GILROY – The concrete footing is poured and set. A kelly green pole points to the sky. But something is missing from the perch along Monterey Highway in this city at the southern end of Santa Clara County: a planned “mission bell” marking the historic route that once connected California’s missions.
As Americans engage in impassioned debates over monuments and our nation’s history, El Camino Real mission bells have become the West Coast version of Confederate statues.
Officials at UC Santa Cruz removed theirs in 2019, the city of Santa Cruz did the same and the city of Hayward was talked out of erecting one – all persuaded by local Native American tribes arguing that the familiar mile markers are an offensive symbol of domination and genocide.
But the city of Gilroy has decided to do the opposite: install a brand new one downtown to celebrate its 150th anniversary. It could go up as early as Friday.
“It’s like a slap in the face,” said Valentin Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band whose ancestors lived in the region for thousands of years before Spanish soldiers in the 1700s forced them to build the missions and convert to Christianity. “I couldn’t believe how they could be so insensitive and totally disregard the indigenous people’s point of view.”
The topic has become so controversial that public officials who voted in favor of installing the bell, including Mayor Marie Blankley, now refuse to talk about it.
Carolyn Lopez, a diner outside the Garlic City Cafe next to the monument’s stump, summed up the prevailing reluctance: ”I’ll get canceled!” she said.
But she relented and launched into her take on the subject. “I know the missions are out right now. They did do harm. But it was a different time,” the retired school teacher said. “I’m not saying they were right. But they are a symbol of California.”
Gilroy City Councilman Zach Hilton, one of three council members who oppose the bell, says the plan is an embarrassment.
“In my mind, this is something that you just don’t do in 2022,” Hilton said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if people thought, ‘Seriously, like, is this a joke?’”
At a January City Council meeting where Lopez and other tribal members showed up to speak, a motion to reopen the mission bell debate was voted down 4-3.
The green-patina mission bells mounted on staff-like poles and hooks were not part of any effort driven by the Catholic Church or the missions, said Santa Clara University history professor emeritus Robert Senkewicz. They were an early 1900s construct of ladies’ guilds and auto associations to commemorate a romanticized version of early state history and promote California tourism. The markers along the El Camino Real, “the royal highway” named in honor of the Spanish monarchy that funded the California expedition, were intended to mark each mile of the old route connecting the 21 missions from San Diego to Sonoma.
“The history of California, like the history of most places, is complex,” said Senkewicz, who co-wrote a book about mission founder Junipero Serra, whose sainthood six years ago was protested by native tribes. “To emphasize one part without acknowledging and emphasizing the others is not right. It’s not a question of what to take down. It’s what to put up that expresses California’s wonderful diversity.”
At one point, more than 500 markers, including those installed at the missions themselves, dotted the corridor that now roughly follows Highway 101 and includes The Alameda in San Jose that leads to the Santa Clara Mission. Many of the markers have been lost to theft over the decades. At least two are easily spotted along Highway 101 between South San Jose and Gilroy.
To Lopez, the mission bells are symbols not only of a whitewashed history of mission life but a false history of the El Camino Real itself, a series of trails first established as a trade route centuries earlier by indigenous people.
In Gilroy, the pole for the planned mission bell is planted on the edge of a wide alley known as the “paseo” that connects a parking lot with the downtown commercial district along Monterey Highway between Fifth and Sixth streets. To dress it up about five years ago, interpretive signs about Gilroy’s history and its place as the garlic capital of the world were installed along the brick-walled edges. Under “early settlers,” the Amah Mutsun’s diet of acorns and berries is mentioned along with the notation that, in the 1790s, “the local natives were relocated to the mission grounds at either San Juan Bautista or Santa Cruz.”
“It says nothing about how, during Mission times, between 100,000 and 150,000 indigenous people died,” Lopez said. “How can the state of California, much less a local community, want to glorify that period of time?”
He and his supporters are starting a movement, he said, to remove all the remaining roadside mission bells.
In Hayward, Muwekma Ohlone tribal members thwarted a plan to install a mission bell in the city’s Heritage Plaza several years ago – the bell was given to the Hayward Historical Society instead – and the tribe commissioned its own artist to create a new installation.
What happens next in Gilroy? The bell that was purchased months ago by City Councilman Dion Bracco to donate to the city was supposed to be installed early this year. Its whereabouts aren’t entirely clear, but Hilton heard the city could begin erecting it Friday.
One thing is clear for Lopez: “Once that bell goes up, we’re going to have a campaign to take it down.”
