19 June 2020 / / colonizers

Junípero Serra—San Francisco, CA, USA

The Catholic missionary and saint, Junípero Serra y Ferrer, was toppled by direct action during Juneteeth protests in 2020.

Junípero Serra was a Roman Catholic missionary canonized by Pope Francis.1 He was also a brutal colonizer who converted Indigenous people to Catholicism.2 In recent years, his genocidal legacy overshadowed his canonization and his name was partially scrubbed from some, but not all, buildings and facilities at nearby Stanford University.3 The effort to remove references to Serra on Stanford University’s campus has been ongoing for several years.4

Serra was one of three statues toppled in Golden Gate Park on Juneteeth 2020; the others were Francis Scott Key and Ulysses S. Grant.

References

  1. Pope Francis makes Junipero Serra, controversial California figure, a saint ↩︎

  2. Junipero Serra was a brutal colonialist. So why did Pope Francis just make him a saint? ↩︎

  3. Stanford University to remove Junipero Serra name from buildings, mall ↩︎

  4. Columbus Day Sparks Student Protest ↩︎

Photo Credit: Heresy Labs

Categories colonizers

Tags direct-action