FREMONT — Bright red spray paint still marked the white walls of the church and museum buildings at the Mission San Jose in Fremont on Monday, after they were vandalized with anti-colonial messages late last week.
Authorities said church officials believe the vandalism happened roughly around 3 a.m. Friday, based on an early review of surveillance camera footage. The graffiti was reported to police around 7 a.m. by a passerby who saw the paint on the buildings.
Monday afternoon, some of the words that were spray-painted on the buildings, including on the church facade and on the front walls of the historic museum building that faces Mission Boulevard, were still visible.
Some of the painted words read, “Ohlone land,” “Land Back,” “Catholicism is a colonizer religion” and “Genocide is not a spectacle.”
While workers cleaned up some of the graffiti over the weekend, exact plans to remove all the red paint and restore the buildings’ original paint were still being discussed, according to Deacon Dick Bayless.
Andrew Galvan, who describes himself as an Ohlone Indian and is a parishioner at the church, said the adobe building requires specialized treatment after being graffitied.
A statue of Father Junipero Serra, the founder of multiple California missions, in the mission’s courtyard was painted red as well, though most of the paint had been removed by Monday afternoon.
The hands of a statue of Saint Dominic located in front of the Motherhouse of the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose were painted red, along with the statue’s face, and “Land Back” was written at the base of the statue in paint, according to Sister Mary Virginia Leach. An American flag nearby was also defaced.
Bayless said when he and others learned of the vandalism they were “shocked” and dismayed.
He said the words on the walls in Fremont and previous vandalism in other cities in which statues of Serra were toppled, feel like a “shallow effort” by people trying to get their message across.
“It says that the Ohlone people were hurt, and I would say yes, they were hurt to a degree. But there were also benefits to offset some of those problems and hurts,” Bayless said.
“Were there benefits offset by the damage done to the people? That’s the debate, of course,” he said.
“I believe there were benefits in terms of providing education, jobs and support” to Native Americans at the missions, he said.
The legacy of California’s missions has come under scrutiny in recent years, highlighting the mistreatment, forced conversions to Catholicism and deaths of large swaths of Indigenous people at the missions.
The Mission San Jose church, completed in 1985, is a reconstructed adobe replica of the original mission, which was completed in 1809. It was destroyed in an 1868 earthquake, though the west wing, currently the museum, survived, and was retrofitted in 2002.
Galvan said he doesn’t believe Indigenous people were behind the vandalism of the church.
“A number of Ohlones did text me and they were upset because our ancestors built that building and especially the museum building, which is the oldest standing intact adobe building in Alameda County,” Galvan said in an interview Monday.
“It has historical value, but it is a monument to Native experience. It’s a monument to the testimony that we survived colonial intrusion into this area,” he said.
“It’s desecration not only of a sacred Roman Catholic church, but it’s desecration of an area very special to us Ohlone people,” he said of the vandalism.
The church was targeted by vandals previously, on July 4, 2020. Then, the church was spray-painted with graffiti that read “Native Land.” Paint also was splashed onto the exterior walls of the church and its steps.
Galvan said this latest vandalism, like the last one, affords the church leaders a chance to respond.
“This once again provides an opportunity to the Roman Catholic Church to make sincere efforts to reach out to Ohlone people and to other Natives who have felt disenfranchised because of church policy and church action. And reconciliation is something Jesus always talked about,” he said.
Yanneth Contrada, a representative for Fremont police, said the department is investigating the vandalism. Detectives are collecting video surveillance footage from the mission facilities and looking for any other video or photos of potential suspects.
Source: www.mercurynews.com