiders. And while the great majority of the tourist visitors pass through the missions respectfully, with empathetic concern for the religious lives of the local parishes, some tourists display a disturbing level of insensitivity and disregard for the religious practitioners and even for the privacy of those clerics who live on the mission grounds. Moreover, the dirt and refuse left by the large numbers of visitors who come through the church doors week after week places an unusual maintenance burden on parishioners. And as the business manager at Mission San José is quick to point out, the standards that government and community organizations impose for maintaining historic authenticity compound exponentially the time, effort, and expense of maintenance.60 Most of the burden falls on parishioners. The National Park Service takes responsibility for maintaining all ‘‘secular’’ areas of the missions, including the lawns and landscaping as well as all non-church buildings and structures, but it is prohibited from contributing in any way to the repair or maintenance of religious areas. So it is up to the parishioners to keep the churches clean and repaired. For major structural repairs and maintenance projects, the archdiocese usually secures outside help from groups like Los Compadres, the San Antonio Conservation Society, and other organizations interested in historic preservation.61 But day-to-day maintenance falls to the members of the parish communities. In addition to causing wear and tear on the physical structures at the missions, the presence of tourist visitors sometimes wears on the nerves of parishioners and residents. Olga Gonzalez tells of tourists who would enter the church at Mission Concepción through the sacristy during Mass and go right up to the altar while a church full of worshipers watched the insensitive behavior in disbelief. Some tourists would even take pictures from the altar while parishioners knelt in prayer. Gonzalez put an end to disruptions of this sort by locking the sacristy door whenever religious services were being held. Now the church ushers allow visitors to go in and get their pictures before the Mass begins. Some tourists still take a snapshot during the  ;                     

religious services, but, as Gonzalez says, ‘‘They’re sitting in the pew. So it doesn’t matter.’’ 62 Margie Jimenez tells of rude visitors to Mission Espada. One private tour guide in particular had a habit of disrupting the church service on Sunday mornings by opening the door and shouting to his tour group, ‘‘Well, you can’t come in right now because they’re having Mass.’’ But he would continue with his tour there in the doorway while worshipers tried to go on with their Mass. Jimenez says, ‘‘We would just slam the door in his face.’’ Eventually, the tour company changed its schedules, and the offending guide stopped bringing groups to Mission Espada on Sunday mornings.63 Young visitors also pose a challenge to the tranquility of the missions. Every spring, thousands of schoolkids descend on the missions for their annual school tours. They come to witness the places of history, to attach a spatial reality to the historical narratives recited in their classrooms. But with their abundant energies, they can be a nuisance to parishioners. They take special delight, for instance, in the votive candles set up on racks inside the churches. After they pass through the church, it is not uncommon to find every candle on the rack lit up. And Church officials cannot simply extinguish them, because, as one parishioner explains, they ‘‘have no way of knowing which one’s the prayerful one and which was [lit by] a little kid.’’ 64 The pyromaniac tendencies of young visitors, however, seem rather benign compared to some visitors’ literal invasions of the private places of mission residents. Clergy live at three of the missions (Franciscans reside at both Mission San José and Mission Espada, and the diocesan priest lives on the grounds at Mission San Juan), and their contact with curious tourists at times seems interminable. ‘‘You’re a goldfish,’’ complains one of the resident friars. ‘‘You’re in the bowl for everybody to watch.’’ Their doors must remain locked at all times to prevent the intrusions of tourists who ignore privacy signs and proceed to walk right into private quarters whenever they find an open door. The same resident friar tells of a stranger he found one day standing inside the friars’ private quarters; when questioned, the intruder explained, ‘‘Oh, I just walked in and the door was open.’’ The friar replied, ‘‘Well, this is our home. You’re in our living room.’’ 65 Yet despite the intrusions, regardless of visitors’ insensitivity and occasional rudeness, parishioners welcome the tourist visitors to their mission churches. Some even seek out opportunities to engage visitors in conversations, to share with them the little details of life at the missions. They invite them into their churches and ask them to join in special celebrations. They                      ; 

worry over their well-being and take an active interest in visitors’ impressions of the San Antonio missions and the communities that reside there. Most parishioners deny that they are on display for the benefit of tourists. As one resident living near Mission San Juan puts it, ‘‘Nobody’s forcing us to go there. We go there because we want to.’’ 66 And nobody is asking them to dress the part of mission residents, either. The National Park Service, in fact, has no interest in what Steve Whitesell refers to as ‘‘costume interpretation.’’ 67 Likewise, the San Antonio archdiocese of the Catholic Church has no desire to compel residents of the missions to wear costumes. Early on, it squelched calls by citizens to have the resident Franciscans wear their friars’ habits and stroll around the mission grounds in imitation of Saint Francis.68 Regardless of parishioners’ sometimes self-conscious resistance to displaying themselves as museum objects, the aesthetic appeal of their liturgical performances draws tourists to the Sunday morning masses at all four missions. Still, these performances, with one possible exception, do not amount to religious theater staged for tourists. All are legitimate celebrations of the Catholic Mass in which tourists participate alongside parishioners in Christian worship. The exception is the Mass that takes place every Sunday at Mission San José. At noon, the church fills with tourists who have come to witness the famous ‘‘mariachi Mass.’’ Blaring trumpets, the delicate sound of guitars, and the plaintive voices of mariachi singers punctuate the performance of the Mass and appeal to touristic desires to observe authenticity and sublime beauty. Afterward, the tourists crowd around the band outside the church in the convento gardens as it continues the musical performance. The Franciscan friars at Mission San José deny that their mariachi Mass plays to the tourists who jam the church every Sunday at noon. ‘‘We try in every way possible to have the liturgical norms met at that Mass as well as any other one,’’ insists a friar who served at the mission for more than two decades.69 Franciscan Herbert W. Jones, the priest currently serving the Mission San José parish, also emphasizes the liturgical and devotional dimensions of the mariachi Mass. But he concedes that its character depends on one’s perspective. ‘‘If you’re looking through [the eyes of ] the choir and the mariachis,’’ he explains, ‘‘this is liturgy. They are extremely dedicated people.’’ On the other hand, he says, ‘‘There are some people who come in, take a few pictures, and leave. So it’s very much [up to] the ones who behold the liturgy whether it is a liturgy or not. As the priest celebrating it, I consider it a liturgy.’’ 70  ;                     

Mission San José in . (Photograph by the author)

But for some of the visitors to Mission San José, the mariachis take them out of the religious space altogether; in fact, the novel liturgical style sometimes transports them across the Río Grande into a romantic fantasy of colonial Mexico. Mission San José’s former organist even brought his mother to the mariachi Mass so that she could experience Mexico without actually traveling there.71 In other words, the mariachi Mass can transform the space of the mission church into an aestheticized Mexican place. The aesthetic appeal of the mariachi Mass also resonates with the Catholic Church’s evangelistic mission. The interaction between visitors and local parishioners in the mission spaces can play an evangelistic role, but no overt attempts to proselytize visitors are made. The parish communities instead strive to create an inviting atmosphere at the mission churches where visitors will feel welcome and comfortable. In the words of Father Jones of Mission San José, ‘‘Our method of evangelization, [which] fits very well with the mission itself, is to welcome visitors. . . . However, we welcome them not only into a church, but into a community.’’ 72 Thus the fostering of welcoming Christian communities becomes a strategy for Christian evangelism at the missions. The mission communities avoid more coercive evangelism in part because their members are uneasy about the marketplace aspect of religion. Father James G. Galvin of Mission San Juan warns against the creation of                      ; 

what he calls ‘‘a religious Las Vegas,’’ where the glitzy performance of religion and the sale of memorabilia linked to the graces of the place could soon overwhelm whatever legitimate religiosity visitors might otherwise find there.73 Welcoming visitors into a religious community without demanding a confessional allegiance seems a more palatable approach to fulfilling the evangelistic imperatives of the Church. Reticence to participate in the marketplace of souls, however, does not preclude participation in the marketplace of tourist donations. To some extent, the parish communities regard tourist visitors as a financial resource. As Leslie Price, the business manager at Mission San José, exclaims, ‘‘We are blessed with tourists.’’ 74 Without their dollars, the parishes would be in a desperate position; keeping up the churches, especially to the strict standards required for these historic structures, would simply not be feasible. Money at the missions flows from tourists’ pockets into the parish coffers through multiple streams. The mainstay of parish cash flow at all four missions is the collections that are taken at the weekly religious services. In fact, financial considerations underlie the mariachi Mass at Mission San José. According to Father Janacek, the tradition began as a fund-raiser for the musicians’ uniforms. The offerings were so impressive that the parish decided to continue with the special noon Mass to bolster its weekly collections.75 At Mission Espada, on the other hand, when a fire closed the church for nearly two years, the parish experienced a noticeable drop in revenues. Parishioners realized the importance of the contributions visitors made at the weekly masses.76 The parishes collect tourist dollars by other means, some devotional and some less so. In three of the mission churches, racks of votive candles provide a bit of income from devotional contributions. Likewise, donation boxes—with their direct plea to visitors to help with the costs of maintaining the churches—generate significant income. Parishioners raised a vociferous protest when the National Park Service set up its own donation boxes, which diverted some of the income away from the parishes.77 Sometimes unsolicited checks arrive through the mail. Leslie Price reveals that at least three people from different parts of the country send regular contributions ‘‘for no reason.’’ She explains that these contributors write, ‘‘We came through, we loved your church, we know that you have needs and that you’re a poor parish; here’s some money.’’ 78 Making donations keeps these donors actively involved in what they regard as a worthwhile cause; at the same time, they help the parish to keep the doors open so that others can enjoy the church.  ;                     

In July , Mission San José also opened the doors of a religious gift shop. According to Father Jones, the parishioners had to put up a bit of a fight to convince the park service that selling religious items at the mission constitutes a legitimate ecclesiastical activity. ‘‘But we were persistent,’’ he explains, ‘‘and figured that . . . a church should be able to have something of religious value to provide for the parishioners and for those who come to the church.’’ 79 Of course, monetary value also accrues to the parish from the sale of these religious items. Finally, weddings have provided the mission communities with a significant source of revenue. The parishes at both Mission San José and Mission Concepción, in particular, willingly accommodate requests from couples desiring to be wed in a mission church, including non-Catholic couples. The fees that the parishes collect for the use of their churches add substantially to their financial well-being. Leslie Price of Mission San José says, ‘‘It’s another way to pull in funds to help us pay for the repairs of the church.’’ 80 The church at Mission San José serves as the ritual space for about three hundred weddings each year. Of these, about half are what Price calls ‘‘parishioner weddings’’ involving couples that have some sort of formal relationship to the parish, and the rest are what she calls ‘‘tourist weddings,’’ or, in slightly euphemistic terms, the weddings of ‘‘friends of the missions.’’ Weddings in this latter category involve couples not related to the parish who ‘‘dearly love the mission.’’ 81 A significant number of the weddings at Mission San José are non-Catholic ceremonies. Price, herself a Baptist, claims to have played a role in getting the Catholic Church to allow what some Catholics might regard as a shameful violation of their religious space. She hopes to someday see her own son married at Mission San José, and she says that she would not want him to be deprived of that opportunity simply because he is not Catholic. Her hope is bolstered by the attitude of Archbishop Patrick Flores, who, according to Olga Gonzalez of Mission Concepción, has approved the use of the mission churches for non-Catholic weddings because of the missions’ important historical status. Likewise, Father Jones, the priest at Mission San José, justifies making this exception for non-Catholics by characterizing the missions as the ‘‘patrimony of the Christian people, not just Catholics.’’ The archdiocese’s official representative at the missions, Father Balthasar Janacek, also encourages the local parishes to allow couples from outside, including nonCatholics, to be married in the mission churches; ‘‘If couples want to start their marriage off in a sacred setting,’’ he argues, ‘‘[then] we should try to accommodate that.’’ 82                      ; 

Margaret Woodhull and David Hildebrand begin married life in the sacred setting of Mission Espada, October , . (Photograph by Brenda Ladd, Austin, Texas)

The accommodation of weddings for outsiders also makes a big difference to the financial condition of the parishes. Olga Gonzalez attributes the continuing economic stability of Mission Concepción entirely to wedding income; ‘‘The weddings,’’ she exclaims, ‘‘are bringing in the money.’’ 83 The revenues, in turn, benefit the park as a whole. Consequently, National Park Service representatives for the most part have no objections to the weddings as a form of income. Katie Bliss, formerly the site advocate for Mission Concepción, considers it a simple business arrangement. She remarks: ‘‘They need the money, they need it to be able to do their job. And if it helps them to take better care of the resource because people are appreciating it through having a ceremony there, then I think it’s the right turnaround. It’s not like there’s a tidy profit being made for somebody’s pocket on any  ;                     

of that.’’ 84 Likewise, a ranger at Mission San José does not believe that the Church’s business efforts create any conflicts. He explains: ‘‘It’s all a business anyway. No matter if it’s a religion or if it’s government or if it’s at McDonald’s or wherever you are, right? It’s about the bottom line . . . because you need the dollar in order to function.’’ 85 Park superintendent Steve Whitesell, on the other hand, admits that purely financial endeavors warrant scrutiny for possible abuses. But he tries to view such arrangements from the perspective of visitors.86 Although tourists who are not able to enter the church buildings when weddings or other religious events are taking place occasionally complain, most visitors recognize that such activities are a part of the living parish aspect of the missions, and they respect the Church’s prerogative to disallow visitation during weddings, funerals, and other ceremonies and celebrations. They even regard such events as fortuitous enhancements of their tourist experience. Indeed, most visitors are thrilled to share the mission spaces with the local communities of worshipers.

;

Aesthetic Space: A Place of Ambivalent Identities

The shared spaces at the San Antonio missions appeal to the aesthetic desires of visitors and parishioners alike. The strict attention to historical authenticity in restoring architecture, the National Park Service’s program of land acquisition to maintain the ambiance of the mission sites, landscape installations that create a parklike atmosphere—all of these self-conscious efforts contribute to the alluring attraction of the missions. But the people who live and worship there claim that there is something more than aesthetic design operating in the beautiful spaces of the missions. ‘‘There is a charism with this mission,’’ remarks Father Jones of Mission San José. Leslie Price adds that many people who visit the mission discover a sense of peace. ‘‘There’s just something so peaceful and comforting,’’ she explains. ‘‘You can go through there stressed and come out like a big burden was lifted. And people say that to me all the time.’’ 87 Similarly, Father Janacek insists that ‘‘the missions have an added aura of sacredness about them.’’ 88 Using this religious language, he identifies an aesthetic appeal that brings tourists to the missions and serves parishioners and other local residents by connecting their identities to the venerable sites. For both tourists and worshipers who seek authentic experiences of sacredness, perceiving an inherent charism—feeling the healing power of                      ; 

the Holy Spirit—becomes the object of desire. The experiences in turn inflect the parishioners’ and tourists’ own senses of self and identity. Tourist weddings at the missions make obvious this conjunction of touristic and religious aesthetic desires. Most couples who are wed there give priority to aesthetics over sacrality. What they hope for and in fact spend great sums of money to obtain is a beautiful wedding, rather than a solemn sacramental ritual. Concerns about the religious aspect of weddings at the mission churches are so rare, in fact, that a friar who served at Mission San José describes one bride who emphasized the prayerful aspect of her wedding as either ‘‘a strange girl or very, very spiritual.’’ In contrast, he recalls numerous occasions on which wedding parties intent on creating a beautiful wedding made outlandish demands; one bride, for instance, ‘‘wanted to change the color of the carpet because it clashed with the girls’ dresses.’’ The friar told her, ‘‘Lady, either change the color of the dresses or find a church that’s got the color you want.’’ 89 When it comes to aesthetic values, the conjunction of the touristic and the religious has become so thorough that it seems almost counterintuitive to suggest that there is a distinction between the beautiful and the sacred. For many people, religion slips imperceptibly into touristic practice. Thus whether one enters a mission church in shorts carrying a camera or in a bridal dress and a long, flowing veil, the experience will be informed to a large degree by the pervasive system of aesthetic values and desires that touches every facet of modern life.90 Not only weddings but everything about the missions, from routine religious services and ranger-led tours to Indian dancers and even intrusions into the private quarters of residents, involves aesthetic dimensions of the touristic, everyday experiences of the places there. Even residents in the mission communities take delight in their touristic practices at the missions. One parishioner who lives just up the road from Mission San Juan tells how he enjoys watching the spectacle of tourists filing in and out of the mission from his front porch. Another parishioner at Mission Espada likes to make the trip over to Mission San José every now and then for the mariachi Mass, ‘‘because they play real nice, a Catholic music.’’ 91 Aesthetic desires also figure in the assertion of identities. Fundamental to identity is a meaningful self-image of affiliation with an imagined community.92 These self-images take shape through shared practices that give form to the imagined community while also strengthening affiliations. At the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, the National Park Service practices that narrate the mission story contribute to a collective image of  ;                     

the American nation and help individuals to create affiliations with the national community. Likewise, the Indian dancers at Mission San Juan imagine their own affiliations with an ancestral community that they convene in their ritual gatherings and performances. Both the National Park Service and the native dancers perform images of identity for the benefit of tourist audiences.93 The touristic desire for authentic experiences creates a demand for these performances. Concern about ‘‘getting it right’’—whether it be the historical details of the colonial missions, the accuracy of architectural restorations, or the ritual performances of indigenous cultures—is important to the process of forming and maintaining identities, not only for the makers of ‘‘authentic’’ images but for the consumers of them as well. In short, touristic practices amount to the consumption of the images that create both personal and collective identities.94 Religious communities participate in this touristic process of forming identity by consuming images. At the San Antonio missions, the performance of these images in the sacramental life of the parish communities takes on an added dimension under the attentive watch of tourist visitors. The awareness of personal religious affiliations and identities becomes even more acute for visitors due to their proclivity to make comparisons that map the boundaries between insider and outsider, resident and visitor, Catholic and non-Catholic. At the same time, however, reaching across those boundaries presents an opportunity for reconstituting larger, more inclusive communities. But the communities that become possible at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park do not displace entirely the intensely local practices of mission parishioners. The crowds of daily visitors, for instance, failed to deter Josefina Flores from walking almost a mile every afternoon from her humble house on Old Corpus Christi Highway to the church at Mission San Juan. She spent most of her nearly ninety years as a member of the parish there, and in the final decade of her life Josefina made a daily trek to collect the offerings left by worshipers and tourists in the money box for the votive candles. She would arrive before the park service employees on duty locked up the church at five o’clock. Certainly, the schedules and economies of tourism structured her daily routine. But she also came to pray. She had witnessed plenty of hardship, toil, and tragedy during her life. ‘‘But I’m happy,’’ she confided, ‘‘because, like I told my son, I had a good health and I go to church and I pray every night a rosary.’’ 95 In her daily prayers for family, friends, her priest, and even for strangers, Josefina Flores                      ; 

made her own community, local and intimate, as she knelt alone inside the tiny church on the old mission grounds. Unseen and unheard by the tourist crowds, una invisible, her supplications imagined no communities but her own. She did not seek a public performance of unambiguous identity; in her devotion, she wished only to practice her faith for those she loved . . . en el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo. Amén.

 ;                     



Reburying the Past The Catholic Church excavated and removed human bones discovered at Mission San Juan during renovations in preparation for HemisFair in the s. For three decades, these remains of former mission inhabitants stayed in the custody of the University of Texas at San Antonio for study and safekeeping. But the outrage of local Native American groups as well as the growing misgivings of Church officials, especially Father Balthasar Janacek, who had overseen the original excavations and who continued to serve as the Church’s official liaison at the missions some three decades later, led to negotiations that allowed the bones to be returned to the place of their original interment. The human remains were reinterred at Mission San Juan in a ceremony that involved the close cooperation of local Native Americans, the San Antonio archdiocese of the Catholic Church, and the National Park Service. Despite these groups’ differing opinions about the significance of the ceremony, and even despite a federal lawsuit filed by a rival Native American group, the reburial marked a significant moment of cooperation, forgiveness, and acceptance. Multiple itineraries coincided as the human bones found a place of rest once again in the mission ground.1 The ritual event of the reburial ceremony produced a new place of commemoration and community in the space of the mission. It is not simply a single place. 

To local Coahuiltecan people, the burial ground is the grave site of ancestors who have at last found a final resting place. It has become a site of mourning for and celebration of a past that defines them as a people. At the same time, the National Park Service regards the site as a place of significance in the history of the mission. The new grave stands as a historical monument that validates the park service’s narrative of continuity at the missions. Tourists, finally, look upon the burial site as an appealing attraction that enriches the aesthetic experience of their visits to Mission San Juan. Thus the reburial ceremony initiated a simultaneity of places on the very spot where the bones found their final place of repose. But establishing this place that contains many places required the intense negotiation of social relationships between the various individuals present at the reburial ceremony (and even some who were absent), as well as between various groups of Native Americans (including one group that eventually took an antagonistic position), officials of the Roman Catholic Church, and government representatives from the National Park Service. At stake for the various participants were questions of identity. Indeed, the fate of the human bones found at Mission San Juan became an issue of importance to the selfimage of all the interested parties. Coahuiltecans claimed the bones as the remains of their own people. Their history as a community and the identity narrated in that history forged a symbolic link to the disposition of these human remains. The National Park Service asserted its own identity as custodian and official interpreter of the mission site. It saw to it that the ceremony enhanced its narrative of the missions’ significance to the American nation. Likewise, the Catholic Church brought its own sense of identity to the negotiating table. As the divinely sanctioned institution responsible for the spiritual and material well-being of mission inhabitants, the Church assumed the moral imperative to rectify the desecrations that it had perpetrated some three decades earlier. The integrity of the Church itself rested on the return of these bones to the campo santo of the mission. Besides affirming the identities of the various parties, the ritual performances that returned the bones to Mission San Juan’s holy ground also involved aesthetic considerations; in fact, the aesthetic power of the ceremony produced a moment that has been described simply as ‘‘poignant.’’ Father James Galvin, for instance, describes the emotional force of the ceremony itself: ‘‘One of the things I remember most poignantly was that one of the guys did a lament, like crying, and it was really from the depths of his heart.

 ;          

Offerings left at the grave site just two weeks after the reburial ceremony at Mission San Juan on November , . (Photograph by the author)

I was nearly in tears myself. I could feel it welling up. It was very emotional.’’ 2 The deep well of emotions tapped in the ceremony contributed to the aesthetic force of the places created at the grave site. The sublime encounter with powers that transcend the self, the historical connection with lives that once occupied the hallowed grounds, the ritual dancing and somber rhythms of native music, and the emotional outpouring elicited by the ceremonial moment all served to collapse the distinction between the sacred and the beautiful. The place of burial acquired a poignant beauty that itself became sacred. The aesthetic presence of holiness, however, did not preclude commercial interests from finding their way onto the site. With a television crew busily filming every detail of the reburial ceremony, the force of the marketplace could not be ignored. This hardly noticed ritual moment would soon find a television audience half a world away. Visitors also brought the ceremony into the touristic economy of authentic experiences as they joined in the ritual moment. Their experience on that Saturday morning became a highly valued commodity in the marketplace of their travels. The grave at Mission San Juan is, of course, more than a commodity of tourists and broadcast media. The place of reburial endures in the collective memories of the various individuals and groups who have identities invested there. Yet the grave site cannot continue forever as a static monument to the past. In every place, there remains something locative and something itinerant. The locative stability that gives a particular place an enduring sense of location masks the itinerant contingencies that both make the place possible and contribute inevitably to its demise. The illusion of permanency disguises the inevitability of change. The places of San Antonio, Texas, have endured for decades, even centuries. But they have become something very different than what they were long ago. Many of the changes have been brought to San Antonio in the practices of travel, in the dynamic movements of people, goods, and ideas across the borders of tradition and stability. Among the forces of change introduced over the centuries has been religion. In fact, religion often plays a key role in the production of places and identities, in the aesthetic desires of travelers, and in the marketplace of commercial activities that sustains travel destinations. The religious people at these places are also modern people. They practice their religion with modern understandings of place and identity. They

 ;          

harbor a modern aesthetic sense that regards the sacred as the highest level of beauty. And they support their religions according to the demands of modern economies. Indeed, religious people of the modern western world have much in common with tourists. Together they occupy a borderland of religion and tourism in the dynamic spaces of modernity.

          ; 

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Notes

           AP folder CASA CAT Cenotaph folder DRT Library Lucey Correspondence MNHP SACSF UTSA Visitor series

XO series

Archives—Presidents—Harris, Mrs. Ethel, folder, San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation Library, San Antonio, Texas Catholic Archives of San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas Catholic Archives of Texas, Austin, Texas Historic sites: Cenotaph, folder, DRT Library Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, San Antonio, Texas Lucey, Robert E. (Archbishop): San Antonio Missions— Correspondence, folder, Catholic Archives of San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas San Antonio Missions National Historical Park Headquarters, San Antonio, Texas San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation Library, San Antonio, Texas Archives, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries, San Antonio, Texas San Antonio Fair Inc., Visitor and Exhibitor Relations Department series, in Archives, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries, San Antonio, Texas San Antonio Fair Inc., Executive Officers series, in Archives, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries, San Antonio, Texas

          . Elizondo and Matovina, San Fernando Cathedral, . . Ibid. . My work has been confined to the Americas, although, given the globalized tendencies of tourism, clearly defining the boundaries of an ‘‘American context’’ becomes problematic at best. With Americans traveling to virtually every corner



of the world (and even beyond, with the advent of space tourism) and with significant numbers of foreign tourists visiting the Americas, it seems futile to attempt a precise definition. Nevertheless, my focus is on how the relationship between religion and tourism is thought about and actually practiced both in the United States and by Americans wherever they might be. . My claim that attention to tourism leads to insights regarding the relationship between religion and modernity finds inspiration in Judith Adler’s argument that ‘‘the way in which the human body is exercised as an instrument of travel is deeply revealing of the historically shifting manner in which people conceive themselves and the world to which they seek an appropriate relation through travel ritual.’’ See ‘‘Origins of Sightseeing,’’ . . I discuss the distinction between ‘‘space’’ and ‘‘place’’ in chapter . . Exactly what constitutes ‘‘touristic practices’’ remains an open question that will be explored throughout this book. At the most commonsense level, these practices involve specialized forms of travel, although at least some people argue that we are always tourists, even while at home. (See, for instance, the claim that we have witnessed the ‘‘end of tourism’’ in Urry, Consuming Places, .) Practices normally associated with touristic forms of travel include sightseeing, picture taking, and souvenir shopping. But as we will see, tourism entails far more than these obvious markers of touristic behavior; it amounts to a complex set of ‘‘material practices that serve to organize and support specific ways of experiencing the world.’’ Franklin and Crang, ‘‘Trouble with Tourism and Travel Theory,’’ . . Quotation from the Web page of the Archdiocese of New York, (August , ). Throughout this book, I distinguish between Church (capitalized) and church (lowercased) to designate respectively the Church as a religious and social institution or community (for example, the Catholic Church, or the Church community), and church as a building or other religious structure (for example, the cavernous spaces of the church). . Quoted in Meyer, Myths in Stone, . . This is not to say that there is a singular understanding of or attitude toward American national identity. There remains ample opportunity to create alternative interpretations and disputed understandings of Washington’s places. My point, however, is that regardless of how one construes both place and identity, they remain inextricably bound to each other. . For discussions of the sublime, see McGreevy, Imagining Niagara, –; Sears, Sacred Places, ; and W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology, chapter . Kant discusses the sublime in The Critique of Judgement. . Regarding the role of authenticity in touristic practices, see Culler, ‘‘Semiotics of Tourism’’; MacCannell, The Tourist, especially chapter , ‘‘Staged Authenticity,’’ –; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture, especially the chapter ‘‘Confusing Pleasures’’ in part , –; Clifford, Routes, –; Eco, Travels in Hyper Reality, –; Bruner, ‘‘Abraham Lincoln as Authentic Reproduction’’; Crew and Sims, ‘‘Locating Authenticity’’; Cohen, ‘‘Authenticity and Commoditization in

 ;              – 

Tourism’’; and Redfoot, ‘‘Touristic Authenticity, Touristic Angst, and Modern Reality.’’ . Colleen McDannell outlines some of the material concerns of religious groups in Material Christianity. See especially chapter , ‘‘Christian Retailing,’’ –. . Of course, tourists and pilgrims were not the only categories of people that were to be found at the Ground Zero site in the months following September , . Other categories included rescue workers, investigators, and mourners, to offer just a few examples. . For just a few of the many accounts of Ground Zero in the months following September , , see Frankie Edozien and Linda Massarella, ‘‘Rudy’s Plea: Have Respect for the Dead, Scolds Ghoulish Gawkers,’’ New York Post, October , , ; Hugo Kugiya, ‘‘A Poignant Stop on Holiday Tour,’’ New York Newsday, December , , ; John Leland, ‘‘Letting the View Speak for Itself,’’ New York Times, January , , F; Amy Sacks, ‘‘Pilgrims Tough It Out to Reach Ground Zero,’’ New York Daily News, January , , News, ; Susan Cheever, ‘‘At Ground Zero, Seeing Again Is Believing,’’ New York Newsday, January , , B; Dean E. Murphy, ‘‘As the Public Yearns to See Ground Zero, Survivors Call a Viewing Stand Ghoulish,’’ New York Times, January , , ; Zev Chafets, ‘‘Facing Ground Zero,’’ New York Daily News, February , , Editorial, ; Katherine Roth, ‘‘Throngs Visiting Ground Zero Viewing Platform Reach Unforeseen Levels,’’ Associated Press State and Local Wire, April , ; and Julie Claire Diop, ‘‘Tourists Are Taking Home Pieces of the Apple: Sept.  Souvenirs,’’ New York Newsday, May , , D. . As will become apparent in the first chapter, the place that the Spaniards christened ‘‘San Antonio’’ had been another sort of place in the practices of native peoples long before the arrival of the Spanish expeditions. . Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, ‘‘San Antonio Facts,’’ (compiled March ).

  . Hatcher, ‘‘The Expedition of Don Domingo Terán de los Ríos,’’ . As William Foster points out, only Domingo Terán de los Ríos, the military leader of the expedition, had the official authority to confer names: ‘‘Thus, officially, Terán was the one who gave the location the name San Antonio de Padua.’’ Spanish Expeditions into Texas, . . For the official instructions for the expedition, which include its general goals, see Hatcher, ‘‘The Expedition of Don Domingo Terán de los Ríos,’’ –. . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . ‘‘Claiming by naming’’ was an oft-repeated practice of European colonizers. As Patricia Seed notes, ‘‘French, Spanish, and Dutch settlers both named and claimed to possess through naming.’’ See Ceremonies of Possession, . . I borrow the term ‘‘locative’’ from the work of Jonathan Z. Smith. Smith pro-

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poses ‘‘the dichotomy between a locative vision of the world (which emphasizes place) and a utopian vision of the world (using the term in its strict sense: the value of being in no place).’’ He identifies these two perspectives in terms of those who wish to restrict mobility in their elitist control of ‘‘place’’ (the locative) and those who experience exile and consequently emphasize ‘‘rebellion and incongruity’’ (the utopian). See Map Is Not Territory, xii, . But I am less inclined to oppose these tendencies as dichotomous poles based on their apparent possession or nonpossession of a ‘‘place.’’ I prefer to concentrate on the interactive dynamics of locative and itinerant forces in making places. For more on the theoretical and methodological implications of Smith’s use of ‘‘map’’ and ‘‘territory,’’ see Gill, ‘‘Territory.’’ For ‘‘diasporic religion’’ as another alternative to Smith’s categories of locative and utopian, see Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile, –. . Throughout this book, I utilize the distinction between space and place that Michel de Certeau describes: ‘‘Place (lieu)’’ refers to an order in which ‘‘elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. . . . [with] each situated in its own ‘proper’ and distinct location, a location it defines. A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability.’’ In contrast, Certeau regards ‘‘space’’ in terms of ‘‘vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables.’’ He writes: ‘‘Thus space is composed of intersections of mobile elements.’’ The Practice of Everyday Life, . . Although no extensive archaeological sites have been investigated in the Olmos Basin, numerous artifacts of Paleo-Indian culture have been collected in the area. These include projectile points frequently associated both with kill sites, where animals were butchered, and with habitation sites, where people camped and performed domestic tasks. Stothert, Archaeology and Early History, –. . Ibid., , . . The Spaniards used the term ‘‘ranchería’’ to designate temporary settlements or encampments. T. N. Campbell, Payaya Indians, . . At least one scholar has suggested that the term signifies ‘‘refreshing waters,’’ an interpretation that is popularly circulated among tour guides and others in San Antonio without credible confirmation. For a brief discussion about the term ‘‘Yanaguana,’’ see ibid., . . Ibid., ; Stothert, Archaeology and Early History, ; and Schuetz, ‘‘Indians of the San Antonio Missions,’’ . . Stothert, Archaeology and Early History, , and Schuetz, ‘‘Indians of the San Antonio Missions,’’ . . Mardith Schuetz contends that the arrival of the Spaniards represented the first real threat to the continuation of indigenous culture. See ‘‘Indians of the San Antonio Missions,’’ . . Chipman, Spanish Texas, . . This is according to the official account given by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and first published in . Cabeza de Vaca explains in the proem of his account, addressed to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (–) and king of Spain (as

 ;               –  

Charles I, –), that it contains ‘‘information not trivial for those who in your name might go to conquer those lands and at the same time bring them to knowledge of the true faith and the true Lord and service to Your Majesty.’’ See Adorno and Pautz, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, :–, quote on :. The three-volume Adorno and Pautz study is the most thorough English-language work on the Cabeza de Vaca account. . This brief summary of the Narváez expedition and its survivors relies on the transcription of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s account in volume  of Adorno and Pautz, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Adorno and Pautz provide a detailed analysis of the account in volume  of their work. . Two notable exceptions were the explorations of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Hernando de Soto in the late s and early s, both of which set out following Cabeza de Vaca’s return. See Chipman, Spanish Texas, –, and Weber, Spanish Frontier in North America, –. . Foster, Spanish Expeditions into Texas, –, . Regarding the role of the French in instigating the Spanish to pay greater attention to Texas, see Chipman, Spanish Texas, –; Weber, Spanish Frontier in North America, –; and Gerhard, North Frontier of New Spain, –. . Hatcher, ‘‘The Expedition of Don Domingo Terán de los Ríos,’’ . . Ibid., . . As Anthony Pagden points out in reference to earlier centuries of Spanish colonial efforts, religious conversion was not complete or adequate without political and cultural transformation. See Lords of All the World, . . Clendinnen, ‘‘Franciscan Missionaries,’’ –. Certainly, many missionaries are translocal women, but Clendinnen is describing specifically Franciscan missionaries in the early period of Spanish colonialism, all of whom were men. . Hatcher, ‘‘The Expedition of Don Domingo Terán de los Ríos,’’ –. . Foster mentions that subsequent expeditions relied on earlier ones, especially for route markings. Spanish Expeditions into Texas, . . Hatcher, ‘‘The Expedition of Don Domingo Terán de los Ríos,’’ . . Foster notes that diaries were routinely required of all expeditions, and detailed instructions were given about what should be included in the daily entries. See Spanish Expeditions into Texas, . . Hatcher, ‘‘The Expedition of Don Domingo Terán de los Ríos,’’ –. Terán and Massanet each kept diaries, both of which Hatcher translates. . Ibid., . . Foster, Spanish Expeditions into Texas, . Foster goes on to discuss the Alarcón expedition. See ibid., –. Other references to Alarcón’s expedition to establish San Antonio can be found in Weber, Spanish Frontier in North America, , and in Chipman, Spanish Texas, –. . Céliz, Diary of the Alarcón Expedition, . A second diarist on this same expedition, Fray Pedro Pérez de Mezquía, also recorded the official possession of the place San Antonio on May , . Hoffmann, ‘‘The Mezquía Diary,’’ . . Hereafter, I refer to this first mission in San Antonio as Mission San Antonio.

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Regarding the trio of villa, presidio, and mission, Gilbert Cruz emphasizes the importance of these as the three primary ‘‘frontier institutions’’ of Spanish colonial efforts to secure territory in Texas. Let There Be Towns, –. . Habig, Alamo Chain of Missions, –. Also see Félix D. Almaráz Jr., ‘‘Faith along a River: Franciscan Missions of Spanish Colonial San Antonio, –,’’ [early s], :, MNHP. . Habig, Alamo Chain of Missions, . . A sixth mission, San Francisco de Xavier Nájero, was established in the s not far from where Mission Concepción now stands. But it lasted only until , when it was merged with Mission San Antonio. Ibid., –. . Ibid., –. . Ibid., –. . Ibid., –. . The ceremonies of possession performed on March , , are described in Almaráz, ‘‘Faith along a River,’’ :–, MNHP. . Habig, Alamo Chain of Missions, . . As explained in chapter , however, the missions that visitors see today are for the most part reconstructed interpretations of the original missions. . Schuetz, ‘‘Indians of the San Antonio Missions,’’ –. . Morfi, History of Texas, . . Schuetz, ‘‘Indians of the San Antonio Missions,’’ –. . Schuetz, ‘‘Beginnings of the Spanish Settlement,’’ . . In requesting authorization to found Mission San José, Father Antonio Margil de Jesus wrote in : ‘‘The College of Querétero has hospices for its missionaries traveling to the Thexas at the Mission de la Punta, at its three missions on the Rio Grande, and at Mission San Antonio. Our missionaries [from the College of Zacatecas] are guests at these missions when they travel along this route.’’ Margil de Jesus, ‘‘Letter of Fr. Margil,’’ . . This point is also made in Schuetz, ‘‘The Mission Indians,’’ . . David Weber notes that ‘‘Coahuiltecans had pleaded for missionaries since the s.’’ See Spanish Frontier in North America, . By the s, the Spaniards were taking notice of Indian pleas. For example, the Franciscan missionary Margil de Jesus described how three ‘‘Panpoas’’ leaders expressed a desire that the Franciscans ‘‘establish a mission for them.’’ He explained: ‘‘Having seen the harvest of corn in Mission San Antonio, they too would like to sow much corn.’’ See ‘‘Letter of Fr. Margil,’’ . Likewise, a leader of the Sana tribe petitioned Marqués de Aguayo in  for a mission where his people could take up residence; this led to San Antonio’s short-lived sixth mission, San Francisco de Xavier Nájero. Habig, Alamo Chain of Missions, . . Mardith Schuetz explains how rivalries in North America between the Spanish, the French, and the English upset trading patterns among indigenous peoples, provided European arms to many of the tribes, and drove them off of traditional lands. Groups like the Apaches had to rely more and more on raiding Spanish and Indian settlements as they were forced out of their buffalo hunting areas; besides livestock, the raiding parties often sought prisoners who could be sold to

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the Europeans as slaves. Among the people most vulnerable to these new threats were the small, isolated hunter-gatherer clans of Coahuiltecan speakers found in south central Texas. As Schuetz puts it, ‘‘On the eve of the Spanish colonization in Texas, the Coahuiltecans were already on their way to extinction.’’ It is hardly surprising that they sought the protection and stability of the missions. ‘‘Indians of the San Antonio Missions,’’ –. . Urrutia, ‘‘Testimony,’’ . In February , Benito Fernández de Santa Ana, president of the San Antonio missions, reported that following the ‘‘plague’’ of the previous year only  persons remained at Mission San Antonio and that there were only  each at Mission Concepción and Mission Espada. But Mission San José seems to have suffered the greatest losses, with only  people remaining after the epidemic. See Leutenegger, ‘‘Two Franciscan Documents,’’ . . Mardith Schuetz maintains that ‘‘the demanding routine of mission life sometimes chafed the wild and free nature of the Indians, and they would run off.’’ See ‘‘The Mission Indians,’’ . I am less inclined to characterize mission Indians with the Rousseau-inspired image of innately ‘‘wild and free’’ natives; I prefer to emphasize the difficulty that people who are accustomed to a far more itinerant life have in forcibly adapting to the locative proclivity of European patterns of living. . Schuetz contends that the most important adjustment that mission Indians had to make ‘‘may have been to something called ‘time’: waking, eating, attending catechism or mass, working, playing, and sleeping to the inexorable ticking of a clock.’’ ‘‘Indians of the San Antonio Missions,’’ . . Schuetz discusses native language groups in ibid., –. . Morfi’s report on his visit to Mission San José in  made the connection between the Indians’ progress and their linguistic capability. He wrote: ‘‘[The Indians there] are today well instructed and civilized and know how to work very well at their mechanical trades and are proficient in some of the arts. They speak Spanish perfectly, with the exception of those who are daily brought in from the woods by the zeal of the missionaries.’’ See History of Texas, . A decade later, at Mission Concepción, an anonymous priest wrote in the mission guidelines, ‘‘The missionary should see to it also that the small children speak Spanish in order to meet the demands of various decrees, and because of the facility it promotes both for the missionary to understand what they are saying and for the Indians to understand him.’’ Benoist and Flores, Guidelines for a Texas Mission, . . Fray Antonio de San Buenaventura y Olivares, in his letter urging the establishment of a mission on the San Antonio River, characterized the native peoples as having ‘‘a disposition for praying.’’ Olivares wrote, ‘‘All of them want to be Christians and there is no one who refuses but all eagerly seek the waters of baptism.’’ He offered this disclaimer, however: ‘‘We have not seen any formal idolatry among them, some abuses, yes; there are sorcerers who deal in herbs; they are quacks who pretend to cure and heal; if they fail and the sick person dies, they pay with their lives.’’ Leutenegger, ‘‘Two Franciscan Documents,’’ .

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. See the discussion of mitotes in Schuetz, ‘‘Indians of the San Antonio Area,’’ –. . Benoist and Flores, Guidelines for a Texas Mission, . . Quoted in Schuetz, ‘‘Beginnings of the Spanish Settlement,’’ . . Gaspar José de Solís reported in  that at Mission San José he found  ‘‘warriors,’’ of whom ‘‘ [were] armed with guns and  with bows and arrows, spears, and other weapons.’’ ‘‘Solís Diary,’’ . . Schuetz, ‘‘Indians of the San Antonio Missions,’’ –. . Chipman, Spanish Texas, . . Ibid., . According to Gerhard’s table ‘‘Estimated Population of SpanishControlled Texas,’’ San Antonio’s non-Indian population more than doubled between  and . Throughout the period covered by the table (–), more than half the total colonial population of Texas was in the San Antonio area. In North Frontier of New Spain, . . The secularization of missions involved transferring the responsibility for religious ministry from missionary administrators to parish authorities and distributing the property and possessions of the mission to its residents. A report in  by the president of the Texas missions, Father José Francisco López, recommended that Mission San Antonio be completely secularized and that the other San Antonio missions be partially secularized; within two years, these recommendations had been accepted and carried out. For a translation of López’s report, see Habig, ‘‘Report on the San Antonio Missions in ,’’ –. For more about the secularization of the San Antonio missions, also see Habig, Alamo Chain of Missions, –; Almaráz, ‘‘San Antonio’s Old Franciscan Missions,’’ –; and Almaráz, ‘‘Faith along a River,’’ :–, MNHP. . Almaráz, ‘‘San Antonio’s Old Franciscan Missions,’’ –. Almaráz details the distribution of the former missions’ lands. . Sibley lists many of these types of travelers who traversed Texas in the nineteenth century. See Travelers in Texas, . One of the nineteenth-century tourists in Texas was Frederick Law Olmsted, who promised his readers that San Antonio would ‘‘enliven and satisfy [their] traveler’s curiosity.’’ Journey through Texas, . . Sibley, Travelers in Texas, . . Olmsted, Journey through Texas, . . Picturesque San Antonio (San Antonio: Sigmund Press, [ca. ]), , copy consulted in the Texana Collection of the San Antonio Public Library. . Regarding the history of the Grand Tour, especially as practiced by the British, see Black, The British Abroad, and Hibbert, The Grand Tour. . Stowe, Going Abroad, . . Sears, Sacred Places, . Dona Brown notes that due to the popularity of the ‘‘fashionable tour’’ of the region, New England became, in the s, the first commercial tourist region to develop. She points out that tourist interests followed economic development up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany and west along the Erie Canal as it broke new ground toward Niagara Falls. Inventing New England, –, . . Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West, .

 ;               –  

. Sibley, Travelers in Texas, . . Matilda Charlotte ( Jesse) Fraser Houstoun, quoted in ibid., . . Emmanuel Henri Dieudonné Domenech, quoted in ibid., . . Ibid., –. . Roemer, Texas, . . Sibley, Travelers in Texas, . . Ibid., , . . Roemer, Texas, . . Ibid., . . Sibley, Travelers in Texas, . . Reagan, ‘‘Journey to Texas,’’ . . Latham, Travels in the Republic of Texas, . . Ophelia Gilmore, ed., ‘‘Diary of Harvey Alexander Adams, in Two Parts: Rhode Island to Texas and Expedition against the Southwest in  and ,’’ , pt. , p. , Harvey Alexander Adams Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. . Reagan, ‘‘Journey to Texas,’’ . . Ibid., . . Olmsted, Journey through Texas, . . Hayes, –, . . Roemer, Texas, . . Regarding the arrival of the railroad in San Antonio, see Houston, San Antonio’s Railroads, –, Crow quote on . Also see Everett, ‘‘San Antonio Welcomes the ‘Sunset.’ ’’ . Corner, San Antonio de Bexar, ‘‘Preface,’’ iii. . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . ‘‘San Antonio: Where Life is Different,’’ , pamphlet, Western Ephemera Collection, C-, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

        . Latham, Travels in the Republic of Texas, . . King, Texas: , . . Corner, San Antonio de Bexar, . . Munroy, ‘‘San Antonio de Bexar,’’ . . A visitor in  reported that one ‘‘could ascertain but little of the siege from the inhabitants who were present at the time’’ or of the ‘‘individual fate of the fallen.’’ Quoted in Sibley, Travelers in Texas, . . For a brief discussion of the various accounts regarding Crockett’s death, see William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, –. . The story of the Alamo battle has been told in a nearly constant stream of versions from the nineteenth century right up to the present; many, if not most, accounts of the siege and battle have included details of questionable accuracy. In my very brief synopsis here, I have tried to present only what most professional

              –   ; 

historians working on the Alamo today believe to be undisputed facts. For recent histories of the battle, see William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo; Edmondson, The Alamo Story; Hardin, Texian Iliad; Huffines and Zaboly, Blood of Noble Men; and the fictionalized account by Harrigan, Gates of the Alamo. . Bollaert, William Bollaert’s Texas, –. . Corner, San Antonio de Bexar, . . Sweet, Lighter Side of Lone Star History, –. . Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents, . . Historical and Descriptive Review of the Industries of San Antonio, , . . Ibid., –. . Spofford, ‘‘San Antonio de Bexar,’’ . . Ballou, ‘‘Scudder’s Journey to Texas, ,’’ –. . Randolph B. Campbell’s study of slavery in Texas includes a discussion of how the issue figured in the Texas revolution. He notes that it was Stephen F. Austin himself who summed up the sentiment of most Texians when he wrote in , ‘‘Texas must be a slave country’’ (emphasis in original). Campbell concludes that ‘‘slavery appears to have been a major cause of the revolution.’’ He acknowledges that the immediate cause of the conflict was the political instability of Mexico in the s, but he argues that slavery was a major underlying point of contention, and he notes that one crucial result of the revolution was the strengthening of the institution of slavery in Texas. See Empire for Slavery, –, Austin quote on . . I am indebted to the theologian Virgilio Elizondo for first pointing this out to me. . Olmsted had toured the southern states in – to learn firsthand about the effects of slavery on southern agriculture and the southern economy. He went to Texas in  in large part to carry out a follow-up study of slavery’s effects on the development of a frontier region. See Roper, FLO, , . . Olmsted, Journey through Texas, . . Edward T. Linenthal notes that racism transformed the war for Texas’s independence, inspiring among many Texians a hatred of all things Mexican. Linenthal refers to Arnoldo de León, who argues that Texas became ‘‘‘white,’ spiritually, attitudinally, politically, socially, economically and demographically’’ in the Texas revolution. During the United States’ war with Mexico, negative images of Mexicans were strengthened. Sacred Ground, –. . Roemer, Texas, . . Latham, Travels in the Republic of Texas, . . Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents, –. . Latham, Travels in the Republic of Texas, . . Matovina, Tejano Religion and Ethnicity, . . Bollaert, William Bollaert’s Texas, –. . Interview reprinted in Stevens, Through Texas, . . Ibid., . Two other interviews with Señora Candelaria that appeared in San Antonio newspapers are reprinted in Matovina, The Alamo Remembered, –, –. Another Tejano survivor of the Alamo, Enrique Esparza, claimed in a

 ;               –  

 interview that Señora Candelaria was not in the Alamo at its fall, as she had maintained. Esparza’s interview also appears in ibid., –. For a more recent, although brief, discussion of Señora Candelaria and the veracity of her tales about the Alamo, see Schoelwer and Gläser, Alamo Images, . . Reprinted in Everett, San Antonio: The Flavor of Its Past, . . Reprinted in ibid., –. . Quoted in Linenthal, Sacred Ground, . . Charles W. Evers to , March , , final page, , DRT Library. . Cuyler, ‘‘Telamon Cuyler’s Diary,’’ . . Sweet, Lighter Side of Lone Star History, . . Corner, San Antonio de Bexar, . . See the minutes of the San Antonio City Council for April , , which authorize the sale of stone from the wall of the Alamo to Rev. Valdez, ‘‘whatever he may need at four reals per cart load.’’ Reprinted in Everett, San Antonio: The Flavor of Its Past, . . Charles I. Sellon (Second Illinois Infantry) to Marilla, September , , typescript copy, Historic Sites: Alamo: Clippings, DRT Library. . Hayes, –, . . Schoelwer and Gläser, Alamo Images, –. . John Frost, Incidents and Narratives of Travel, . . King, Texas: , . . Ibid., . . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, –. Also see Schoelwer and Gläser, Alamo Images, –. . Gould, Alamo City Guide, back cover. . Ibid., . . Reprinted in Everett, San Antonio: The Flavor of Its Past, . . Reprinted in ibid., . . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, , and Schoelwer and Gläser, Alamo Images, –. . Corner, San Antonio de Bexar, . . M. A. C., ‘‘Some Haunts of the Padres,’’ . . Munroy, ‘‘San Antonio de Bexar,’’ . . Quoted in Fisher, Saving San Antonio, . . Linenthal, Sacred Ground, . William Bollaert mentioned the ‘‘monument to the memory of the ‘Heroes of the Alamo’’’ in his journal on September , . See William Bollaert’s Texas, . William Corner’s guidebook included a description of the monument. See San Antonio de Bexar, . A detailed illustration appears in Schoelwer and Gläser, Alamo Images, . Also see Raines, ‘‘The Alamo Monument,’’ –. . Potter, The Fall of the Alamo, . . Ibid., . . Richard Harding Davis, The West from a Car-Window, . . The difference in the spelling of the last name of Adina De Zavala and her grandfather Lorenzo de Zavala began with Adina’s father, Augustine, who decided to capitalize the ‘‘d.’’ See Fisher, Saving San Antonio, , n. . Fisher credits

              –   ; 

an unpublished thesis by Luther Robert Ables from the Centro de Estudios Universitarios of Mexico City College () for this information. . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, –, and Schoelwer and Gläser, Alamo Images, –. . Quoted in Fisher, Saving San Antonio, . . Ibid., –, , and Schoelwer and Gläser, Alamo Images, –. . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, –. . Coppini, From Dawn to Sunset, . . Ibid., . . Ibid. . Ibid., . . J. Frank Dobie, ‘‘Alamo Cenotaph Is Like Grain Elevator,’’ San Antonio Light, November , , copy consulted in Cenotaph folder. On the dispute between Dobie and Coppini, see Foshee, ‘‘San Antonio, the Centennial, and the Cenotaph.’’ . Dobie, ‘‘Alamo Cenotaph Is Like Grain Elevator.’’ . Ibid. . Coppini, From Dawn to Sunset, . . Coppini’s remarks reported in ‘‘Coppini Defends Cenotaph Work,’’ San Antonio Light, November , , copy consulted in Cenotaph folder. . Dobie, ‘‘Alamo Cenotaph Is Like Grain Elevator.’’ . ‘‘Coppini Defends Cenotaph Work.’’ . Coppini’s remarks in ‘‘A Radio Talk on Station KTSA, Delivered January  [] at :–: ..,’’ published in The Memorial Salesman (promotional bulletin of the Georgia Marble Company, Tate, Georgia) , no.  (May ), copy consulted in Cenotaph folder. . ‘‘ ‘Prettified’ Alamo Memorial Tilts Noses in San Antonio,’’ Newsweek, April , , , copy consulted in Cenotaph folder. . Foshee, ‘‘San Antonio, the Centennial, and the Cenotaph,’’ . . ‘‘Catholics, Protestants, and Jews to Pray for Peace When Cenotaph Dedicated Armistice Day,’’ San Antonio Express, November , , copy consulted in Cenotaph folder. . Coppini, From Dawn to Sunset, . . Charles Curtis Munz, ‘‘Old Alamo Restored: A Museum and Cenotaph Are Expected to Draw More Visitors to Texas Shrine,’’ New York Times, November , , copy consulted in Cenotaph folder. . Quoted in Foshee, ‘‘San Antonio, the Centennial, and the Cenotaph,’’ –. . Peyton, San Antonio, City in the Sun, . . The gendered nature of the Alamo as symbol is discussed in Brear, Inherit the Alamo. . Colonel Sidney Sherman is credited with originating the phrase ‘‘Remember the Alamo’’; he said it as he spurred his troops on the battlefield at San Jacinto just a month and a half after the slaughter at the Alamo. Bate, General Sidney Sherman, . . These alternative stories, however, do get told, a point that Edward T. Linenthal

 ;               –  

makes regarding the dynamic struggles over the symbolic meanings of the Alamo. See Sacred Ground, –.

  . As Dean MacCannell points out, preservation and authentic representation both tend to make the present more unified against the past, more in control of nature, and less a product of history. The Tourist, . . T. J. Jackson Lears emphasizes the paradox of antimodernist critiques of modern life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He describes antimodernism in this period as ‘‘a complex blend of accommodation and protest.’’ See No Place of Grace, xiii. His analysis certainly applies to the historical preservation movement in San Antonio. . The Alamo and various identities associated with it are discussed in chapter . . Wangler, Archdiocese of San Antonio, . . Ibid., . . Ibid. . Ibid., –. . Odin, ‘‘Letter of the Bishop,’’ . . Noonan-Guerra, ‘‘Priest-Conservationists,’’ , copy consulted in Missions folder, CASA. The act is in Gammel, The Laws of Texas, –, . . Odin, ‘‘Letter of the Bishop,’’ –. . Obituary of Father Francis Bouchu, Southern Messenger, August , , copy consulted in Francis Bouchu folder, CASA. . Corner, San Antonio de Bexar, . . Bouchu’s ledger indicates that he held nearly nine hundred acres of land as of . See Ledger book of Reverend Father Francis Bouchu, –, Francis Bouchu Papers, –, CAT. . Santiago Escobedo (staff archaeologist, San Antonio Missions National Historical Park), Report on Reverend Father Francis Bouchu, , ibid. William Corner reported in  that under the ‘‘rule’’ of Reverend Father Bouchu, ‘‘the Mission Chapel’’ at Espada was ‘‘almost entirely renewed, the front retaining only a portion of its ancient work.’’ San Antonio de Bexar, . . Corner mentions that Bouchu fitted some of the rooms along the Mission Espada compound wall for a schoolhouse. See San Antonio de Bexar, . Bouchu’s ledger stipulated that the two lots that formed his residence should ‘‘be kept for the residence of teachers.’’ Ledger book of Reverend Father Francis Bouchu, entry H, , Francis Bouchu Papers, –, CAT. . Vanderholt, ‘‘Bouchu,’’ , copy consulted in CASA. Vanderholt’s celebratory account characterizes Bouchu as a dedicated pastor who refused more lucrative posts in order to ‘‘tend to his poor Mexican people.’’ But the priest’s attitude toward his Spanish-speaking vecinos included a tinge of the Eurocentric paternalism and even racism that was rampant in nineteenth-century Texas. For instance, he wrote in : ‘‘Our poor Mexicans, for the most part, have nothing

              –   ; 

of their own; wretched as dogs and soft as cats; impossible to depend upon them, although to see them, they seem okay. I believe I wouldn’t be able to have much patience with them for a long time, without the company of my nephew.’’ See Bouchu to his uncle, March , , trans. Sally E. Patterson, Francis Bouchu Papers, –, CAT. . Every account of Bouchu’s life that I have seen repeats the story told in his obituary of the young priest in his first assignment ‘‘out on the missions for weeks in turn.’’ The obituary explains: ‘‘In that way, Father Bouchu became accustomed to outdoor life in the saddle, going from place to place, camping out and cooking for himself wherever he chanced to be. In fact, this mode of life became almost a second nature with him, so that afterwards, when he was appointed pastor of the old Spanish mission of San Francisco de la Espada, near San Antonio, and had a permanent residence, he still continued to do all his own work and, almost to his dying day, refused the services of a cook or the help of relatives.’’ See Obituary of Father Francis Bouchu, Southern Messenger, August , . For an example of the kind of popular Catholic image of San Antonio’s missionaries available at the turn of the twentieth century, see O’Hagan, ‘‘In the Footsteps of Texas Missionaries,’’ –. O’Hagan’s opening paragraph proclaims, ‘‘Men have indeed made history in Texas, in cloister, in camp, in field, in forest—wherever courage, devotion, and faith sublime chose to build an altar— chose to offer sacrifice.’’ . William Corner obtained from Father Bouchu a printed copy of ‘‘Informe Oficial del Conde Revilla-Gigedo, Virey de Méjico al Rey de España, ,’’ a colonial report concerning the Texas missions. Corner did not specify, however, whether Bouchu printed the copy himself. See San Antonio de Bexar, . . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . See Bouchu to his uncle, June , ; Bouchu to his parents, December , ; and Bouchu to his uncle, May , , all trans. Sally E. Patterson, Francis Bouchu Papers, –, CAT. . Bouchu to his parents, December , . . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, . . ‘‘The Alamo,’’ San Antonio Light, May , , . Quoted in ibid., . . I discuss the involvement of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in saving the Alamo convento, including their bitter and divisive internal dispute, in chapter . . My discussion of Adina De Zavala and the beginnings of the De Zavala Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas relies on Fisher, Saving San Antonio, –, –. . Ibid., –. As Fisher points out, the lease arrangement at Mission San Juan was similar to agreements negotiated the same year in California by the Landmarks Club, led by Charles F. Lummis. For more about the Landmarks Club, see Thompson, American Character, –, –. . ‘‘San Juan Chapel Dedicated,’’ Southern Messenger, February , , copy con-

 ;               –  

sulted in San Juan Capistrano Mission (–): Miscellaneous Folder #, CASA. . ‘‘Mission Used Again after Two Centuries,’’ San Antonio Light, October , , typescript copy consulted in Mission San Francisco de la Espada folder, CASA. . D. S. Phelan, ‘‘Picturesque Strongholds of Priestly Pioneers, Ensanguined by Border Warfare, and Long Abandoned to the Owls and Coyotes, to Be Restored to Their Original Beauty and Become Church Centers,’’ Sunday Magazine, St. Louis Dispatch, April , , copy consulted in Mission San José folder, CASA. . Wangler, Archdiocese of San Antonio, . . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, ; ‘‘Saving from Total Ruin Most Beautiful Mission,’’ San Antonio Express, October , , copy consulted in Mission San José folder, CASA. . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, –. . Quoted in Cumming and Kaplan, The Arts and Crafts Movement, . Besides the book by Cumming and Kaplan, other histories of the arts and crafts movement in Britain include Stansky, Redesigning the World; Naylor, The Arts and Crafts Movement; and Anscombe and Gere, Arts and Crafts in Britain and America. . Cumming and Kaplan, The Arts and Crafts Movement, . . Anscombe and Gere, Arts and Crafts in Britain and America, . Other histories of the arts and crafts movement in the United States, albeit with regional emphases, include Floyd and Baldwin, The Noble Craftsman We Promote, and Trapp, The Arts and Crafts Movement in California. . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, –. . The Mission Board of the San Antonio Conservation Society asked Harris ‘‘to consider living in the Prefecture [of Mission San José] in order to properly supervise the property.’’ See Ethel Wilson Harris to the Board of Directors, San Antonio Conservation Society, May , . (I thank Donald W. Harris, Ethel Wilson Harris’s youngest son, for providing me with a copy of this letter.) Regarding the death of her husband and the circumstances that led to her decision to move into the mission walls, see Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by the San Antonio Conservation Society Oral History Program, September , , – , , transcript in SACSF; Gerald Ashford, ‘‘Mrs. Harris’ Retirement Will Be Somewhat Partial,’’ San Antonio Express and News, August , , -D, copy consulted in AP folder; and the interview of her son Donald and her daughterin-law Trudy in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, . According to Trudy Harris, Ethel Wilson Harris continued living at the mission until she moved in  into a house designed by her architect son, Bob Harris; this house, known today as Harris House, is just outside the mission walls at Mission San José. By then, her longtime friend Mrs. Christian was living with her, and she remained Harris’s housemate until she died in about . Trudy Harris, interview. Harris’s association with Mission San José finally ended in , when she closed her ‘‘Mexican curio shop’’ there. See Richard Erickson, ‘‘Ethel Harris Ends an Era,’’ Northside Sun (San Antonio), March , , copy consulted in AP folder.

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. Ethel Wilson, ‘‘Arts and Interests: An Adventure into Background,’’ Bright Scrawl (San Antonio Junior League), January, , , copy consulted in AP folder. . Regarding the world’s fair exhibitions, see Bob Dale, ‘‘Face of San Antonio,’’ San Antonio Express and News, December , , copy consulted in AP folder; ‘‘Ethel Wilson Harris,’’ July , , biographical statement, AP folder; Erickson, ‘‘Ethel Harris Ends an Era’’; and Susan Toomey Frost, ‘‘San Jose and Miz Harrie,’’ . See also ‘‘Mexican Crafts in Texas City,’’ Christian Science Monitor, June , , ; American Architect, , no.  ( June ): . Projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) shop supervised by Harris included murals at Alamo Stadium that still survive today; wrought iron ‘‘keys to the city’’; tile benches at Jefferson High School; tile fairy-tale characters in public parks; and tiles identifying animals and birds at the San Antonio Zoo. All of the WPA products were distributed free of charge to charitable and tax-maintained institutions. See ‘‘Murals Depict Sports History of San Antonio’’ and ‘‘Old Lewis Barn Becomes Scene of Art Activity,’’ clippings, both n.p., n.d., copies consulted in WPA scrapbook of Ethel Wilson Harris, , , , SACSF; Susan Toomey Frost, ‘‘San Jose and Miz Harrie,’’ . Although these articles describe Harris as ‘‘technical supervisor’’ of the WPA arts and crafts projects in San Antonio, she claimed many years later that she took the position with three conditions, the third one being ‘‘I must have the final say.’’ See Marlene Gordon, ‘‘Profiles,’’ San Antonio Magazine, April, , , copy consulted in AP folder. . Bruhn, American Decorative Tiles, –, . Bruhn’s introduction offers a useful review of tile making in the United States, as does Karlson, American Art Tile: –. . Delpar, The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican, . A touring exhibition of Mexican folk art set an attendance record at the Witte Museum in San Antonio in August . Ibid., . . Biographical details of Harris’s life come from ‘‘The Magic Touch: Concerning the Gracious San Antonio Woman Who Is the New President of the Conservation Society; Meet Ethel Harris,’’ San Antonio Express Magazine, June , , , copy consulted in AP folder; from Gordon, ‘‘Profiles’’ (Gordon wrote the article based on her oral history interview with Ethel Wilson Harris of January , , a transcript of which is on file at the SACSF); from the interview of Donald and Trudy Harris in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, –; and from Donald W. Harris, interview. . Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by the San Antonio Conservation Society Oral History Program, . . Gordon, ‘‘Profiles,’’ . Regarding Harris’s experience as the first woman to drive in San Antonio at the age of fourteen, one article read: ‘‘‘It was a bright yellow Apperson Jackrabbit,’ she said. ‘And sitting there, waiting for my father, I was embarrassed by the stares of people walking by.’ ’’ See Erickson, ‘‘Ethel Harris Ends an Era.’’ Harris’s youngest son also relates how she would tell the story of the Apperson Jackrabbit. Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, . . Susan Toomey Frost, ‘‘San Jose and Miz Harrie,’’ . The details of Ethel Wilson Harris’s early life are a bit sketchy, but at some point along the way she studied

 ;               –  

for two years at the San Antonio Female College (later Trinity University) and played violin with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra. Erickson’s article reports that she worked for the symphony ‘‘in the late ’s,’’ but her later interview with Marlene Gordon suggests she was with the symphony much earlier, probably before World War I. Her son’s testimony confirms the latter view; he states, ‘‘By age twenty [], she played the violin with the San Antonio symphony.’’ See Erickson, ‘‘Ethel Harris Ends an Era’’; Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by Marlene Gordon, January , , ; and Donald W. Harris interview in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, –. Donald W. Harris reports of his father’s teaching career that Arthur graduated from Bates College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and taught English at both Washington Irving High and Jefferson High School in San Antonio. Donald believes that Arthur was responsible for creating the glazes that Ethel used on her ceramics, since the formulas in her record books are in Arthur’s handwriting. Ibid., –. . ‘‘Mexican Crafts in Texas City.’’ Regarding Harris’s role as ‘‘the driving force behind the revival of tile making in San Antonio,’’ see Susan Toomey Frost, ‘‘San Jose and Miz Harrie,’’ . Frost cites artist and art historian Amy Freeman Lee, who recognized Harris as ‘‘San Antonio’s most expert technician in the ceramic craft of making tiles.’’ Lee stated: ‘‘For the past twelve years, she has done more to encourage interest and to aid the development of this art than any other individual.’’ See Lee, ‘‘The Craft of Tile Making,’’ n.p., n.d., copy consulted in WPA scrapbook of Ethel Wilson Harris, , , SACSF. Yet despite her fame as an artist, Harris was not a potter or tile maker herself; her role was more of organizer, manager, and promoter. As her son Donald W. Harris put it, ‘‘My mother was an entrepreneur.’’ But he went on to emphasize that in the tile making process she was ‘‘the most important person in the production’’ because ‘‘she fired the kilns herself.’’ See interview in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, , . Donald Harris also emphasizes that although his mother did not do the designs herself, she mixed all the glazes used on the tiles. Donald W. Harris, interview. . Ethel Wilson, ‘‘Arts and Interests,’’ . . The Nat Lewis Barn was located at  North St. Mary’s Street in San Antonio. Donald W. Harris, interview. . Susan Toomey Frost, ‘‘San Jose and Miz Harrie,’’ . The quotation from Harris’s proposal to the conservation society is from society minutes in , quoted in Fisher, Saving San Antonio, . Regarding the conservation society’s acquisition and restoration of the granary at Mission San José, see ibid., –. . Susan Toomey Frost, ‘‘San Jose and Miz Harrie,’’ . . During the war years, the scarcity of visitors to the mission left Harris with such a minimal income that the Texas State Parks Board initiated an adjustment in its agreement in order to give her a larger percentage. See Frank D. Quinn to Robert E. Lucey, August , , San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. In later years, however, it seems that Harris contributed more funds to the park than she earned there; at least, that is how her former protégé Pete DeVries remembers it. DeVries, interview. Harris’s youngest son

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recalls, ‘‘We never had any money to speak of, but she seemed always to be able to make out with what we had.’’ Donald W. Harris, interview. . The Texas legislature’s resolution recognizing Harris’s work, as well as the descriptions of her plans for Mexican Crafts, are taken from an article in the San Antonio Express that was reprinted in Sparks (a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department newsletter), July , , copy consulted in AP folder. In the same folder is a Mission Crafts catalogue illustrating products for sale by mail order. Harris’s enthusiasm for mission artisans ‘‘almost untouched by modernism’’ revealed her affiliation with what T. J. Jackson Lears describes as ‘‘American anti-modernism.’’ No Place of Grace, xiii. . Father Herzig to Robert E. Lucey, memorandum, July , , and Lucey to Herzig, memorandum, October , , both in San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by Esther MacMillan, July , , , SACSF; Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by the San Antonio Conservation Society Oral History Program, . . Robert E. Lucey to Rev. Felician Cook, February , , San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by the San Antonio Conservation Society Oral History Program, . Regarding the suggestion in  that the archbishop replace Harris with a Catholic custodian, see Felician Cook to Robert E. Lucey, September , , San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . DeVries, interview. Harris was Episcopalian, and although she was not a passionately religious person, she insisted that her children be raised in the Church; as her son puts it, ‘‘She was big on us going to church.’’ Donald W. Harris, interview. . Father Roy Rihn to Lucey, October , , and Lucey to Rihn, October , , both in San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. Ethel Wilson Harris served as the thirteenth president of the San Antonio Conservation Society, –. See Fisher, Saving San Antonio, . A copy of her final report as president, made on May , , is on file in AP folder. . For an ‘‘artistic biography’’ of Elizabeth M. Fraser, see Outsen, ‘‘Elizabeth M. Fraser.’’ Outsen discusses the model of Mission San José in chapter , –. The booklet ‘‘San José Mission: Queen of the Missions’’ that Harris first produced in  stated in its fifteenth edition (): ‘‘A scale model of the mission as it looked in the early part of the th century has been painstakingly built in order to show the visitor the completeness of this mission community. This model can be seen in the granary.’’ The model remains even today in the granary as part of the National Park Service display at the mission. . Pete DeVries insists that Harris had no historical sources other than Carlos E. Castañeda’s Our Catholic Heritage in Texas. DeVries, interview. But the fifteenth edition of her interpretive brochure () also listed works by Eugene Bolton and Frederick C. Chabot, the guide by William Corner, a translation of Alto S. Hoermann’s Daughter of Tehuan, and the eighteenth-century reports of Fray Antonio Cipriano, Governor Barrios, Fray Gaspar José de Solís, and Fray

 ;               –  

Juan Augustín Morfi. Nevertheless, her use of these sources remained rather superficial. . Helen Delpar documents the role that Mexico played for antimodernist Americans in the s and s. She argues, for instance, that ‘‘those in search of premodern communities still relatively unscathed by the industrial revolution’’ found them ‘‘throughout rural Mexico.’’ The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican, . . A column in the San Antonio Express and News featuring Ethel Wilson Harris in  reported, ‘‘By Jeep and even horseback, Mrs. Harris has been making one or more trips a year into Mexico the past  years doing research on arts, crafts, costumes, markets, and fiestas.’’ See Bob Dale, ‘‘Face of San Antonio.’’ Evidence of Harris’s travels throughout Mexico is abundant; Outsen mentions a postcard Harris sent to Elizabeth Fraser from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, on June , . See ‘‘Elizabeth M. Fraser,’’ . Father Roy Rihn of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio wrote on July , , ‘‘Mrs. Harris at the moment is enjoying the charms of Old Mexico.’’ See Rihn to Lucey, San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. She described her adventurous trip to the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Yahuitlan in February of . See clipping from the San Antonio Light, June , , in AP folder. On March , , Harris presented slides of ‘‘a traditional religious festival in Chiapas, Mexico,’’ that she had photographed in the late s. See clipping from the San Antonio Light, March , , in AP folder. And her son Donald notes that ‘‘she spent her life making many, many trips into Mexico, taking pictures and traveling all over the country.’’ See interview in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, . He comments that her tile artisans would draw designs using her photographs of Mexican scenes as models. Donald W. Harris, interview. . Helen Harris Witte, ‘‘Memories of Ethel Harris,’’ November , , AP folder. . Ann Walker, ‘‘Memories of Ethel Harris,’’ October , , AP folder; Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, . . DeVries, interview. A photo of the cart adorned the cover of the fifteenth edition () of the brochure ‘‘San José Mission: Queen of the Missions.’’ Harris used her trips to Mexico to purchase items not only to decorate the mission but also for resale in the shop there. Donald W. Harris, interview. . Marlene Gordon claims that Harris came up with the idea of placing a theater adjacent to the mission, but she misquotes Harris’s  oral history interview with Esther MacMillan; Gordon quotes Harris as saying, ‘‘I used to sit on the side of that gravel pit and dream of what a wonderful outdoor theater it would make.’’ See ‘‘Profiles,’’ –. In fact, the ‘‘gravel pit’’ had already been a theater for nearly two decades; according to the transcript of the interview with MacMillan, Harris actually said, ‘‘And then that theater was just a big hole in the ground, and we had a little old broken down stage there that we had some things there. And I used to sit there and think about that theater: ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful?’ And sure enough, we got it done.’’ See Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by Esther MacMillan, . Regarding the origin of the theater in the Huisache Bowl at Mission San José, see Fisher, Saving San Antonio, . The

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theater program from the summer of  has a brief history of the theater that states, ‘‘A small theatre was built in the early ’s in what was an abandoned gravel pit and many historical pageants were presented, including a harvest pageant written by Mrs. Elizabeth Graham.’’ ‘‘Drama of the Alamo/San José Story,’’ program, copy consulted in Zoltan Balough Collection, CASA. . DeVries, interview. Although Harris may have circumvented the state agency in initiating renovations of the outdoor theater, the subsequent success of the theater prompted Texas governor Price Daniel in  to proclaim it ‘‘the Historic Theatre of Texas,’’ and by  it was under the administration of the State Parks Board. See ‘‘Drama of the Alamo/San José Story.’’ Regarding federal involvement, Harris said that she secured , to renovate the theater from Conrad Wirth of the National Park Service. Harris, interview by Esther MacMillan, –. (Marlene Gordon also misrepresented this tale in her  ‘‘Profiles’’ article, .) . ‘‘Drama of the Alamo/San José Story.’’ . DeVries, interview. . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, , n. . . ‘‘Drama of the Alamo/San José Story.’’ The program listed Harris as coauthor, along with playwright Frank Duane, of San José Story. But an interview of Harris in the San Antonio Express-News in June  in which Harris suggested she was the sole author of the play elicited a strong reaction from Duane. ‘‘Mrs. Harris has been ‘credited’ as co-author of the play in press releases and on programs,’’ he wrote, elaborating, ‘‘—she requested such billing prior to the play’s being produced by The Texas Historic Theatre Foundation, of which she is President.’’ But, he went on to emphasize, ‘‘there is a great deal of difference between having your name on something and publicly stating that such billing is warranted and deserved.’’ Duane explained, ‘‘Mrs. Harris supplied background material and research for the play. That is all.’’ He went on to argue that although the idea of the play came from Harris, (he described it as ‘‘an old lady’s twenty-year dream’’), it was his skill as a writer that made it a satisfying theatrical work. See ‘‘Statement by Frank Duane,’’ June , , AP folder (emphasis in original). In , a new play by Ethel Wilson Harris opened at the mission theater, Los Indios de San José. According to Pete DeVries, Harris simply reworked San José Story by throwing out Duane’s contributions and renaming it. DeVries, interview. For an announcement of the new play, see Felicia Cogan, ‘‘Jungle Journey Routine to Her,’’ San Antonio Light, June , , copy consulted in AP folder. . Gordon, ‘‘Profiles,’’ . . Cogan, ‘‘Jungle Journey Routine to Her.’’ . DeVries, interview. Father Balthasar Janacek recalls that in the mid-s, ‘‘Pete DeVries was already the superintendent, and Mrs. Ethel Harris still lived in the house [at Mission San José, now the renovated Harris House], but she was really the ‘owner’ [of the mission]!’’ Interview in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, –. . See Ethel Wilson Harris to the San José Mission Advisory Committee, August , , and Minutes of the San José Mission Advisory Board, March , , both

 ;               –  

in Old Spanish Missions Committee Miscellaneous –, Old Spanish Missions Office Collection, CASA. . Minutes of the San José Mission Advisory Board, March , , San José Advisory Board –, ibid. . Harris once described herself as a ‘‘fighter.’’ See ‘‘San Antonio Theater Leader Praises ‘Texas’ Production,’’ Amarillo Globe-Times, July , , copy consulted in AP folder. Amanda Cartwright Taylor, Harris’s friend and collaborator at the San Antonio Conservation Society, once said of her: ‘‘When they need a soft glove, they give it to me. When they need a bulldozer, they give it to Ethel.’’ See ‘‘Ethel Harris Named and Nurtured ‘A Night in Old San Antonio,’’’ San Antonio ExpressNews, April , , copy consulted in AP folder. Pete DeVries describes her as a ‘‘bulldog’’ and compares her personality to a maguey, the hardy plant that served as the logo for her tile work. DeVries, interview. . Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by Marlene Gordon, –. . Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by Esther MacMillan, . . Ethel Wilson Harris, interview by the San Antonio Conservation Society Oral History Program, . . FitzSimon to Lucey, March , , San Juan Capistrano Topics: Restoration # (–), CASA. Garriga had been custodian of the missions for the Church and had directed the restorations at Mission San José under Lucey’s predecessor, Archbishop Drossaerts. See Noonan-Guerra, ‘‘Priest-Conservationists,’’ , and Fisher, Saving San Antonio, . FitzSimon was to become Lucey’s successor as bishop in Amarillo, Texas. Privett, The U.S. Catholic Church and Its Hispanic Members, . . Lucey made a habit of spending the month of August every year in an apartment overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California. See Lucey to H. J. Carney, June , , Lucey, Robert E. (Archbishop): Travel Schedules –, folder, CASA. The routine continued as late as , when he mentioned at the end of August that he was returning ‘‘from a three-weeks’ vacation in California.’’ Lucey to Clayton T. Garrison, August , , Lucey Correspondence. . Lucey’s notes for a speech he delivered in  alluded to an affection for the California missions that he had cultivated since childhood. See notes for ‘‘Early Days in San Antonio’’ (speech delivered at the thirtieth annual meeting, Conference on State Parks, San José Mission, San Antonio, Tex., October , ), , Lucey Correspondence. In the same folder is a letter from  in which Lucey, by then retired, wrote, ‘‘During my twenty-eight years as Archbishop of San Antonio I took a special interest in the Old Spanish Missions because I was born and spent my early life in Los Angeles, California, where the natives really appreciate having the Old Missions in that lovely part of our nation.’’ Lucey to Clayton T. Garrison, August , . . A photograph published in a local newspaper showed the archbishop reading over the agreement in the presence of Dr. Aubrey Neashan of the National Park Service, Frank Quinn of the Texas State Parks Board, the county judge

              –   ; 

Charles W. Anderson, and Amanda Cartwright Taylor, who represented the San Antonio Conservation Society. See clipping from the San Antonio Express-News, April , , in San Juan Capistrano Topics: Restoration # (–), CASA. The attorney J. R. Davis of San Antonio sent a lengthy opinion on the proposed agreement to the archbishop’s secretary on April , . Davis also expressed a misogynist fear of an advisory board made up of four women and only one man. ‘‘I think,’’ he wrote, ‘‘it would be a situation not to be desired; hence the suggestion in the opinion that the Advisory Board be composed of four men and one woman.’’ His suggestion was not heeded, and no gender formula appeared in the final agreement. Davis’s letter to Reverend James T. Lockwood of April , , and the accompanying legal opinion are in San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . See De Zavala to Lucey, April  and April , , as well as Lockwood to De Zavala, April , , all in San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (– ), CASA. In the same folder is Lockwood’s note of September , , expressing his opposition to the ‘‘diabolical plot.’’ Whom he intended it for is unclear, since it is addressed only to ‘‘Your Excellency,’’ an uncertain reference following the death earlier that month of Archbishop Drossaerts. The note has a newspaper clipping attached to it reporting the National Park Service’s interest in Mission San José as a national monument. . The front page of the San Antonio Express on May , , carried a photograph of the signing ceremony. Chief participants in the ceremony included county judge Charles W. Anderson, Archbishop Lucey, Amanda Cartwright Taylor, U.S. Undersecretary of the Interior Alvin J. Wirtz, and Wendell Mayes, chair of the Texas State Parks Board. Copies of the signed agreements are in San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . The transcript of the speech Lucey gave at the signing ceremony on May , , is in Archbishop Robert E. Lucey Speeches , CASA. . Saul Bronder characterizes ‘‘the key tension of Lucey’s life’’ as a conflict between ‘‘his social liberalism and his ecclesiastical conservatism.’’ Social Justice and Church Authority, . . O’Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform, . O’Brien notes at least two other, alternative perspectives held by Catholics during the same period: a negative view that ‘‘regarded the dominant trends of their time as antithetical to the doctrines of their Church and the ideals of their nation’’; and a third view that rejected ‘‘America, in theory and in fact, in favor of a wholehearted commitment to Christian truths transcending the limits of geography, nation, ethnic group and class.’’ Ibid., –. . Lucey to Felician Cook, July , , San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . Lucey to Father Herzig, memorandum, October , . . Lucey to DeVries, January , , San José Mission Topics: National Park Service (–), CASA. . Lucey to Amanda Cartwright Taylor, May , , Espada Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. Lucey repeated this sentiment the following year

 ;               –  

when he wrote, ‘‘The more land around the mission we can own the less chance there will be of someone building a honky-tonk near that sacred ground.’’ See Lucey to Rihn, December , , Lucey Correspondence. What Lucey meant by ‘‘sacred’’ in both of these quotes is revealing. It could be a reference to the sacrality of the missions’ ecclesiastical function, but an implicitly aesthetic sentiment seems more the point here. . Lucey to Frank D. Quinn, September , , San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA; Lucey to Amanda Cartwright Taylor, May , . . Lucey to Father Herzig, memorandum, February , , , San Juan Capistrano Mission (–): Miscellaneous Folder #, CASA. . Clipping from the San Antonio Light, May , , copy consulted in Lucey Correspondence; Lucey to Rev. Henry Schultz, March , , Espada Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . Lucey wrote at the beginning of , ‘‘It is time to begin thinking of the restoration of Old San Juan Mission and improvements to the campus of Old San Juan and also of Espada.’’ See Lucey to Father Herzig, memorandum, January , , San Juan Capistrano Topics: Restoration # (–), CASA. In an address to the Texas Old Missions Restoration Association in March , Lucey announced: ‘‘We’re going to do something about the San Juan mission this year.’’ Clipping from the San Antonio Light, March , , in Lucey Correspondence. . Interestingly, this committee at first had no Catholic members, although one was later added to help with fund-raising among Catholics. Lucey to John A. Bitter Jr., January , , San Juan Capistrano Topics: Mission Committee (–), CASA. . Notes for ‘‘Early Days in San Antonio,’’ , Lucey Correspondence. . Father Herzig to Lucey, memorandum, May , , Lucey Correspondence. . Lucey to Rihn, August , , Lucey Correspondence. . Lucey to Gonzalez, March , , Missions—Miscellaneous, CASA. . Lucey to DeVries, January , , San José Mission Topics: National Park Service (–), CASA. . Rt. Rev. Patrick J. Geehan to all city pastors, March , ; Rev. J. L. Manning to all city pastors, note, April , ; Father Juraschek to Lucey, memorandum, May , ; Lucey to Juraschek, May , , all in San José Mission Topics: Annual Pilgrimage (–), CASA. . Roy Rihn to Lucey, July , , San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . Anderson to Lucey, January , , and Margaret Anderson, ‘‘Report on Mission Restoration Program,’’ both in San Juan Capistrano Topics: Restoration # (–), CASA. . Lucey to Ilott, June , , San Juan Capistrano Topics: Mission Committee (–), CASA. . Lucey to Gilbert M. Denman Jr., November , , ibid. . Lucey to Marshall T. Steves, April , , ibid. . Lucey to Roy Rihn, memorandum, June , , Concepción Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA.

              –   ; 

. Harvey P. Smith Jr. to Bernard F. Popp, April , , Mission Concepción Topics: Restoration (–), CASA. . Lucey to Rihn, June , , Lucey Correspondence. . Lucey to Father Herzig, memorandum, February , . . Lucey to Brooks Martin, August , . . See, for instance, the address he delivered at the official dedication of the San Francisco de la Espada Historical Marker on August , , , Lucey Correspondence. . Lucey to Leven, memorandum, November , , Espada Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . ‘‘Our Old Spanish Missions’’ (address delivered to the Conservation Society at the Ursuline Academy, San Antonio, Tex., March , ), outline in Missions of San Antonio Description, SACSF. . ‘‘Church (Archbishop’s Recording),’’ December , , San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . ‘‘Early Days in San Antonio,’’ . . Margaret R. Anderson, ‘‘Report on Mission Restoration,’’ . . A copy of the short acceptance speech delivered August , , by Lucey for the Amigo of the Missions Award is in Lucey Correspondence.

  . Sylvia Springer, ‘‘Religious Procession Dedicates Hemisfair to God: Tribute Paid to Dr. King,’’ San Antonio Express/News, April , , A, and Jim Brigance, ‘‘Religious Tone Marks March to Fair,’’ San Antonio Light, April , , . . The television documentary HemisFair , produced in commemoration of the fair’s thirtieth anniversary, remembers the evening gala performance of Don Carlo primarily as a social event, commenting at length on the women’s dresses and the food at the elegant buffet dinner served during the long intermission. Richardson, Hemisfair . . By the s, San Antonio could claim undisputed status as a world-class destination. For instance, survey results reported in the October  issue of Condé Nast Traveler magazine ranked San Antonio ninth overall among the top ten travel destinations in the world, putting the city just below Paris and above Venice. Cited in Fisher, Saving San Antonio, ix and xii, n. . The image of world’s fairs as pilgrimage destinations goes back at least to the turn of the twentieth century, when Henry Adams professed a ‘‘religion of world’s fairs.’’ See The Education of Henry Adams, . In his essay ‘‘The Dynamo and the Virgin,’’ Adams loosely characterized international expositions as modern pilgrimage destinations by comparing the force of the modern dynamo, on display at the Great Exposition of , to the force of the Virgin Mary. See ibid., –. Likewise, Walter Benjamin wrote in his essay ‘‘Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century’’ that fairs were ‘‘sites of pilgrimages to the commodity fetish.’’ Reflections, . . Regarding the role that world’s fairs played in promoting and consolidating

 ;               –  

modern consumer culture, see Hinsley, ‘‘The World as Marketplace’’; Lewis, ‘‘Everything under One Roof ’’; Rydell, ‘‘The Culture of Imperial Abundance’’; Susman, ‘‘Ritual Fairs’’; and Weimann, ‘‘Fashion and the Fair.’’ For more general histories of fairs and expositions, see Allwood, The Great Exhibitions; Findling, Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions; Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas; Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty; Rydell, World of Fairs; Rydell, Findling, and Pelle, Fair America; and Rydell and Gwinn, Fair Representations. . Regarding the relationship of American religion to the marketplace, see Moore, Selling God. . The appearance of religion at HemisFair was in no way unique to it. Regarding religion at other world’s fairs, see Benedict, The Anthropology of World’s Fairs, –; Downey, ‘‘Tradition and Acceptance’’; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture, –; McArthur, ‘‘The  Chicago World’s Fair’’; and Todd, ‘‘Imagining the Future of American Religion.’’ . Commemorating important anniversaries is a common theme for American expositions. In , Philadelphia celebrated the centennial of American independence with an international fair; the  Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition commemorated the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage; the  Saint Louis fair marked the hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase; in , Portland, Oregon, celebrated the centenary of the Lewis and Clark expedition with a fair; in , Chicago staged another fair to mark the centennial of the city’s founding; and Dallas celebrated one hundred years of Texas independence in  with the Texas Centennial Exposition. See Rydell, The Books of the Fairs, . Regarding the earliest stages of planning for HemisFair, see John Daniels (Planning Committee secretary), ‘‘Fact Sheet: Fair of the Americas,’’ January , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA. (Note that Kathleen G. McCabe, archives assistant at the Archives, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries, informed me shortly after I completed my research there that the archivists had begun renumbering the San Antonio Fair Inc. Collection. She assured me, however, that most of the files would keep their previous numbering and that the new numbers for the ones that changed would likely be close to the old numbers.) . See, for instance, James M. Gaines, ‘‘Your HemisFair-,’’ December , , draft copy, –, XO series, box , folder , UTSA. . Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez pegged the beginning of San Antonio’s civic decline to . See Palmer, ‘‘The Confluence of Politics,’’ . For an assertion by HemisFair officials that the fair would rehabilitate San Antonio’s reputation, see James M. Gaines, ‘‘Destination ,’’ June , , –, XO series, box , folder , UTSA. . Gaines, ‘‘Destination ,’’ –. . Steves, interview. . ‘‘Opening Remarks by Marshall Steves to the San Antonio Rotary Club, September , ,’’ XO series, box , folder , UTSA. . Minutes of the HemisFair Religious Committee meeting, February , , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA.

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. For allusions to the pressure exerted by HemisFair officials, see Baugh to the HemisFair Religious Exhibits Committee, memorandum, January , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA. Also, in recounting his involvement with HemisFair, Reverend Baugh told me, ‘‘It became very obvious very quickly that what [HemisFair corporate officials] wanted us to do was build a building. . . . their idea was that we would have a big religion center, and the various groups would do their thing in different parts of it.’’ Baugh, interview. . The full initial proposal for the Inter-Faith Center appears in Dr. William Burns (chairman, Ad Hoc Prospectus Committee) to the HemisFair Religious Exhibits Committee, memorandum, January , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA. . Ibid., . . Minutes of the HemisFair Religious Committee meeting, February , . . Leven to Richard E. Miller, February , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA. Baugh is quoted in the San Antonio Light, February , , . . Miller to Kahn, February , , Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. . James M. Gaines and Richard E. Miller to Religious Expression Committee, memorandum, May , , Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. This memo contains an itemized list of contributors that includes ten religious groups (Catholic archdiocese, Christ Scientist, Greek Orthodox, Jewish Federation, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Christian Church, Episcopal Church, San Antonio Baptist Ministers, Methodist Church, and Reorganized Church of Latter-day Saints) and one individual (Paul Howell), plus miscellaneous contributions. Note that sometime in the early months of  the name of the committee changed from ‘‘Religious Exhibits’’ to ‘‘Religious Expression.’’ . See, for instance, Richard E. Miller, ‘‘HemisFair —A Cultural Landmark,’’ draft copy, Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. Miller predicted: ‘‘HemisFair  is an event which will be remembered for its art, its music, its educational emphasis, its religious unity, its quality, its great contribution to hemispheric understanding, and [as] a place where at least . million people had a wonderful time.’’ He included the Religious Center as a key element in the cultural legacy of the fair. . Present at the March , , meeting were Everett H. Jones, Stephen A. Leven, Myron Chrisman, David Jacobson, O. Eugene Slater, and C. Don Baugh. An undated and unattributed memo on San Antonio Council of Churches letterhead to the six participants is filed with the papers of James M. Gaines (executive vice president of San Antonio Fair Inc.), XO series, box , folder , UTSA. The memo outlined the group’s reservations about proceeding with the building and called for a meeting with Gaines. . Rynne, Vatican Council II, , and Leven, Go Tell It in the Streets. . See Alamo Messenger, January , , clipping, in Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. . San Antonio Council of Churches (C. Don Baugh, Everett H. Jones, Myron W. Chrisman, Stephen A. Leven, David Jacobson, and Eugene Slater) to James M. Gaines, June , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA.

 ;                –   

. Charles G. Williams (director for religion, Lilly Endowment) to Richard E. Miller, June , , Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. . Miller to Leven, June , , Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. . William R. Sinkin, the first president of the HemisFair Corporation and a member of the Executive Committee throughout the planning and operation of the fair, does not recall religion having been an important element in planning for the fair, and he concludes that ‘‘religion never played that big a part of being an attraction of the fair.’’ Sinkin, interview. . Sterling F. Wheeler to Charles R. Meeker Jr., March , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA. . See ‘‘News Release,’’ April , , Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. Also see news accounts in Springer, ‘‘Religious Procession Dedicates Hemisfair to God,’’ and Brigance, ‘‘Religious Tone Marks March to Fair.’’ . According to a news release prepared March , , but never issued, the chaplain’s meditation corner was located in the northeast part of the lower level of the Lake Pavilion, a building that housed various visitor services and a cluster of fast-food outlets. See ‘‘News for Immediate Release,’’ March , , Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. Indicative of the invisibility of religion at HemisFair, the official guidebook of the fair never mentioned the chaplain program or the meditation corner. The guidebook’s map of the Lake Pavilion showed a unit marked ‘‘lost children’’ in the northeast corner of the lower level. Wall, HemisFair  Official Souvenir Guidebook, –. . Information about the chaplain program comes from the unreleased ‘‘News for Immediate Release’’ and also from Baugh, interview. . Wall, HemisFair  Official Souvenir Guidebook, . . See Frank Manupelli (HemisFair general manager) to Roland C. Bremer (president of the San Antonio Stake of the LDS Church), October , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA. It addresses a number of Mormon concerns, including their intentions to proselytize. Regarding possible pavilion sites, see also James M. Gaines to Bremer, August , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA. . Reviews of the Mormon pavilion appeared on April , , in both the San Antonio Light () and the San Antonio Express (A). . ‘‘Mormon Lauds HemisFair,’’ San Antonio News, April , , A. For a list of the Mormon officials and their itinerary, see Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. . James M. Gaines to Chuck Snyder, memorandum, February , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA. . See the news release of November , , announcing construction of the Sermons from Science pavilion in Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA, and Wall, HemisFair  Official Souvenir Guidebook, . For a history of these films and their creator, Reverend Irwin Moon, as well as details of their wide distribution in the U.S. Air Force, see Gilbert, Redeeming Culture, –. Gilbert discusses the Sermons from Science pavilion at the  ‘‘Century ’’ exposition in Seattle. Ibid., .

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. ‘‘Progress Report: First  Days,’’ Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. . This sort of record keeping was routine for showings of the Sermons from Science films. Gilbert, Redeeming Culture, . . Baugh, interview. . The performers came primarily from Texas and neighboring states, and most (but not all) of the groups’ members were Baptists. See the list of performers in Visitor series, box , folder , UTSA. Regarding the Eagar House pavilion, see Wall, HemisFair  Official Souvenir Guidebook, . . See the comments of Charles Numrich, a student at Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who supervised the program, about the intent of the Oxcart performances in clipping, n.p., n.d., in San Antonio Fair Inc., Entertainment Department series, box , folder , UTSA. . See Wall, HemisFair  Official Souvenir Guidebook, –, and Richardson, HemisFair . . Both Guerra and Allee comment in Richardson’s documentary film. Marshall Steves claimed in my interview with him that when HemisFair executives learned of the young woman’s exhibitionist display of her body, they were horrified and put a stop to it. But virtually everyone I talked to was quick to mention the ‘‘bare-breasted beauty.’’ Either Steves only imagined what he thought HemisFair officials should have done, or the sacrificial performers disregarded the order to cover up, or fairgoers are imagining what they wished they had seen at the Voladores show. . Wall, HemisFair  Official Souvenir Guidebook, . The appearance of the flying Indians and their performance of a mock human sacrifice perpetuated a long tradition at world’s fairs of displaying cultural otherness both as entertainment and to sell products. See Benedict, ‘‘Rituals of Representation’’; Benedict, The Anthropology of World’s Fairs; Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, chapter , ‘‘Human Showcases,’’ –; Hinsley, ‘‘The World as Marketplace’’; Timothy Mitchell, ‘‘The World as Exhibition’’; and Tenkotte, ‘‘Kaleidoscopes of the World.’’ . Richardson tells the story of the chicken sacrifice in her documentary HemisFair , which includes an interview with Manupelli. As Marshall Steves recalls it, the HemisFair executives learned about the incident only after the chicken had been killed, and although they did not approve of it, they nevertheless could do nothing about it. Steves, interview. . The distinction between a locative tendency (that is, one that highlights the power and stability of location, represented most forcefully in permanent buildings) and an itinerant tendency (that is, one that emphasizes mobility, movement, and contingency) can be found in chapter . . Reported in ‘‘Mormon Lauds HemisFair.’’ . See Minutes of the Executive Committee meeting, August , , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA, and Ernst and Ernst, ‘‘Audited Combined Financial Statements [for San Antonio Fair Inc. and Fair Syndicate Inc.],’’ December , , San Antonio Fair Inc., Comptrollers Office series, box , folder , UTSA. . Steves’s comment is in ‘‘Bexar County Historical Commission Oral History

 ;                –  

Program, Interview with: Marshall Steves,’’ February , , , XO series, box , folder , UTSA. . See the retrospective comments of HemisFair leaders and other San Antonio residents in Marlene Richardson’s film HemisFair . . Quoted in Paul Thompson, ‘‘Top of the News: Another First,’’ San Antonio Express, April , , -A. . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, –. . Legislation authorizing the negotiations that led eventually to the national historic site designation at Mission San José passed the U.S. Congress on August , . Cruz, San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, . . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, –. . Regarding the sacralization of national parks, see the chapters on Yosemite and Yellowstone in Sears, Sacred Places, –. For an alternative perspective, see Runte’s argument regarding ‘‘monumentalism’’ in National Parks. . My characterization of national sites as ‘‘sacred’’ corresponds to the notion of ‘‘civil religion’’ as discussed most prominently by Robert Bellah. See ‘‘Civil Religion in America’’ and Bellah and Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion. My allusion to the San Antonio missions as a national sacred space is intended only to emphasize the special priority the missions enjoy alongside other American sites that contribute to an official narrative of national unity. These include such places as battlefields of the American Revolution and Civil War; memorials to national heroes, especially those in Washington, D.C.; and museums that commemorate national heritage, such as the one at the Ellis Island National Monument. . The Pacheco story appears in the San Antonio Light, October , , copy consulted in Missions, CASA. . Thurber, Sellars, and Battle, Proposed San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, . . I discuss more thoroughly in the next chapter how ‘‘living parishes’’ figure into the park service’s interpretive efforts at the missions. . For instance, during negotiations with the National Park Service in , Charles Grahmann, serving then as vicar general of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, wrote of his concern ‘‘that the present rights of the Church be fully protected so that the living parishes, priests and people, do not get so entangled that their freedom to use the churches, grounds, etc. would be endangered.’’ See Grahmann to Thomas Drought, August , , Cooperative Agreement and Indenture, Old Spanish Missions Office Collection, CASA. . I am not alone in regarding Father Balty, as he is affectionately known to many in San Antonio, as the factor most responsible for making the complex relationships at the missions work as well as they do. Virtually everyone I talked to, including the park superintendent, other administrators, park rangers, clergy, and parishioners, spoke highly of him and expressed confidence in his remarkable ability to find compromise in seemingly intractable conflicts. . Father Janacek (spelled ‘‘Yanokick’’ in the subcommittee hearing transcript)

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noted that a long precedent at Mission San José demonstrated that parish needs and public uses could be balanced successfully in a government-managed park. When questioned by members of the Senate subcommittee on how public uses might constrain religious activities at the missions, Father Janacek commented: ‘‘It does limit somewhat the use of the churches as parish churches. But that limitation is always able to be worked out to serve both purposes.’’ See U.S. Congress, San Antonio Missions, . . Fisher, Saving San Antonio, . . Janacek interview, March , .

  . The official homepage of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park reported ,, recreational visitors in . See ( June , ). . Thurber, Sellars, and Battle, Proposed San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, . . Archaicization serves narratives of national identity in a process that Homi K. Bhabha succinctly describes by drawing attention to how ‘‘the people’’ of a nation occupy ‘‘a double-time.’’ He writes: ‘‘The people are the historical ‘objects’ of a nationalist pedagogy, giving the discourse an authority that is based on the pre-given or constituted historical origin or event; the people are also the ‘subjects’ of a process of signification that must erase any prior or originary presence of the nation-people to demonstrate the prodigious, living principle of the people as that continual process by which the national life is redeemed and signified as a repeating and reproductive process.’’ ‘‘DissemiNation,’’ . . Clifford, Routes, . . Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture, . . Grabowska, Gente de Razón. . One of the park rangers, for instance, told me that he asks tour groups, ‘‘Where are these people?’’ He goes on to explain that their descendents make up today’s mission communities (anonymous park ranger, interview). Also, Mark Tezel, a volunteer docent and former interpretive ranger, contrasts the San Antonio missions with the Salinas missions in New Mexico, which he describes as silent and dead. Tezel, interview. . The theme of continuity emphasized at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park coincides with a narrative framework that has guided the National Park Service in general since the s. Ever since it began to aggressively acquire historical sites as part of a New Deal expansion of the park service’s role, it has focused its interpretations on the patriotic story of nation building, presenting a narrative of American progress from its uncivilized beginnings to the contemporary triumph of the American nation. See Bodnar, Remaking America, –. Edward T. Linenthal notes, however, that the National Park Service does not narrowly promote a single historical narrative. There are, he argues, ‘‘serious counternarratives anchored in difficult sites,’’ including Manzanar,

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Oklahoma City National Memorial, Washita Battlefield, the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, the Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site, Women’s Rights National Historical Park, and, soon, the site of the Sand Creek Massacre. Private correspondence with Edward T. Linenthal, October , . . Southwest Regional Office, National Park Service, ‘‘General Management Plan/Development Concept Plan, San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, San Antonio, Texas,’’ July , , MNHP. . Whitesell, interview. Father Herbert W. Jones, OFM, of Mission San José reiterated this point when he said that although visitors come to the national park, it is the churches that they want to see. Jones, interview. . San Antonio Missions National Historical Park interpretive brochure for Mission Concepción, May  (acquired at Mission Concepción, January ). . Bliss, interview. . Ibid. . Cantú, interview, March , . . Payne, interview, February , . . Bliss, interview. . Martinez-Amos, interview. . Ibid. . Mark Tezel tells of an incident that occurred when he was accompanying the park superintendent and the park historian on a tour with VIPs. When they arrived at the mission church, the superintendent remained outside because he was in uniform, while the park historian, who was out of uniform, took the guests into the church. Tezel, interview. . Whitesell, interview. Another factor that allowed the revision of the policy was the U.S. Supreme Court’s somewhat inconsistent approach to the Constitution’s establishment clause. Since , when the U.S. Justice Department approved the cooperative agreement between the secretary of the interior and the San Antonio archbishop that allowed the park to open, the Court’s rulings have made the ‘‘Lemon test,’’ upon which the Justice Department based its approval of the park’s creation, a less reliable ‘‘standard of review’’ in establishment cases. Regarding the modern history of establishment law, including the changing role of the Lemon test, see Witte, Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment, –. . Tezel, interview. . Tour of Mission San José with Alfred G. Davila, December , . . Cantú, interview, March , . . Payne, interview, March , . . Ibid. . Eric Michael Mazur makes this argument in The Americanization of Religious Minorities. . Payne, interview, March , . . Cherry Payne told me that the park service’s interpretive program explicitly ‘‘excludes stories like the Alamo, the War of Texas Independence.’’ Ibid.

               –   ; 

. Regarding the Alamo in national and regional narratives of identity, see chapter . . Whitesell, interview. . Tezel, interview. . Ibid. . I am grateful to Mark Tezel for first drawing my attention to the spatial segregation at the missions that makes for, as he insists, ‘‘two different types of experience.’’ Ibid. . Garza interview in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, –. . Jimenez, interview. . Tour of Mission Espada with Bruno J. Martinez, February , . . The book of interviews by Luis Torres, for instance, originated as an oral history project commissioned by the National Park Service. Voices from the San Antonio Missions, . . Jimenez, interview. . Martinez-Amos, interview. . Payne, interview, March , . . Garza interview in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, . Also see Betty Beuché’s remarks in ibid., . My interview with Father Larry Brummer, OFM, confirmed these recollections. . In my interview with the last of the Mission San Juan parishioners to live in the neighborhood immediately adjacent to the mission, the couple remembered the former community and expressed their frustration with the park service’s handling of the acquisition of their home. See anonymous parishioners, husband and wife, interview. Josefina Flores also recalled the community at Mission San Juan and the hardships of being displaced when the park service took over. Flores, interview; Flores interview in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, –. . Galvin, interview. . As a writer for the San Antonio Current, a free weekly ‘‘alternative’’ newspaper, reported, ‘‘At issue is who gets to claim the -year-old parish as their own.’’ Joe P. Killough, ‘‘A Church Divided: Mission San Juan Re-Examines Its Roots,’’ San Antonio Current, August –, , –, copy consulted in Mission San Juan Capistrano, Old Spanish Missions Office Collection, CASA. . A news clipping announcing the formation of a new parish at Mission San Juan and the appointment of Father Baistra as its first priest can be found in San Antonio Current, August –, , copy consulted in ibid. . For instance, Rick Mendoza, a parishioner at Mission San Juan heavily involved in the activities of the Native American dancers, claims descent from an eighteenth-century Indian resident of the mission. But Mickey Killian, himself a parishioner who claims an indigenous ancestry, refutes Mendoza’s claim and challenges him to ‘‘show what fairy tales he has for proof.’’ Mickey Killian, letter to the editor, San Antonio Current, August –, , copy consulted in ibid. . Father Jorge Baistra, letter to the editor, San Antonio Current, September , , copy consulted in ibid.

 ;                –  

. Susana Hayward, ‘‘San Antonio Priest Says He Could Lose Parish,’’ San Antonio Express-News, May , , A, A, copy consulted in ibid. . Isaac Alvarez Cardenas to Alan W. Cox and Stephen Whitesell, June , , ibid. . Ibid. . Quoted in Hayward, ‘‘San Antonio Priest,’’ A. . Martinez, interview, and Rodriguez, interview. . As the priest at Mission San José notes, ‘‘The Mexican American people still are the major ethnic group that worships here in Mission San José.’’ Jones, interview. . Richard Rodriguez offers a poignant account of language loss and cultural estrangement in Hunger of Memory and also in Days of Obligation. . Jimenez, interview. . Ibid. . Ibid. . A lifelong parishioner at Mission San Juan states, ‘‘We’ve been having visitors ever since I was a kid.’’ Anonymous parishioners, husband and wife, interview. . Parishioner Margaret Benavides, for instance, acknowledges the value of the National Park Service in properly maintaining the mission buildings at Mission Concepción. See Benavides interview in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, . In , Father Nathan McNally, OFM, acknowledged that a beneficial spirit of cooperation had grown up between the park service and parishioners. See Anne Pedrotti, ‘‘Corridors to the Past,’’ Today’s Catholic, July , , . The priests whom I spoke with at the missions all characterized their relations with the National Park Service as very good. Brummer, interview; Galvin, interview; and Jones, interview. . Price, interview, February , . Amelia Casillas mentioned to me that the parishioners at Mission Espada sought help from the National Park Service with cleaning up after the tourists, but to no avail. Casillas, interview. . Los Compadres is a local organization established in  ‘‘to aid and promote programs and objectives for which no government funds are available.’’ See Frank Trejo, ‘‘New Group to Promote Missions,’’ San Antonio Light, January , , B. Park superintendent Steve Whitesell describes Los Compadres as the park service’s ‘‘Friends’’ group that is ‘‘specifically limited to working with the National Park Service and working on my goals.’’ It sometimes helps out with Church projects, he says, but there are limitations on what can be done there. Whitesell, interview. . Gonzalez, interview. . Jimenez, interview. . Price, interview, February , . In contrast, Josefina Flores, the caretaker of the candles at Mission San Juan, complained of kids blowing all the candles out. Flores, interview. . Anonymous friar who lives at one of the missions, interview. Intrusions of this sort are not new at the missions; in the s, for instance, Pete DeVries, former superintendent of the state park at Mission San José, put a fence up around his house, which was located just outside the mission walls, in order to ‘‘keep

               –   ; 

out the tourists’’ who viewed it as ‘‘another attraction.’’ Father Herzig to Lucey, memorandum, February , , San José Mission: Miscellaneous Folder # (–), CASA. . Anonymous parishioners, husband and wife, interview. . Whitesell, interview. . Brummer, interview, and Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, –. . Anonymous friar who lives at one of the missions, interview. . Jones, interview. . Anonymous friar who lives at one of the missions, interview. . Jones, interview. . Galvin, interview. . Price, interview, February , . . Janacek, interview, March , . . Martinez, interview. . Nancy Perdue, ‘‘Money Buys Trouble at the Missions,’’ San Antonio Light, December , , A, A. Also see Margaret Benavides’s remarks in Torres, Voices from the San Antonio Missions, , and Janacek, interview, March , . . Price, interview, February , . . Jones, interview. . Price, interview, February , . . Ibid., May , . . Price, interviews, February , May , ; Gonzalez, interview; Jones, interview; and Janacek, interview, March , . . Gonzalez, interview. . Bliss, interview. . Anonymous park ranger, interview. . Whitesell, interview. . Jones, interview, and Price, interview, February , . . Janacek, interview, March , . . Anonymous friar who lives at one of the missions, interview. . John Urry contends that the extent to which aesthetic values structure modern (or, more precisely in his analysis, postmodern or post-Fordist) life signals the end of tourism. He argues that in the late twentieth century, people everywhere (or at least people in more developed societies) have become tourists all the time, not just when they are traveling. Moreover, the ubiquity of tourism has made for a thoroughgoing aestheticization of social life. See Consuming Places, . . See anonymous parishioners, husband and wife, interview, and Martinez, interview. . Here I draw inspiration from Benedict Anderson, although he imagines communities primarily at the national level and pays scant attention to individuals as active imagineers. See Imagined Communities. . Regarding the Native Americans’ relationship to tourists at the missions, Susana Hayward reported: ‘‘The colorful, plumed dancers draw crowds.’’ She went on to quote one of the dancers, Juanita Vasquez Lopez, who noted: ‘‘The church fills up every Sunday we are there.’’ Thus it seems that the dancers measure their

 ;                –  

success, at least to some extent, by audience response. Hayward, ‘‘San Antonio Priest,’’ A. . This touristic consumption of images participates in the market forces of what John Urry regards as ‘‘disorganised capitalism,’’ which, according to Urry, typifies the current economic epoch dominated by nonmaterial forms of capitalism, especially images. See Consuming Places, . . Flores, interview.

        . The reburial ceremony took place at Mission San Juan on the morning of Saturday, November , . News reports appeared in the San Antonio ExpressNews on November , , B and B; November , , B and B; and November , , B. I asked about the reburial in my interviews with Daniel Cantú (April , ), Father James G. Galvin, and Father Balthasar Janacek (March , ). . Galvin, interview.

               –   ; 

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Bibliography

            Research for this book relied to a large extent on unpublished sources located in the following archives and libraries in Texas: Archives, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries, San Antonio Catholic Archives of San Antonio, San Antonio Catholic Archives of Texas, Austin Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, San Antonio DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas Institute of Texan Cultures Library, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation Library, San Antonio San Antonio Missions National Historical Park Library, San Antonio Texana Collection of the San Antonio Public Library, San Antonio

       Below is a list of all interviews by the author cited in the book; the position listed for each interviewee refers to her or his status at the time of the interview, unless otherwise noted. Those listed as ‘‘anonymous’’ asked that their names not be revealed. Except where noted, all interviews were conducted in San Antonio. Anonymous friar who lives at one of the missions, February ,  Anonymous parishioners, husband and wife, February ,  Anonymous parishioners at Mission San Juan, husband and wife, February ,  Anonymous park ranger at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, March ,  Baugh, Reverend C. Donald, former chairman of the Religious Expression Committee for HemisFair , February ,  Bliss, Katie, National Park Service site advocate at Mission Concepción, February ,  Brummer, Father Larry, OFM, parish priest at Mission Espada, February ,  Cantú, Daniel L., National Park Service site advocate at Mission San Juan, March  and April , 



Casillas, Amelia, former parish office manager at Mission Espada, February ,  DeVries, Pete, former superintendent of the Mission San José State Historical Park, May ,  Flores, Josefina, parishioner at Mission San Juan, February ,  Galvin, Father James G., parish priest at Mission San Juan, February ,  Gonzalez, Olga, parishioner at Mission Concepción, February ,  Harris, Donald W., son of Ethel Wilson Harris, January ,  Harris, Trudy, daughter-in-law of Ethel Wilson Harris, February ,  (telephone conversation) Janacek, Monsignor Balthasar, archdiocesan director of old Spanish missions, March , , and March ,  Jimenez, Margie, parishioner at Mission Espada, February ,  Jones, Father Herbert W., OFM, parish priest at Mission San José, February ,  Martinez, Bruno J., parishioner at Mission Espada, February ,  Martinez-Amos, Anna, National Park Service site advocate at Mission Espada, February ,  Payne, Cherry, chief interpreter at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, February  and March ,  Price, Leslie, parish business manager at Mission San José, February  and May ,  Rodriguez, Augustine, parishioner at Mission Espada, February ,  Sinkin, William R., former president of the HemisFair Corporation, April ,  Steves, Marshall, former executive officer of the HemisFair Corporation, May ,  Tezel, Mark, volunteer docent and former interpretive ranger at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, February ,  Whitesell, Steve, park superintendent at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, March , 

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Adams, Carlton, 57 Adams, Harvey Alexander, 30 Adams, Henry, 176 (n. 4) Aesthetics: and tourism, 5–6, 28, 30–31, 34, 46, 97, 138, 143–44; and identity, 8, 143–44, 148–50; in preservation and restoration efforts, 63–64, 69, 71, 72; and modernity, 64, 150–51; and religion, 97, 143–44, 148–51. See also Authenticity; Lucey, Robert E.: aesthetic vision for San Antonio missions; Missions: romanticization of; Space: aesthetic Aguayo, Marqués de, 158 (n. 48) Alamo, 8, 35–61, 39, 50, 65, 82, 95, 128, 183 (n. 28); tourism at, 8, 35, 36, 38, 42, 43, 44–46, 47, 48, 49–50, 52, 58–59, 60; battle at, 35, 36–38, 37; veneration at, 35–36, 40–41, 50, 55, 59, 60; historical accounts of, 36, 38–39, 44, 53; as symbol, 40–43, 59; as monument to Texas heroes, 41, 48–49, 50–51, 52, 53, 54–55, 59, 60; and racism, 41–42, 43, 60, 128; souvenirs, 43, 47–48, 60; U.S. Army occupation of, 46, 48–49; and Catholic Church, 49, 51, 69, 84; preservation and restoration of, 50–52, 53–54, 69–70; monuments to, 51, 52– 53, 55–59; and gender, 57–58, 60. See also Cenotaph; Mission San Antonio

Alamo Mission Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, 54, 72–73 Alamo Monument Association, 51, 53 Alamo Rifles, 41 Alarcón, Martín de, 19 Alarcón expedition, 19–20 Alive, Inc., 106–7 Allee, Randy, 108 Alvarez Cardenas, Isaac, 133 Anderson, Benedict, 186 (n. 92) Anderson, Charles W., 173 (n. 85), 174 (n. 87) Anderson, Margaret R., 89, 92 Anti-Catholicism, 42–43, 60, 86 Antimodernism, 73, 77, 79, 90–91, 93, 165 (n. 2). See also Modernity Apaches, 25, 158 (n. 49) Archaicization, 114, 115, 118–20, 121–22, 129, 182 (n. 3). See also Communities of worship at missions; National Park Service: interpretation of missions Arts and crafts movement, 73, 74–75, 93 Austin, Stephen F., 162 (n. 16) Authenticity, 6, 46, 75, 76, 78–79, 120, 128, 130, 143–44, 145. See also Aesthetics Aztecs, 108, 132, 133 Baistra, Jorge, 132–33 Baptists, 107, 141, 178 (n. 21) Bartlett, John Russell, 40, 42

199

Baugh, C. Don, 100, 102, 178 (n. 23) Bell, James, 113 Benavides, Margaret, 185 (n. 59) Benedictines, 65 Benjamin, Walter, 176 (n. 4) Bhabha, Homi K., 182 (n. 3) Blanc, Anthony, 65 Bliss, Katie, 123, 125, 142 Bobbitt, Lynn, 113 Bollaert, William, 38, 43, 163 (n. 53) Bonham, James B., 35, 39, 46, 50, 82 Bouchu, Francis, 65–69, 67, 94 Bowie, James, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 43–44, 44–46, 47, 50, 57, 82 Brothers of Mary, 65 Brown, Hugh B., 105 Bureau of International Expositions, 100 Cabeza de Vaca, Ãlvar Nuñez, 15–16 Candelaria. See Señora Candelaria Cantú, Daniel L., 124, 126–27 Casillas, Amelia, 185 (n. 60) Catholic Church: in Texas following independence, 65; Archdiocese of San Antonio, 70, 101, 111, 138, 147, 178 (n. 21); and tourism at missions, 111; and interpretation of religion at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, 123, 126; and Native Americans at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, 133–34, 147–48; evangelism, 139–40. See also Anti-Catholicism; Identity: Catholic; Communities of worship at missions; Missions CBS Television, 89 Céliz, Francisco, 19 Cenotaph (Alamo monument), 55–59, 56 Certeau, Michel de, 156 (n. 7) Chimayó, N.Mex., 6 Chrisman, Myron, 178 (n. 23) Christian Church, 178 (n. 21) Christian HemisFair Committee of Alive, Inc., 106–7 Church of Christ, Scientist, 101, 178 (n. 21)

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 104, 105–6, 107, 110, 178 (n. 21) Civic Works Administration (CWA), 112 Civil religion, 181 (n. 59) Clendinnen, Inga, 18 Clifford, James, 120 A Cloud of Witnesses, 81 Coahuiltecans, 24, 132, 148, 159 (n. 49) Colquitt, Oscar, 54 Commercialization, 6, 7; at the Alamo, 47–48, 49–50, 59, 60; at San Antonio missions, 79, 86, 120, 150; of religion, 97, 106–7, 110, 116, 139–40, 150–51. See also HemisFair 1968: and market capitalism Commodification. See Commercialization Communities of worship at missions: religious worship and practice, 79– 80, 89, 117, 128–29, 129–30, 133–34, 134–35, 138, 144, 145–46; relations with tourists, 86, 117, 135–43, 144, 145–46; relations with National Park Service, 112, 113, 114–15, 117–18, 130, 135, 136, 140, 142–43, 185 (nn. 59, 60); financial burdens from tourism, 117, 136, 140; internal conflicts, 120, 131– 34; interpretation of missions, 120, 130–31; revenues from tourism, 135, 140–43, 145; as tourists, 135, 144. See also Archaicization; Catholic Church; Commercialization: at San Antonio missions; National Park Service: interpretation of missions; Space: sacramental; Weddings Congress of Patriotism, 53–54 Coppini, Pompeo, 55–59 Corner, William, 32–34, 35–36, 38, 48, 51, 66, 67 Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de, 157 (n. 18) Cox, Joseph, 47 Crockett, David, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 56, 82 Crow, George, 31–32 Cuyler, Telamon, 47

Daniel, Price, 172 (n. 68) Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT), 54–55, 56, 60, 70, 71. See also Alamo Mission Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas; De Zavala Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Davila, Alfred G., 126 Davis, J. R., 173 (n. 85) Davis, Richard Harding, 53 De Soto, Hernando, 157 (n. 18) DeVries, Pete, 81, 185 (n. 65) De Zavala, Adina, 53–54, 70, 84 De Zavala, Lorenzo, 53 De Zavala Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, 53, 54, 70 Dickenson, Russell, 112 Disease, 14, 23, 123, 159 (n. 50) Dobie, J. Frank, 56–58 Don Carlo, 96 Drama of the Alamo, 82 Driscoll, Clara, 54 Drought, Ethel Tunstall, 72, 74 Duane, Frank, 172 (n. 72) Dwyer, Joseph E., 49 Eagar House, 107 Ecumenism, 58, 98–99, 100, 102–3, 105, 110 Edwards, Emily, 74 Elizondo, Virgilio, 1–2 El Mercado (San Antonio), 1 Episcopal Church, 125, 170 (n. 58), 178 (n. 21) Espada Aqueduct, 113 Espada Dam, 113 Esparza, Enrique, 162 (n. 28) Establishment Clause, U.S. Constitution, 183 (n. 20). See also Missions: Church and state relations at Evers, Charles W., 47 Fandangos, 24, 43 FitzSimon, Laurence J., 84 Flores, Josefina, 145–46, 184 (n. 42), 185 (n. 64) Flores, Patrick, 2, 112, 113, 134, 141

Flying Indians. See Voladores de Papantla Forest, John Anthony, 70 France, 16, 25 Franciscans, 17, 34, 46, 65, 71, 79–80, 85, 92, 104, 123, 137, 138. See also Missionaries Francis of Assisi, Saint, 71, 85, 138 French Revolution, 27 Frito-Lay, 108 Frost, John, 48 Galvin, James G., 139, 148 Garriga, Mariano, 84 Garza, Janie, 130, 131 Gender, 173 (n. 85). See also Preservation: gender aspects of Gonzalez, Henry B., 89, 99 Gonzalez, Olga, 136–37, 141–42 Gordon, Marlene, 82 Gould, Stephen, 50 Grahmann, Charles, 181 (n. 63) Grand Tour: participation of Americans in, 27–28 Great Awakening, 97 Greek Orthodox Church, 104, 178 (n. 21) Green, Rena Maverick, 72–74 Gregory XVI (pope), 65 Grenet, Honoré, 49, 50 Ground Zero (New York City), 7, 155 (n. 13) Guadalupe, Virgin of, 3, 104, 133 Guerra, Henry, 108 Harris, Arthur L., 74, 76 Harris, Ethel Wilson, 74–83, 78, 86, 90, 93, 94, 170 (n. 58); enchantment with Mexico, 74, 75, 80; tile making, 74, 75, 76, 169 (n. 47), 171 (n. 63); travel to Mexico, 80–81, 82, 93, 171 (n. 63) Harris House, 167 (n. 38) Hayes, Rutherford B., 30–31, 48 HemisFair 1968, 9, 87, 94, 95–111, 98, 112, 116; theme, 95, 96, 99–100; dedication procession, 95–96, 104; religion at, 95– 96, 97–99, 100–111, 179 (n. 32); planning of, 96, 98, 99–103; and market capitalism, 97, 99; benefits to city of

i n d e x ; 201

San Antonio from, 99, 111; Inter-Faith Center/Religious Center, 100–104, 110; chaplains at, 104–5; financial results, 110–11. See also World’s fairs and expositions Hinojosa, Tish, 121 Historic Theatre of Texas, 81–82 Howell, Paul, 178 (n. 21) Hugo and Schmeltzer Wholesale Grocery, 50, 53 Huizar, Pedro, 78 Hume, William Wheeler, 72 Identity, 6, 7, 8, 9, 96, 144–46, 148, 150– 51; ethnic, 2, 118, 120, 124, 127, 130, 132–35, 145; relation to place, 4–5, 134; national, 5, 8, 9, 40–43, 59–60, 61, 93, 118, 123–24, 127–28, 145, 154 (n. 9); Texan, 40–43, 52, 57–58, 59–60, 61; and historical narratives, 63, 64, 127–28, 129; Catholic, 64, 85–86, 92–93, 174 (n. 90); ambivalence of, 118, 134–35, 143–46; religious, 118, 120, 124–26, 127, 132–34, 135, 145; and language, 134–35. See also Aesthetics: and identity; Space: civic; Space: sacramental Ilott, Pamela, 89 Indian Harvest Festival, 81 Itinerant dimensions of place, 12, 110, 150, 180 (n. 49) Jacobson, David, 178 (n. 23) Janacek, Balthasar, 111, 115, 116, 140, 141, 143, 147, 181 (nn. 64, 65) Jefferson, Thomas, 5 Jemison, Robert Seaborn, 29, 30 Jewish Federation (San Antonio), 178 (n. 21) Jimenez, Margie, 130, 131, 134–35, 137 John Paul II (pope), 133 Johnson, Claudia Taylor (Lady Bird), 96 Jones, Everett H., 178 (n. 23) Jones, Herbert W., 138–39, 141, 143, 183 (n. 10) Kahn, Louis, 102, 103 Kant, Immanuel, 5

202 ; i n d e x

Kennedy, John F., 96 Kennedy, Robert, 96 Killian, Mickey, 184 (n. 46) King, Edward, 35, 48–49 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 5, 95–96 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 120 Know-Nothings, 42–43 Landmarks Club, 166 (n. 27) La Salle, René-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de, 16 Latham, Francis S., 30, 42 Lemon Test, 183 (n. 20) Lethaby, W. R., 73 Leven, Stephen A., 101–3, 178 (n. 23) Lilly Endowment, 103 Linenthal, Edward T., 182 (n. 8) Living parishes. See Archaicization; Communities of worship at missions; National Park Service: interpretation of missions Locative dimensions of place, 12, 99, 110, 150, 155 (n. 6), 180 (n. 49) Lockwood, James T., 84 Lodging: in nineteenth-century Texas, 29 López, José Francisco, 160 (n. 63) Los Compadres, 136, 185 (n. 61) Lucey, Robert E., 80, 83–92, 88, 93, 94, 95; aesthetic vision for San Antonio missions, 85, 86, 89–90, 90–92, 92–93, 174 (n. 94); and social justice, 85–86, 93; and tourism at San Antonio missions, 86, 89–90, 92; preservation and restoration of San Antonio missions, 86–89, 90, 93 Lummis, Charles F., 166 (n. 27) Lutheran Oxcart stages, 107, 110 Lutheran Church, 107 Manifest Destiny, 28 Manupelli, Frank, 108–10 Margil de Jesus, Antonio, 158 (nn. 46, 48) Mariachi Mass, 138–39, 140, 144 Martinez, Bruno J., 130–31 Martinez-Amos, Anna, 125, 131

Mary, Virgin, 125. See also Guadalupe, Virgin of Massanet, Damián, 11, 14, 17, 19. See also Terán expedition Maverick, Mary, 53 Maverick, Maury, 58, 84 Maverick, Samuel A., 41, 53 Mayas, 133 Mayes, Wendell, 174 (n. 87) Mendoza, Rick, 184 (n. 46) Meredith, Burgess, 107 Methodist Church, 178 (n. 21) Mexican Arts and Crafts (company), 74, 76–77 Mexican Crafts (shop), 77, 79 Mexico, 75, 76, 139; independence from Spain, 26. See also Harris, Ethel Wilson: enchantment with Mexico; Harris, Ethel Wilson: travel to Mexico Mezquía, Pedro Pérez de, 157 (n. 31) Miller, Richard E., 102, 103 Missionaries, 15, 18, 25, 42, 66, 67, 69, 166 (n. 17). See also Franciscans; names of individual missionaries Mission Concepción, 63, 116, 122, 123, 124, 136, 141, 142, 185 (n. 59); in colonial period, 21, 158 (n. 35), 159 (n. 50); in nineteenth century, 31, 32, 65; preservation and restoration of, 71, 90, 91. See also Missions Mission Espada, 63, 122, 125, 130, 131, 134–35, 137, 140, 142, 144, 185 (n. 60); in colonial period, 21, 159 (n. 50); in nineteenth century, 65, 66, 68, 69; preservation and restoration of, 71, 86–87, 88, 90. See also Missions Missions: preservation and restoration of, 8, 64, 69, 71, 72, 112, 114; in colonial period, 20–26; tourism at, 64, 71, 78–80, 93–94, 115, 117, 131, 135–43, 148, 150, 185 (n. 65); romanticization of, 79, 93, 123, 129, 139; California, 84, 92, 173 (n. 84); as symbol, 92; Church and state relations at, 111, 112, 116, 118, 121–23, 124–26, 127, 181 (n. 65), 183 (n. 20). See also Commercialization: at San Antonio missions; Commu-

nities of worship at missions; Harris, Ethel Wilson; Lucey, Robert E.; National Park Service: interpretation of missions; San Antonio Missions National Historical Park; Secularization; Weddings; names of individual missions Mission San Antonio, 20–21, 25, 26, 84, 128, 158 (n. 48), 159 (n. 50), 160 (n. 63). See also Alamo; Secularization Mission San Francisco de los Tejas, 21 Mission San Francisco de Xavier Nájero, 158 (nn. 35, 48) Mission San Francisco Solano, 20–21 Mission San José, 63, 71, 74, 114, 122, 137, 138–39, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144; in colonial period, 21, 22, 158 (n. 46), 159 (nn. 50, 54); in nineteenth century, 30, 31, 65; preservation and restoration of, 70, 71–72, 72, 88; pilgrimage to, 89. See also Missions; San José Mission State Park Mission San José de los Nazonis, 21 Mission San Juan, 33, 63, 116, 122, 124, 130, 131–34, 132, 137, 138, 139, 144, 145– 46, 147–50, 149, 185 (n. 64); in colonial period, 21; in nineteenth century, 65, 66, 69; preservation and restoration of, 70, 86–87, 91. See also Missions Mitotes, 24. See also Native Americans: religions Modernity, 9, 47, 120, 150–51; critiques of, 63–64. See also Antimodernism Moody Institute of Science, 106 Moon, Irwin, 179 (n. 39) Morfi, Juan Agustín, 22, 82, 159 (n. 54) Mormons. See Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Mormon Tabernacle Choir, 106 Morris, William, 73 Municipal Auditorium (San Antonio), 95, 104 Museums, 120; San Antonio Missions National Historical Park as, 118, 121, 138 Nangle, William B., 47 Narváez, Pánfilo de, 15

i n d e x ; 203

National Park Service, 9, 66, 69, 81, 90, 111, 112–13, 114–16, 117–18, 135, 143, 147, 148, 173 (n. 85), 185 (n. 59); role in American culture, 113–14, 182 (n. 8); interpretation of missions, 118–20, 121–29, 130–31, 138, 182 (n. 8). See also Communities of worship at missions: relations with National Park Service; Missions: Church and state relations at; San Antonio Missions National Historical Park National parks, 113–14 Native Americans, 24, 67, 85, 92, 121, 123, 124, 129; precolonial, 13–14; in colonial period, 15, 16, 17–18, 22–25, 42, 158 (nn. 48, 49), 159 (nn. 51, 52, 54); religions, 24, 108–10, 123, 133, 159 (n. 55); dancers, 132–34, 144, 145; and repatriation of human remains, 147– 50, 149. See also Voladores de Papantla; Yanaguana; names of individual tribal groups ‘‘Nat Lewis Barn,’’ 77 Navarro, José Antonio, 41 Neashan, Aubrey, 173 (n. 85) Neff, Pat, 73 Neraz, Jean C., 69 New Deal, 85, 93, 112, 182 (n. 8) Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción. See Mission Concepción Numrich, Charles, 180 (n. 44) Odin, Jean Marie, 65, 69 Olmos Basin, 13–14, 156 (n. 8) Olmsted, Frederick Law, 27, 30, 34, 41, 160 (n. 65) Pacheco, Daniel, 114 Pacheco, Esther, 114 Panpoas, 158 (n. 48) Parish communities. See Communities of worship at missions Parishioners. See Communities of worship at missions Passion play in San Antonio, 1–3, 2 Payayas, 11, 12, 14, 19 Payne, Cherry, 125

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Pepsi Cola, 108 Phelan, D. S., 71 Pilgrimage, 9; to Mexico, 3–4; to Chimayó, N.Mex., 6; to Mission San José, 89 Pineda, Alonso Alvarez de, 15 Place, 3, 4, 6, 12–13, 22, 27, 47, 129, 147–48, 150–51, 155 (n. 6), 156 (n. 7); relation to identity, 4–5, 134. See also Itinerant dimensions of place; Locative dimensions of place; Space Porter, William V. ‘‘Bud,’’ 101 Potter, Reuben Marmaduke, 47, 53 Practice. See Communities of worship at missions: religious worship and practice; Touristic practice; Travel practices Preservation, 63–64; gender aspects of, 74, 83. See also Aesthetics: in preservation and restoration efforts; Alamo: preservation and restoration of; Bouchu, Francis; Lucey, Robert E.: preservation and restoration of San Antonio missions; Mission Concepción: preservation and restoration of; Mission Espada: preservation and restoration of; Missions: preservation and restoration of; Mission San José: preservation and restoration of; Mission San Juan: preservation and restoration of Presidio de Béxar, 20 Price, Leslie, 140, 141, 143 Proselytization, 105, 106–7, 139–40 Quinn, Frank, 173 (n. 85) Racism, 165 (n. 16). See also Alamo: and racism Railroad service to San Antonio, 31–32 Religion: relationship to tourism, 3–7, 9, 59, 69, 97, 104, 116, 120, 135, 144, 145, 150–51; as entertainment, 107– 10; interpretation of at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, 122–23. See also Aesthetics: and religion; Catholic Church; Civil religion; Commercialization: of religion; Com-

munities of worship at missions; HemisFair 1968: religion at; Identity: religious; Native Americans: religions; Space: sacramental Reorganized Church of Latter-day Saints, 178 (n. 21) Republic of Texas, 26, 65 Richardson, Marlene, 107 Rife, Tom, 38, 44 Roemer, Ferdinand, 29, 31, 42 Román, Manuel, 131 Ruskin, John, 73 Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, 65 Saint Patrick’s Cathedral (New York City), 4 Salinas missions (N.Mex.), 182 (n. 7) San Antonio, Tex., 7, 13; passion play in, 1–3; as Jerusalem, 2; as tourist destination, 7–8, 26–27, 96, 99; naming of, 11–12; Spanish settlement and colonization of, 11–12, 14, 19–25; railroad service to, 31–32; boosterism, 32, 34, 59 San Antonio Conservation Society, 54, 74, 77, 80, 81, 83, 84, 112, 113, 136, 173 (n. 85). See also Harris, Ethel Wilson; Preservation San Antonio de Pádua, 11, 19 San Antonio de Valero. See Mission San Antonio San Antonio Fire Company, 41 San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, 9, 117–46; establishment of, 111, 112–13, 113, 116; and displacement of local residents, 114, 129, 131, 184 (n. 42); annual attendance, 182 (n. 1). See also Catholic Church: and interpretation of religion at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park; Catholic Church: and Native Americans at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park; Communities of worship at missions; Museums: San Antonio Missions National Historical Park as; National Park Service; Reli-

gion: interpretation of at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park San Antonio River, 8, 13, 19, 20, 21, 22, 59, 133. See also Yanaguana San Antonio Women’s Club, 57 Sanas, 158 (n. 48) San Buenaventura y Olivares, Antonio de, 159 (n. 55) San Fernando Cathedral, 1–2, 2, 26 San Francisco de la Espada. See Mission Espada San José Mission Advisory Board, 82 San José Mission State Park, 73, 77, 82, 83–85, 112 San José Story, 82, 172 (n. 72) San José y San Miguel de Aguayo. See Mission San José San Juan Advisory Committee, 89 San Juan Capistrano. See Mission San Juan Santa Ana, Benito Fernández de, 159 (n. 50) Santa Anna, Antonio López de, 35, 37–38, 60 Secularization, 26, 160 (n. 63) Señora Candelaria, 43–44, 45 Separation of Church and state. See Missions: Church and state relations at September 11 terrorist attacks, 5, 7 ‘‘Sermons from Science’’ program, 106 Shaw, John William, 71 Sherman, Sidney, 164 (n. 82) Sinkin, William R., 179 (n. 29) Slater, O. Eugene, 178 (n. 23) Slavery, 41, 43, 60, 162 (n. 16) Slaves, 26, 27, 38, 41 Smith, Harvey P., Jr., 90, 91 Smith, Harvey P., Sr., 87, 88, 90 Smith, Jonathan Z., 155 (n. 6) Solís, Gaspar José de, 160 (n. 59) Space, 3, 4, 12, 156 (n. 7); sacramental, 93, 118, 120, 129–35; aesthetic, 118, 120, 139, 143–44; civic, 118, 121–29, 135; touristic, 135–43. See also Place Stevens, Walter B., 43–44 Steves, Marshall, 180 (nn. 46, 48) Stickley, Gustav, 73

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Sublime, 5, 28 Sweet, Alexander Edwin, 38–39 Taylor, Amanda Cartwright, 173 (nn. 78, 85), 174 (n. 87) Tejanos, 42, 43, 60. See also Esparza, Enrique; Fandangos; Racism; Señora Candelaria Tepeyac, 3 Terán de los Ríos, Domingo, 11, 17, 155 (n. 1). See also Terán expedition Terán expedition, 11, 14, 17–19, 155 (n. 1) Texas Centennial, 54, 55, 74, 99, 177 (n. 8) Texas Independence Day, 40–41 Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 77, 81, 112 Texas Pioneers, 55 Texas State Parks Board, 73, 173 (n. 85), 174 (n. 87) Texas Veterans’ Association, 51 Tezel, Mark, 126, 129, 182 (n. 7), 183 (n. 19) Tile making, 74–75, 76. See also Harris, Ethel Wilson: tile making Timon, John, 65 Tlaloc, 108 ‘‘Tour Fourteen’’ (short film), 107 Tourism: definition of, 3–6; and religion, 3–7, 9, 59, 69, 97, 104, 116, 120, 135, 144, 145, 150–51; in Europe, 27–28; history of, 27–28; in American West, 28, 53; in New England, 28, 160 (n. 71). See also Aesthetics: and tourism; Alamo, tourism at; Catholic Church: and tourism at missions; Communities of worship at missions: financial burdens from tourism; Communities of worship at missions: revenues from tourism; Lucey, Robert E.: and tourism at San Antonio missions; Missions: tourism at; San Antonio, Tex.: as tourist destination; Space: touristic; Touristic practice; Tourists Touristic practice, 27, 34, 145, 154 (n. 6), 186 (n. 90). See also Aesthetics: and

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tourism; Space: touristic; Tourism; Tourists; Travel practices Tourists, 2, 9, 47, 79, 97. See also Communities of worship at missions: relations with tourists; Communities of worship at missions: as tourists; Tourism Transportation: in nineteenth-century Texas, 28–29, 31–32. See also Railroad service to San Antonio Travel practices, 8, 12–13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 26, 27, 68–69. See also Harris, Ethel Wilson: travel to Mexico; Lodging: in nineteenth-century Texas; Touristic practice; Transportation: in nineteenth-century Texas Travis, William Barret, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 46, 47, 48, 50, 57, 60, 82 United States Department of the Interior, 83 University of Texas at San Antonio, 147 Urry, John, 186 (n. 90), 187 (n. 94) Vasquez Lopez, Juanita, 186 (n. 93) Vatican Council, Second, 90, 93, 98, 103 Villa de Béxar, 20 Virgin Mary, 125. See also Guadalupe, Virgin of Voladores de Papantla, 107–10, 109, 116 Washington, D.C., 5 Weddings, 141–43, 142, 144 Whitesell, Steve, 122, 126, 128, 138, 143, 185 (n. 61) Wirtz, Alvin J., 174 (n. 87) Witte Museum, 168 (n. 41) Woodhull, Frost, 84 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 74, 81, 112, 168 (n. 40) World’s fairs and expositions: Chicago (1933–34), 74, 177 (n. 8); New York (1939), 74; New York (1964–65), 101, 106; Seattle (1962), 101, 106; Montreal (1967), 106; Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), 177 (n. 8);

Philadelphia (1876), 177 (n. 8); Portland, Oreg. (1905), 177 (n. 8); St. Louis (1904), 177 (n. 8). See also HemisFair 1968 World Trade Center (New York City), 7

Yanaguana, 8, 11, 12, 14, 17, 34, 156 (n. 11). See also Native Americans; Terán expedition Yelvington, Ramsey, 81

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