San Antonio exists because of the missions.

It had a central core that was created by the Spanish, but the presence of five missions that created a local population, a stable population, and sturdy buildings that have survived for more than 300 years are inseparable from the history of San Antonio.

San Antonio's origins lie in its historic missions, all of which we treasure, and one of which we remember as the Alamo.

It was in Mexico that the Spanish missionaries were taught the languages and the customs, and the indigenous populations they would encounter here.

It was in get it that they learned the survival skills they would need to travel north to the outer boundaries of New Spain to establish these missions.

It was there where the San Antonio of today to grew and grew.

And it is there that the San Antonio's blended culture was born.

Simply put, if it weren't for Katrina, there would be no missions, no Alamo, and no San Antonio.

Now, after more than 300 years, we rediscover and celebrate San Antonio's deep connection with Kitaro through artistic and cultural expression.

A reunion three centuries in the making.

Of.

There's a really wonderful collection of statues outside of the Bexar County Courthouse that really captures the four communities that were the pillars of the foundation of San Antonio, and that is called the founder's Monument.

The American Indians, the friars from Queretaro, the Spanish soldiers at the Presidio and the Canary Islanders.

They brought with them the language, the culture, the practices that we can also still see here and feel around us every day.

The Alamo is a mission.

It started life out on May 1st, 1718 as San Antonio River little, and it's founded as one of the missions that's going to bring Catholicism up to Texas and also to establish a foothold for the Spanish government.

So it's part of an institution.

So you have a presidio Avila and the mission, and they work together in order to be able to bring Spanish society up north.

The missionaries said, we are not coming to impose anything on them.

We're coming as friends.

We're coming to learn who they are.

We're coming to invite them into a relationship with us in El Centro.

Ahora si de las almas.

As in low level, la riqueza del signum because I'm an Italian, but para.

And when the indigenous peoples saw the Franciscans and the Franciscans kind of said, look, if we make community here, you can be part of this community.

We can, you can we can build a mission here.

You can live here.

We will work together.

You will have security, you will have food, and you will have a future.

But I think one of the profound things about, about the story of the missions here is represented in the continuity of some of those communities.

They got ethos with the mission themselves, with the mission communities themselves.

And these are the descendants of the mission indigenous part of our community here in San Antonio, the American Indian, community of Texas.

So they remain, in these barrios around the, around the missions.

The last Indian governor of Mission San Jose, he wrote the last census for the mission.

And because of because of that, we know who the original founding families were for Mission San Jose, because he wrote the census.

And in that census he says, estos son Los puto indios de la foundation.

This de mission.

And he lists them the families that were still there, that were of the original families.

From the very first day that those families from the interior México showed up on this land, we've been contributing as families.

So I think key to this understanding is there's a Friars.

They're old, some they're frail, they're not building.

They're they're not digging their cigars.

You know, they got to have the Indian support.

The Spanish brought in engineers from Spain or master masons.

So they brought a lot of they brought people up here so that they could help them with that process.

And so they were the ones that started the work.

But the ones that actually did the manual labor were the indigenous people that were coming through the mission system.

So they did the vast majority of the layout of the digging.

And so you can imagine living in San Antonio, where we are mainly really shallow dirt and a lot of rock.

It was not an easy process.

And the Indians are saying, we'll do this for you if you, with the horses and the guns, protect us against the Comanches and the Apaches and the commission.

But, you know, not shy.

They come in and raid them.

No place other than San Antonio where you have these mission churches so closely together along the banks of the San Antonio River, nowhere else.

And it was needed for defensive reasons.

There was a culture of resistance to some of the things that were being introduced through Mexico, through, the farming, agriculture and some of the farming and agriculture that was taking place by the natives throughout the early 1700s.

They established nearly 50 missions throughout what is now Texas.

And almost all of those missions are complete failures in East Texas, where you have a pretty successful indigenous population of the Hassan II, who are kind of at the top of the social indigenous ladder in Texas.

They have no interest in being colonized by by the Spanish and successfully rebuffed the Spanish.

The first program was in Nacogdoches.

That was where the mission system was going to be.

you know, presented and developed the San Antonio Missions or plan B, they pulled back from Nacogdoches after the, the failure, of of the mission system there and the massacre at San Saba, where a group of of priests creating a mission in San Saba, what will become Sunset of Texas, our massacre.

And I think that the people we're talking about here in San Antonio, you you generally would call them queen Texans, but there was groupings of them.

So they were not all just one group together all the time.

And so this is what made it very challenging for the Franciscans to have 55 different names for the Indians.

So with all 55 different names, the 55 different dialects, so that the priest or not, they can't handle this for everything they do, they rely on the Indians.

There's only 35 families.

We're going to need their protection.

We're going to need their help to sustain us for food, because our crops that we're going to plant will take a year before we have growth.

Over 200 years of occupation had already happened in Mexico by ten.

By the time people got here.

So the hinted the familia that came with it, you know, in the 1780s, there were there was, there were mezcla that already, you know, classical Deccan Indians and we know that the, the, the presidio soldiers, the, the soldiers of the Fronteras, those were mostly mestizos, Caltech and natives, because they were sought out, because they were fearless.

It's the Spaniards and the indigenous people working collaboratively to help build everything.

And that was part of the indigenous ways of, working with their allies.

And they not only helped build the original the, and mission and Presidio and the parish, they also did it when the the people come in during the Republic of Texas with some of the forts, they're also the indigenous people are helping them as well, because they considered the people that were coming to be allies.

There is a caste system involved, but they are treated as members of the community.

They're allowed to have a autonomous, basically rule on their own.

They elect the mayor.

Them they have their own sort of government that's involved inside the mission that's overseen by the Franciscans.

So they're treating them not so much as equals, but they're treating them as members of the society and with different levels of society.

And one of the other things is that people don't really know a lot of or really look into it is the relationship between the mission and the Presidio.

You know, there's times that the Presidio soldiers would they would come and they would be stationed sometimes at the mission to make sure that everything was safe.

But there's other times that that relationship is on the verge of breaking because of the the soldiers coming over and basically trying to do things with the population that you really shouldn't.

And so there's this relationship where they're fighting a lot as well.

And so that's why the Franciscans often would have the soldiers living somewhere else, not right at the mission, because they didn't want that conflict.

all the time.

And the Spanish knew that the only way to create a fort and to hold it was to ensure that it had a steady population.

San Antonio was a precarious place to live deep into the 19th century.

It was not a desirable place.

It was dangerous.

It was hard to eke out a living.

It was hard to grow food.

But it was attractive enough for some people.

And so the Spanish Crown offered a group of settlers from the Canary Islands a place to come, and San Antonio.

They were given a royal charter, and along with it they were given the land that would be their own.

There was a lot of struggle in the Canary Islands in the 1700s, and so they were approached by the Spanish government looking for volunteers who would be a part of an expedition to set up the first government or the first town at that time called a villa.

Here at the existing Presidio San Antonio.

There, Baha Vicente Alvarez Travis so was from the island of Vanity Fair, where the delegation then left, traveled first to Cuba and then to Veracruz.

And then it was in Veracruz that they started their journey on foot to the area of San Antonio.

It took them over six months, and it was about a 1000 mile journey on foot.

As a direct descendant of the center, Alvarez travels, so he was part of the group that established the first municipal government of the area and really developed this as a town.

And during that time he was appointed to be the sheriff, the first ever sheriff for the area, to be the superintendent overseeing construction for the San Fernando Church.

And then he also was the mayor of San Antonio in 1776, when the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of our nation, our San Antonio government had already been operating for 45 years.

Spain makes considerable promises to them when they come here, what sort of lives and kind of how they'll be seen in a more noble light than, the people who are descended from indigenous people who are living here.

But once you have the Canary Islanders come in, you kind of see a friction between these different groups as, as far as who was going to get access to the most arable land, that, is best for irrigation and, agriculture.

Who gets access to the executives, which the sequoias or the Spanish irrigation ditches, of which there are more than 70 miles in San Antonio, by their peak.

Who gets access to those?

Because only through those.

Are you really going to have land that you can grow crops.

It's interesting when you read accounts of an attack on the on the Presidio by Apaches and the friends the Franciscan sends out people from the mission to go defend it.

So the roles are reversed.

And it's very interesting when you see that, because it makes you wonder if if the Presidio was there to guard the missions, why he would need the help from the missions.

Well, it's because it's a community.

And the community that's been established works together as one.

And in times of need, they have to come together to help each other.

A group of Apaches are attacking San Antonio.

The presidio.

The presidio soldiers are forced out there.

They're forced to retreat.

They retreat to La Vita, where the Canary Islanders are.

The Apache group is coming in and they're attacking La Vita, and they're about to annihilate the Rita.

They're about to annihilate all the people that are there.

But 100 American Indian militias, men right out of San Antonio de Valero to protect la vida.

The group that comes from the colors of the Santa Cruz, the Queretaro.

They actually work hard to be able to do the best job that they can.

And it's a different process.

And the Jesuits, the Jesuits were known for being a little more strict and and abusive here.

It's a relationship that they build that needs each other with all that, you know, there was a big change in attitude.

and the need to bring people in who were, I hate to use an expression like this, but hell bent on evangelization.

I mean, they were really, you know, people who sacrificed.

They're the only guys who could really take it.

But there is competition between the different orders.

The competition is so fierce.

The the king of Spain says no more Jesuits in Texas.

They're not.

They're doing a terrible job.

So they kick the Jesuits out totally out of California, Arizona and Texas and the rest of Latin America.

They're expelled.

You know, you all have, you know, done things poorly.

The Franciscans are happy because they get to do the rest of the missions.

They mission San Antonio de Valero is a huge success.

In 1792, Spain had sent a priest to San Antonio to inspect all of the missions and report back to the government on their success, or lack thereof, and the priest that visits Valero in 1792 writes in his diary, and I'm paraphrasing here, this is not so much of a mission as it is a collection of white people.

And basically what he's saying is there are really no indigenous people here left to be colonized at this point.

There's been enough kind of mixing between the indigenous groups, the Spanish people, the people from Queretaro, that there is starting to be the appearance of a, more singular community.

And at the time they're calling each other vecinos, neighbors.

So I'm very proud of my Canary Islands roots, but I'm also proud of the mestiza that followed the blending of those cultures, the Spanish, with the indigenous populations.

That is what really created the fabric of San Antonio as we know it, as at the Hana, a Latina, a generational San Antone.

And that's the beauty of what each of these different communities brought and how we played a critical role in the story of our area.

An agreement is made between France and Spain, who are basically cousins, and Spain gets control of the Louisiana Territory.

So the need for sending more missions up and doing the continuation of protecting the borders of Spain in Louisiana isn't as necessary now because you control Louisiana.

So now the border has moved over to basically the Mississippi.

Well, 18 03A change comes again.

Napoleon sell Louisiana to the United States.

And so the first thing the Spanish government does is they send troops north and they come from the town of Alamo de Paris, basically, and they end up inside the former mission of San Antonio Valero.

So la segunda Compania Volante de San Carlos, the Alamo Barras moves into Valero.

And from that moment on it will be known as the Alamo.

In the early 1900s, Adina the sublime Claire Driscoll saved the Alamo from certain demolition and funded its restoration.

When we see the missions today, we think that they've always been treasured and manicured and maintained and and valued and extolled.

If you go back and find these photographs, for instance, Mission San Jose's The Doors of the Sanctuary at Mission San Jose at the turn of the 20th century, they were in ruins.

One of the interesting things is that Mission Concepcion is the best preserved stone church in the United States, and it remains in the same location, same configuration, same structure.

Now that it was in 1757 when it was completed, the frescoes there were used by the Franciscans to teach to demonstrate different things to the native population.

Standard say has a statue of Mary of the Rosary that is original to its church.

The parishes could not do the important and very huge task of of renovating those churches.

So Father David wonderfully raised, the money for that, and helped to create Los Misiones, which is actually a new name for old Spanish missions.

I now live by Mission San Jose.

I fight to keep development away from Mission San Jose in the other missions, because I think they're of great historical importance and because they're a World Heritage site.

And I did a piece, called Don Pedro Wieser.

And so he's well known for helping design and create the rose window on Mission San Jose's facade and also the frontal entryway.

And I did a drawing of a tree of life with the rose window in it.

And but the tree of life is made by the hands of his descendants, Vincent Wieser and his sisters.

And but behind the that drawing is a map.

And that map is the lands that were given to Don Pedro Wieser.

I lived about two miles from the Alamo, and that's where I was, pretty much where I was born and raised.

I'm descendant of a lady, Victoriana, the Salinas, who was at the Alamo with my three great aunts period of time after the, first siege of Bear in 1835 to when the Santa was removed.

Women were praying from the Alamo and no one knew why.

And I looked at it and I said, I know why.

They were thankful that they had survived this, this, this, this, Alamo battle.

And or possibly they were thankful that they had survived the cholera epidemic.

Or maybe they're thankful it's survived the siege a bear.

So I have women here praying to San Antonio.

But those aren't just women.

That, to me is my fourth great grandmother, Victoriana.

And my three great answer praying in front of the Alamo to San Antonio.

Cathedral has many influences, but in terms of its art and architecture, it's a Baroque city.

But when they paint that to San Antonio, the Baroque becomes not only a style in the in the art and like the missions and so on, but also it becomes a way of living, a way of being.

And the altars.

An altar is a place where women put all the stories of other lives, their pictures of their family.

And when people say how well it is and they don't explain, oh, is it a the mirror?

We know they're in the corral.

That old San Antonio de Como 25% Pennsylvanian animals and was correctness.

Yeah.

I don't need it for my own imagination is.

The bonds between Queretaro and San Antonio are essential.

They are at the very beginning.

The roots of San Antonio are in all.

We are incredibly indebted to all of the efforts made both by the Missionaries of Capital and the indigenous people that, helped the missionaries of of collateral, to establish the missions here in San Antonio.

We owe them a great deal of of of debt.

The Seattle nuances of their relationship is is a very large topic.

And I feel that it's important to acknowledge their contributions to our culture and our society, to the way we kind of think about our relationship to the land and the water and the sky and the earth here in San Antonio.

Our history and the history of Mexico is important.

We you know, we will never separate ourselves from it.

Right now, we're in a perfect place to be able to make the connection, to reconnect, I should say, with the place that started it all.

And you look at that, it's like it's a story of people.

It's a story of migration.

It's a story of how communities grow.

Because I'm sitting here and I am a descendant of people that not only came from Mexico City, from Monterrey, from northern LA.

So those connections are still there.

And it's important that we make sure that they continue to be seen, that they continue to be spread because our histories are connected, and we must conti