The Mission church and workshop buildings (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
The San Fernando Mission is located in the northern end of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, CA.
The back door of the San Fernando Mission Chapel, looking out towards the Memorial Garden (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
The Mission buildings themselves are beautiful and cool even on a hot day. The white adobe walls and red tile roofs do endow places with a quaint ambiance,
especially when banana and fan palms
and fountains grace the area as well. I love the Mission grounds, the buildings are beautiful and the peacocks and gardens are calming.
The convento building which was used as an inn, of sorts (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
One of the bedrooms in the Convento building (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
A table inside the Majordomo building (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
One of the hospice rooms in the Convento building (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
Another room in the Convento building (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
The Mission houses some very interesting archives pertaining to the San Fernando Valley and its history. This tilework
dedicated to "Our Lady of the Archives" hangs on the outside wall of the archive building at the Mission. (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
Critics of the Mission exist as well. Its history is still not that well known, to be honest. Here is some critique by Mike Davis...
In Mike Davis' book, "City of Quartz," he writes, "...the Monsignor (Francis Weber) has devoted much of his life to sketching idealized vignettes of the early California church. Although
the forced labor system of the original Franciscan missions was tantamount to slavery (as California Indian leaders have recently reminded the Church), Monsignor Weber - a leading crusader
for the canonization of Father Serra - defends a vision of gentle padres and their happy neophytes...a romance that generations of tourists and white Angelenos have confused with real history. It is no
accident that the church still relies upon the "Mission Myth" as a buffer between itself and its past."
Davis also writes, "The mission literature depicted the history of race relations as a pastoral ritual of obedience and paternalism: 'graceful Indians, happy as
peasants in an Italian opera, knelt dutifully before the Franciscans to receive the baptism of a superior culture, while in the background the angelus tolled from a swallow-guarded campanile,
and a choir of friars intoned the Te Deum.' Any intimation of the brutality inherent in the forced labor system of the missions and haciendas, not to speak of the racial terrorism and lynchings
that made early Anglo-ruled Los Angeles the most violent town in the West during the 1860's and 1870's, was suppressed." He then quotes Joseph O'Flaherty; "The romanticized and idyllic theme
was quickly picked up and exploited by a gallery of entrepreneurs who knew a good thing when they saw it. Everything from furniture suites and candied fruit to commercial and residential
architecture stressed the mission motif."
Davis notes that "some of the missions themselves were restored as pioneer theme parks...At a New York advertising convention in the early 1930's, the mission aura of 'history and romance'
was rated as an even more important attraction in selling Southern California than weather or movie-industry glamor. Of course, as Starr notes, this capitalization of Los Angeles's fictional
"Spanish" past not only sublimated contemporary class struggle, but also censored, and repressed from view, the actual plight of Alta California's descendants....
(Contemporary mini-malls and fastfood franchises, with their Franciscan arches and red-tiled roofs, are still quoting chapter and verse from the Mission Myth...)"
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.
The convento building which was used as an inn, of sorts (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
A table inside the Majordomo building (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
One of the hospice rooms in the Convento building (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
Another room in the Convento building (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
The Mission houses some very interesting archives pertaining to the San Fernando Valley and its history. This tilework
dedicated to "Our Lady of the Archives" hangs on the outside wall of the archive building at the Mission. (Photo: K.Anderberg, Jan. 2008)
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.