How the history of Mission San Juan Capistrano is told has long been a reflection of my native Orange County, which itself has exemplified some of America\u2019s worst tendencies: a love of avarice, retrograde conservatism and suburban sprawl; a hatred of immigrants and liberalism; a civic religion of nostalgia for a bucolic yesteryear enjoyed only by a few. <\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783167801_333_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
An American flag hangs on the Bell Wall at Mission San Juan Capistrano. The mission and the U.S. are both celebrating their 250th birthdays. <\/p>\n
(Gary Coronado \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
I first visited my local mission in fourth grade. We learned about the annual return of swallows<\/a>, admired blooming roses and citrus trees and absorbed a simple story: Spanish conquistadors and Catholic priests tamed a wild land, and we should follow their example. <\/p>\n We didn\u2019t hear about Europeans bringing diseases that decimated Native Americans. Or that Franciscan fathers \u2014 members of an order dedicated to lives of poverty and humility \u2014 forced tribes to give up their foods, customs and religion in the name of Christ, rewarding them with serfdom. Or that swallows don\u2019t come in the numbers they used to because they have fewer and fewer places to build nests.<\/p>\n It reminds me of one of Trump\u2019s most insidious projects: distorting history to only celebrate winners<\/a>. Anything tragic that happened to minorities was inevitable and necessary. Anything highlighting their overlooked stories of struggle and resistance to white supremacy is diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense. <\/p>\n He knows what dictators have long known: The more you control how society remembers the past, the better you can control the present and the future. That\u2019s why Trump casts those of us who want a full telling of American history as unpatriotic, even treasonous.<\/p>\n Mission San Juan Capistrano was mostly empty as I walked in with a map and a handheld speaker that played short, recorded narrations. I groaned as strumming Spanish guitars played underneath a cheerful introduction welcoming me to the \u201cJewel of the Missions\u201d \u2014 a slogan that boosters coined decades ago. <\/p>\n Guests walk among the ruins of the Great Stone Church, which was all but leveled by an 1812 earthquake, at Mission San Juan Capistrano.<\/p>\n (Gary Coronado \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n I rolled my eyes at a memorial plaque to deceased members of El Viaje de Portol\u00e1<\/a>, a private men\u2019s-only club that stages an annual horse ride through the back hills of Orange County meant to commemorate a 1769 trek by Gaspar de Portol\u00e1. The Catalan conquistador led the first mainland expedition of Europeans up and down what\u2019s now California.<\/p>\n But the more I walked the grounds, the more I realized I was in a new Mission San Juan Capistrano.<\/p>\n Exhibits now offer a grittier, more problematic version of what happened there, not the rose-tinted take absorbed by generations of Californians. <\/p>\n There are nods to the environmental devastation wrought by the cattle industry that dominated Southern California in the first half of the 19th century, as well as the Faustian bargain struck by Indigenous people who converted to Catholicism. The lives of Acjachemen \u2014 the Native Americans who populated modern-day South O.C. before the Spaniards came, and who continue to live in the region<\/a> \u2014 \u201cchanged forever\u201d under the watch of \u201cpoor and uneducated\u201d soldiers, the narrator acknowledges.<\/p>\n A statue of St. John of Capistrano, a 15th century Franciscan friar, is the centerpiece on the Golden Altar in Serra Chapel at Mission San Juan Capistrano.<\/p>\n (Gary Coronado \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n A well-lighted room dedicated to precolonial ways of life even displays a letter from Mission San Juan Capistrano Executive Director Mechelle Lawrence Adams, admitting that \u201cwell-intended missionary purposes also resulted in challenges and in some cases, devastating consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n The overall effect is nowhere near woke. Another room is dedicated to the founder of California\u2019s mission system, Father Jun\u00edpero Serra. Pope Francis declared him a saint in 2015, despite protests from Native Americans because of his treatment of their ancestors<\/a>. <\/p>\n Still, the tour doesn\u2019t shy away from the mission\u2019s sins over its 250 years, demystifying how supposedly carefree life was during the height of its operations before the United States conquered Mexico. <\/p>\n If a historical reckoning can happen in Mission San Juan Capistrano, it can happen anywhere. As we mark 250 years of this country, we need to push for more honest reflections about our national journey \u2014 not the historical revisionism and triumphalism that Trump wants. <\/p>\n Acknowledging and even criticizing our mistakes of the past doesn\u2019t cheapen one\u2019s love for the United States. Take my family. Five generations of us have lived in Orange County, going back to my maternal great-grandfather and grandfather Pl\u00e1cido and Jos\u00e9 Miranda, who arrived in Anaheim in 1918 from the copper mines of Arizona to pick and pack oranges and live in a segregated neighborhood. <\/p>\n My aunts and uncles regale us with stories of the discrimination they faced as teens in the 1960s, not so we will hate America, but to show how they would not be deterred in creating a paradise for their children, as imperfect as it may be.<\/p>\n No matter how false democracy may look right now, you fight for a better day.<\/p>\n Nearly all my cousins still live in O.C., buying homes on blue-collar salaries and seeing their children off to colleges we didn\u2019t have the opportunity to attend because we were discouraged by our parents. We took the good with the bad and soldiered on \u2014 unlike other self-professed patriots who saw a changing Southern California and decamped to other, redder parts of the country. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Orange County became majority minority in 2004. A new generation is fighting Immigration and Customs Enforcement, creating a new identity for O.C. We\u2019re not in John Wayne\u2019s Orange County<\/a> anymore. Hell, we don\u2019t live in my Orange County anymore \u2014 and that\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n Change hasn\u2019t been easy, because it\u2019s not supposed to be easy. As a reminder, the Mission San Juan Capistrano tour ends at the ruins of what\u2019s now called the Great Stone Church<\/a>, which collapsed in an 1812 earthquake that killed 40 Acjachemen worshippers.<\/p>\n As I stared into empty niches that once contained massive wooden statues of saints, I meditated on how fragile our democracy is. We\u2019re one catastrophe from failing, no matter how strong we think our foundation is. But we shouldn\u2019t give up if it starts to crumble. The only way to preserve our republic is to strengthen the pillars of our present with the mortar of our past. <\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s not what Serra and his Spanish hosts thought when they established the mission system, or what its white saviors had in mind when they began to restore the buildings in the early 20th century. That\u2019s the funny thing about a healthy democracy \u2014 you never know when you\u2019re going to find unexpected lessons, but you sure as hell better be willing to accept them.<\/p>\n One of the pitmasters at Heritage Barbecue loads a smoker with sausages.<\/p>\n (Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n![\"Guests](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783167802_220_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783167804_984_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783167804_391_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n