The Hidden Mural of Mission Dolores

A group called Shaping San Francisco host monthly gatherings on the history of the city which I normally attend but will have to skip tomorrow.  Until last month, it was held at the dance studio Counterpulse which is three blocks from my house.  Here’s the location at Mission and Ninth circa 1854:

Looks like "Mission Plain Road is simply "Mission" these days...

Archiving San Francisco is part of what Shaping San Francisco does.  In fact, you can contribute through their project Found SF.  They also do awesome historical bike tours…one day as a teacher I hope to take my kids on some!! 

So I was exploring Found SF today and thought I would share this picture of Mary’s pierced heart, from Mission Dolores circa 1796:  

The Immaculate Heart, pierced by three daggers

 Here’s my mash-up of the accompanying essay:

“Behind the wooden altar in the sanctuary at Mission San Francisco de Asís, is a wall painted in the late eighteenth century by Indian labor. Painted directly onto plaster, in ochre, white, red, yellow, black, and blue/grey, the mural, which is adorned with abstract patterns as well as Christian imagery, is still virtually unknown to the public, despite its rediscovery and subsequent publicity in early 2004.  This mural covers the entirety of the rear wall of the church, behind the historic wooden altar. It measures 22 by 20 feet and includes two statuary niches. It was eclipsed in the year 1796 by an impressive baroque-style relief sculpture shipped from San Blas, Mexico called a reredos. This reredos continues to stand as the backdrop to the mission altar and has concealed the wall painting for over 200 years…

“Mission San Francisco de Asís takes its “nickname” of “Dolores” from the nearby stream, Arroyo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores. The friars honored the Blessed Virgin Mary by depicting her heart pierced by swords… [more on the meaning of Dolores and the pierced heart below...]

“The first known visual record of any decoration at Mission Dolores was an illustration in 1816 by artist Louis Choris. His watercolor painting depicting Indians dancing at Mission San Francisco shows colored geometric patterns on the lower portion of the buildings facade.”  Louis Choris is described as “an exceptionally talented Russian-Ukranian expedition artist who visited California in 1816.”  This link has more images of the Native Americans of San Franciscode Asís.

Natives Dancing at Mission Dolores, by Louis Choris

This is a tangent, but I found the essayists choice of the word "Indian" interesting.  In most cases, I might assume it was a thoughtless mistake.  But the folks at Shaping San Francisco tend to be involved with Native American politics and cultural activities, so I thought there might be another reason.  The politically correct term “Native American”, in my experience, isn't viewed that favorably by Native Americans.  While working with Native American artists at the Museum of Northern Arizona and while spending time on the Navajo Rez supporting elders and struggling against a variety of injustices, I noticed that Native Americans rarely used the politically correct term to describe themselves, but used the term "Indian" instead.  They'd been using it for centuries; why change now?  It was explained to me that when people said "Native American", it was for their own benefit: the word made the speaker feel better about themselves as a politically correct thoughtful person and allowed them to fit into a politically correct culture.  The use of the word "Indian" was actually more intimate, and I changed my own politically correct language to reflect that.  I even found myself in the ironic situation of using the term “Indian” when writing for Native American audiences and their friends and supporters, and using the term “Native American” when writing for everyone else, such as right now.  

As for Mary’s pierced heart, the subject of the Native American mural drawings and the object of their (perhaps forced) devotion, Wikipedia has this to say: “The Immaculate Heart of Mary (also known as The Sacred Heart of Mary) is a devotional name used to refer to the interior life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her joys and sorrows, her virtues and hidden perfections, and, above all, her virginal love for God the Father, her maternal love for her son Jesus, and her compassionate love for all persons”.  While the Sacred Heart of Jesus symbolizes complete and unconditional love for humankind in all their imperfections, the Immaculate Heart of Mary refers most importantly to the devotion to Jesus regardless of the hardships involved.  The most common representation of the Immaculate Heart is the heart pierced by a sword, which refers especially to Mary's suffering at the foot of the cross.  However, as we see on the mural image above, her heart is pierced many times: another name for Mary is Our Lady of Sorrows, in which her heart is pierced seven times, including not only by her son's crucifixion, but later by receiving his body into her arms.  Mission Dolores is named after Our Lady of Sorrows, or Mater Dolorosa, "the mother who suffers."  The mother is a powerful image, for no one can suffer more, be willing to suffer more, and be more devoted than a mother to her child.  In other words the image of the pierced heart is a symbol of complete and utter devotion, a worthy object of worship.  Here is an image of Mary's seven sorrows and images of the immaculate and sacred heart below.  

Mary's seven sorrows

The Immaculate Heart

The Sacred Heart, often shown encircled by the crown of thorns

 

The Louisiana Purchase, or, the Unrecognized Benefit the Haitian Revolution had on the United States

The Haitian Revolution

We all know about the Louisiana Purchase – one of those many parts of American history that are obviously important but just not that interesting.  What high school students tend to hear is that France had a bunch of land it wasn’t really using, and needed some quick cash to fight some wars and so sold that land to the US.  Thus President Jefferson was credited with doubling the size of the United States, and then Lewis and Clark went on their famous expedition to find wooly mammoths.   

The real story is pretty interesting.  Jefferson was elected in 1801, at which point Spain owned Louisiana.  Spain was troubled by America’s growing western population because it had lucrative silver mines in Mexico, and used the vast land of Louisiana as a buffer to keeper western settlers out.  However, Spain’s hold on the West was weak, and it worried that it was not strong enough to keep western migration at bay.  Within months of Jefferson's election, Spain sold Louisiana to France, knowing that France was strong enough to keep American settlers out of Louisiana.

Napoleon was interested in Louisiana primarily because it could provide resources for its sugar colony, San Dominique… soon to be known as Haiti.  France grew 70% of its sugar in Haiti, using slave-labor practices that made slavery in America pale in comparison.  This sugar was sold around Europe to great profit.  In 1801, Napoleon sent a force of forty thousand troops to crush the revolution led by ToussaintL’Ouverture - a man I would want all my students to learn about - but Napoleon's army was incapacitated by tropical disease, with 4,000 of his men dying to this cause alone.  Napoleon abandoned the island and sold Louisiana, now useless to him, to Jefferson.

ToussaintL’Ouverture, leader of the Haitian revolution

The ironic side of this story is that the liberation of Haiti, which terrified many Americans, played a large role in strengthening the United States beyond what it could have possibly hoped for.  In fact, when France first purchased Louisiana from Spain, Jefferson immediately dispatched diplomats to France to avoid war: after all, Napoleon was in the middle of empire building on a massive scale and was interested in the Americas.  Americans could tolerate a weak Spain on its doorstep.  But a powerful France, which at that very moment seemed capable of conquering the continent of Europe...?   

Thus the liberation of Haiti played a role in helping the United States double its size and avoid war with a great European power.  Human beings, however, have a remarkable capacity to notice their difficulties to the point of being blind to their blessings.  All that was noticed at the time was that the liberation of Haiti had showed the possibility of successful slave rebellions.  And indeed, the news spread like wildfire throughout slave communities in the United States; plans for slave rebellions were hatched and a few just barely thwarted.  The South entered a period of increased fear of their slaves, and as is so common in history, increased fear was accompanied by increased repression.  Talk of gradual emancipation quickly eroded.  The North and the South drifted farther apart, as they would continue to do for decades....  

For the story of the Haitian Revolution, see Avengers of the New World.  

Presidential compromises, forgotten conservatives

The full time, never-ending, exhausting search for work has meant that I haven't been nearly as productive this summer as I would have hoped.  A few research projects have fallen through the cracks.  And I haven't been paying attention to politics.  I was hoping to read a few books on presidential politics in order to get a better grasp on what goes on during campaign season: the strategies, compromises, and complexities that go on underneath what frustratingly appears as no more than rhetorical demagoguery, purposeful obfuscation, and misinformation for the sake of one-upmanship rather than the public good. 

Here are some of the books I ordered from the library but haven't looked at yet: The Strategic President: Persuasion and Opportunity in Presidential Leadership, Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century, When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences, Presidential Leadership in Political Time, and The Presidency and the Political System. 

While looking these books up, I discovered the Hauenstein Center, which has some great YouTube videos of lectures on the presidency.  In the videos posted below, Dr. Gleaves Whitney gives a half hour talk on why so many conservatives broke from Bush before the recession and before the war.  Whitney reminds us that that in American history, opinion leaders who originally support a president often break with him.  He traces this phenomenon back to the first presidency, with Jefferson famously splitting from George Washington.  During the second presidency, Hamilton led federalists in splitting from Adams, who was judged to not be federalist enough.  As we have so often seen in American history, this fracturing led to the election of the opposition party: Hamilton unwittingly helped his arch-nemesis, Jefferson, take office.   The most famous split in the 20^th century was of liberals splitting from Johnson over his Vietnam War policies; once again, this was a major factor in the success of the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.   

Whitney points to four main reasons for these splits, one of which is that supporters are almost always let down by the necessity of compromise, which must occur not only between democrats and republicans, but between the left and right wings of both parties.  One of my sorest areas of ignorance is in understanding the nature of Obama's own compromises, which of course have shattered the Left's faith in him and de-energized his administration and campaign.  However, Whitney's talk, being about Bush and the conservatives who lost faith in him, reminded me of the many sides of conservatism in this country that we just don't hear enough about.  

It's common knowledge that fiscal conservatives split when Bush increased federal spending on education for No Child Left Behind and expanded Medicare.  But terribly under-discussed is the fact that a large demographic of foreign policy conservatives, represented by William Buckley and Andrew Bacevich, split with Bush, even before the invasion of Iraq.  They believed that neocon imperialist visions of "democratizing" complex societies were ungrounded, reckless, utopian pipedreams.  Similarly under-discussed are the cultural conservatives who split, including many intellectuals like Jeffrey Hart.  While cultural conservatism in the United States is often associated with the religious right, Hart represents a significant demographic of cultural conservatives that felt totally alienated by Bush: conservatives who considered evangelicals to be unreasonable people with emotionally driven politics.  Such conservatives often thought that Evangelical campaigns, such as the "right to life," were laudable but unwinnable battles and thus a waste of energy.  

All of these groups that split considered themselves realists, and accused the administration of being driven by emotional utopianism.  Speaking of the shift of conservative power to the South in the 1960's, Hart has harsh, even prejudicial words that highlight this split and his sense of alienation: "The consequences of that profound shift [for the conservative identity] are evident, especially with respect to prudence, education, intellect and high culture."  The conservative guardians of realism and of high culture - those who favor students continuing to study the canon from Plato to Shakespeare, and value an intellectual approach to the Bible, for example - continue to feel left out in the cold.  An extraordinarily large number of them voted for Obama.  

The following videos, in three parts, are titled "Conservatives vs. Bush".  The speaker is scholar Gleaves Whitney.