Difficult Heritage and Contact Zones: A Museum Studies Contribution to Critical Mission Studies from
a Mexican Perspective
The California missions have been increasingly recog-
nized as a complex heritage, fraught with tensions and
confrontations. Unlike early twentieth-century homoge-
nizing narratives, which have been termed the “Spanish
Fantasy past,”1 there is now a greater recognition and
understanding of the implications that the missions have
for a range of communities, including—but not restricted
to—Native and Mexican American ones. No longer con-
sidered an unambiguous symbol, missions have become
the center of revisionist interpretations, including the
Critical Mission Studies (CMS) project. This initiative,
created and supported by the University of California,
Office of the President (MRPI Critical Mission Studies
grant), has as its purpose to reconsider the interpretation
of the missions through the incorporation of new voices,
and to facilitate “public engagements with difficult and
traumatic histories.”2
The following essay will argue that CMS can be greatly
enriched by (1) incorporating a comparative analysis of
heritage practices across the border with Mexico and (2),
incorporating tools and methodologies used by the
museum studies field. These two additions have the poten-
tial to provide both analytical depth and ways forward to
CMS through comparison and also through awareness of
more “practical” (i.e., organizational) elements.
Before moving on to addressing in detail these two
specific strands, it is necessary to frame the discussion in
a broader view of why it is important to support CMS
1. “Critical Mission Studies: Rewriting the History of California’s
Missions,” accessed December 16, 2019, http://criticalmissionstudies.ucsd.
edu/.
2. “Critical Mission Studies.” One of Critical Mission Studies’ main
initiatives has been the organization of a three-day conference and field visit
to Mission San Gabriel. The conference was entitled “‘American’ Art and
the Legacy of the Conquest: Art at the California’s Missions in the Global
18th–20th Centuries,” November 8–10, 2019. It was organized by Uni-
versity of California, Los Angeles, Chicano Studies Research Center, co-
sponsored by Critical Mission Studies, the UC-Mexico Initiative and the
UCLA Department of Art History, and made possible by The Terra
Foundation for American Art. A grant provided by the organizers allowed
three staff from the National School of Conservation, Restoration and
Museography (ENCRyM) to attend and participate in the event.
Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Vol. 2, Number 3, pp. 84–90. Electronic ISSN: 2576-0947. © 2020 by The Regents of the University of
California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s
Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2020.2.3.84.
84
moving forward and, more specifically, to support a change
in the way the California missions and their museums are
currently understood, interpreted, and presented.3 The
history of the California missions, though seemingly
remote in time, matters today and to diverse communi-
ties. Following on Aleida Assman’s theory of cultural
memory, some pasts remain as pasts (that is, forgotten
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or irrelevant) and some others are present pasts (past that
have social impact) depending on how actively or pas-
sively they are remembered or forgotten.4
Conquest and colonization are pasts that have increas-
ingly become present both in Mexico and in California,
despite their temporal distance. Mexico is currently com-
memorating the five hundredth anniversary of the arrival
of the Spaniards and the conquest and fall of Tenochti-
tlán (1519–21). These historic events have thus quite
recently become an epicenter of public discussion. This
is the case, for example, of the upheaval resulting from
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s letter
of March 2019 to the King of Spain Felipe VI demanding
a public apology,5 and around the recent broadcasting
(in November 2019) of the Netflix series Hernán. In
California, a related or similar public upheaval took place
when Junı́pero Serra was canonized during Pope Francis’s
visit to the USA in 2015.6 Also, in the last five years, there
have been a series of demonstrations by California
Indians outside Mission San Diego de Alcalá to contest
current historical narratives. The November 2 0 1 9
3. Of the twenty-one California missions, nineteen have operating
museums as well. These are an essential element. For the purposes of this
essay, any time the missions are referred to, that includes their museums as
well.
4. Aleida Assmann, “Canon and Archive,” in Cultural Memory Stud-
ies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll and
Ansgar Nünning (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 98.
5. Raphael Minder and Elisabeth Malkin, “Mexican Call for Conquest
Apology Ruffles Feathers in Spain. And Mexico,” New York Times, March
2 7 , 2 0 1 9 , https://www.nytimes.com/2 0 1 9 /0 3 /2 7 /world/americas/
mexico-spain-apology.html.
6. Daniel Burke, “Pope Francis Canonizes Controversial Saint Serra.”
CNN, September 23, 2015, https://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/23/us/
pope-junipero-serra-canonization/index.html.
demonstration was about voicing “the history of the
relationship of the Kumeyaay and the mission during
the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the founding of
San Diego.” The demonstrators remembered the attack
on the mission during which tribal members burned it
down.7
These critical events are evidence that the colonial past
remains a sensitive and difficult heritage that needs to be
properly addressed and scrutinized. In her seminal book
on Nazi heritage, Sharon Macdonald offers a compelling
definition of difficult heritage as “the past which is
meaningful in the present but that is also contested and
awkward for public reconciliation with a positive, self-
affirming contemporary identity.”8 The California mis-
sions represent a painful symbol of a history that has not
yet been revised and retuned to reflect the different needs
and perspectives of some of the contemporary communi-
ties that live around them. There has been some recent
critical revision of the historiography of the missions, but
on the fundamental level of public history the missions
continue to offer “fantasy mythmaking”: omitting not
only the views and voices of Native Californians but also
denying the “death and cultural devastation” brought
about by the missions as colonial institutions.9
This is also the case for some current Mexican and
Mexican American communities, many of whom are
devout Catholics and often relate unproblematically to
the missions and their history. But others perceive that
conventional representation of the history of California’s
missions often excludes the essential Mexican and Mexi-
can American participation in this history, consequently
marginalizing Mexicans in California’s contemporary
identity politics.10 Thus, for example, the narratives at
some of the mission museums present a racialized ideol-
ogy of a “white colonizing body, when the vast majority of
the first soldiers and settlers . . . were Indian and mestizo
people recruited from Northwest Mexico [previously,
New Spain].” The importance, then, of rethinking these
7. I want to thank Stan Rodriguez for providing the details on these.
8. Sharon Macdonald, Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in
Nuremberg and Beyond (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2009), 1.
9. Deana Dartt-Newton, “California’s Sites of Conscience: An Anal-
ysis of the State’s Historic Mission Museums,” Museum Anthropology 34,
no. 2 (2011): 97.
10. Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, “Crafting the Past: Mission Models and the
Curation of California Heritage,” Heritage & Society 8, no. 1 (2015): 65;
William Francis Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and
the Remaking of Its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2004).
narratives to acknowledge the “very early mixed-heritage
population in California and stories of early migration” is
that it can foster a “sense of belonging” among mestizo,
Mexican, and Mexican American communities.11
For these reasons, a transformation in the understand-
ing, interpretation, and display of the California missions
is now urgent. A first step forward is to analyze their
institutional framework, specifically in the context of
California’s and the United States’ heritage landscape. It
is here where the comparison with Mexico proves useful,
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for in spite of political and historical differences in the
two contexts, both countries face a very similar challenge
of thoughtfully rethinking what the difficult heritage of
conquest and colonization means for contemporary com-
munities, and for Native peoples most of all.
Mexico, although a pervasively Catholic country, has
a clear separation between church and state in official and
institutional terms. This has strong historical roots in the
nineteenth-century Reforma war and resulting laws, espe-
cially the Ley de Nacionalización de los Bienes Eclesiásticos
(the Law for the Nationalization of Church Possessions)
of 1859, which turned all church properties (buildings and
assets) into national property (that is, property of the
state).12 This is why today all churches and buildings
(including those that once belonged to the same religious
orders that established the missions in California) are
colonial monuments and property of the state, protected
by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologı́a e Historia
(INAH; National Institute of Anthropology and History),
even if still used for worship. This has meant that, at least
when it comes down to the presentation of the historical
narratives at these historic monuments, the state is in
a stronger position than the church to define the interpre-
tation and contents. It is here where, as will be seen, a con-
ciliatory narrative has prevailed.
In Mexico, heritage—at least certain parts of it—is
highly centralized through the oversight, policies, and staff
of the INAH. Created in 1939, INAH is a major presence
due to its federal mandate (established by the constitu-
tion), budget, authority, institutions, staff, and procedures
to oversee the management, use, and interpretation of
11. Dartt-Newton, “California’s Sites of Conscience,” 99.
12. Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz, “El patrimonio arquitectónico y urbano
(de 1521 a 1900),” in El patrimonio nacional de México II (Mexico City:
Fondo de Cultura Económica, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las
Artes, 1997), 201. The constitution was reformed in 1991 to give the
Church the legal recognition and status to acquire and possess properties
once again, beginning in that year.
Dialogues 85
national monuments, whether paleontological, archaeo-
logical or historical.13 Twentieth-century artistic monu-
ments fall under the auspices of a similarly centralized and
centralizing organism: the Instituto Nacional de Bellas
Artes y Literatura (INBAL; National Institute for Fine
Arts and Literature).14 Outside INAH, however, a range
of structures are under the jurisdiction of local and state
governments.
The consequence of this institutional and legal land-
scape is that throughout Mexico, heritage sites have often
been considered and interpreted within a particular his-
torical discourse, when managed by INAH, while there is
still room for local variances—even if these do not depart
starkly from national discourse. The cultural policies of
postrevolutionary Mexico, successfully disseminated
across a range of media outlets, sedimented a narrative
of a unique and unifying history that brought together
pre-Hispanic and Spanish colonial pasts through the idea
of a mestizo culture.15 This narrative is thus one that has
a conciliatory vein: it attempts to recognize both the
importance and “courage” of the Catholic missionaries,
but also the loss and violence that took place during
colonization and catechization. The conciliatory narrative
can be seen in public history sites, such as museums, text-
books, murals, and monuments, especially but not exclu-
sively at places overseen by INAH. More locally, some
variances are visible.
For example, in Baja California Sur, the Museo de las
Misiones in Loreto presents a typical INAH conciliatory
discourse. The historical narrative starts with a recognition
of Indigenous populations before the arrival of the
Spaniards, then an account of the process of “discovery”
and conquest, with a recognition of the technological
13. The definition of monument is highly significant: strictly speaking,
Mexican law protects monuments, not heritage. But the notion of mon-
ument encompasses items that could be part of a general notion of heritage.
Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, “Hacia una nueva polı́tica cultural,” in El patri-
monio nacional de México, ed. Enrique Florescano (Mexico City: Consejo
Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997),
93, 94; Enrique Florescano, “El patrimonio nacional: valores, usos, estudio
y difusión,” in El patrimonio nacional de México, 20; Cintia Velázquez
Marroni, “From Monument to Cultural Patrimony: The Concepts and
Practices of Heritage in Mexico,” in A Museum Studies Approach to Heri-
tage, ed. Sheila Watson, Amy J. Barnes, and Katy Bunning (Abingdon, UK:
Routledge, 2019).
14. Tovar y de Teresa, “Hacia una nueva polı́tica cultural,” 93, 94.
15. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, “Nuestro patrimonio cultural: un laberin-
to de significados,” in El patrimonio nacional de México, 28–56; Mary
Coffey, “Muralism and the People: Culture, Popular Citizenship, and
Government in Post-Revolutionary Mexico,” The Communication Review
5, no. 1 (January 2002): 7–38.
86 L AT I N A M E R I C A N A N D L AT I N X V I S U A L C U LT U R E
“achievements” brought by them. The Museo de las
Californias in Tijuana, which is directly under the Min-
istry of Culture rather than INAH, has certain elements
of the conciliatory narrative but is more critical and spe-
cific in its account of the problems and difficulties that
conquest and colonization brought about, and includes
a recognition of Indigenous peoples’ opposition and
struggle. The Museo Histórico de la Sierra Gorda in Jal-
pan de Serra, under the jurisdiction of the Querétaro state
government, also presents a conciliatory narrative, but
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with an emphasis on the way that the history and built
heritage (in particular the missions that Junı́pero Serra
erected) are pillars of contemporary local identity. It is
striking though, that despite differences, there has not yet
been any sort of consultation or critical interrogation
about how the history of conquest and colonization
impacted and continues to impact Indigenous communi-
ties in those regions. In other words, despite variances,
these histories are created by and from the political center,
and one that has not sufficiently given place to Indigenous
narratives (past and present).
For good and for bad, the centralization of heritage
management and interpretation in Mexico provides an
overarching conceptual framework and resources. How-
ever, the legal and institutional scenario in California is
radically different. On the one hand, there is no equivalent
to INAH in the United States, nor a national heritage
policy. On the other, the role and place of private entities
or agents in the heritage sector is prominent—the church
included. Thus, out of the twenty-one California missions,
only two are managed by a public state body (the Califor-
nia Department of Parks and Recreation); the rest of them
“are owned, and operated, at least partially, by the Catholic
diocese of the area or the Franciscan order and have active
churches.”16 As a result, each one is specifically dependent
on the local arrangements and particular dynamics of the
region. This creates a very interesting but challenging con-
text, because any change that Critical Mission Studies is
interested in supporting and endorsing will not only
involve working with local dioceses, but also working on
a case-to-case basis depending on the organizational speci-
ficities of each mission. Thus, it will be a very long and slow
process, with uneven results, but still worth doing.
In the case of Mission San Gabriel, for example, there
has already been a process of rapprochement between
16. Dartt-Newton, “California’s Sites of Conscience,” 98.
different agents and communities. In work with Tongva
members of the community but also with members of the
local Catholic church, students, and volunteers, there are
some signs that change has started to take place—even if
it’s problematic, only partially successful, or even unsuc-
cessful. In the garden, a group of historians led by Cali-
fornia Indians built a
Gabrieleno Indian village so visitors to the museum
can see what it might look like with the kiiy house . . .
the sweathouse to reduce weight . . . the ororeyvekish
covered area (considered a patio in modern days), the
rock where acorn nuts were smashed to get the edible
parts of the nut to eat, and some native plants that
were used to make baskets, for medicine, and for
ceremonies and celebration.17
Additionally, the museum board is looking to “inform
visitors via revised displays of the evolving histories of the
San Gabriel Mission” through critical and scholarly per-
spectives that “challenge outdated myths related to its
collection.”18 As for the mission museum, it is very sig-
nificant that it has remained practically unchanged since
it was opened by the Claretian fathers in 1908. It is thus
a museological curiosity in its own right—a museum of
the museum, of sorts. But it needs to radically change and
update its discourse and displays in order to better cater to
the needs of contemporary audiences, whether Indige-
nous, Mexican American, or other Californians. This pro-
cess must be carefully thought through, designed, and
implemented. The advisory board is already carrying out
planning on this matter.
Here the field of museum studies could be of great use,
although first it is necessary to understand the current
status of the field. The second half of the twentieth cen-
tury was characterized by a series of debates around and
theoretical challenges to the notion of museum. Often
labeled New Museology, the series of initiatives developed
and implemented from approximately the four decades
from the 1970s were about addressing key issues and
problems inherent in previous understandings of the
museum.19 These included: recognizing the political
17. This is excerpted from a text panel in the garden next to the kiiy
house.
18. Yve Chavez, Cynthia Neri-Lewis, and John Macias, “Imagery,
Materiality, and Evolving Histories at Mission San Gabriel,” Boletı́n:
California Mission Studies Association 31, no. 1 (2015): 89, 90.
19. The term new museology became widespread based on a seminal
book thus entitled, edited by Peter Vergo (Reaktion Books, 1989). Yet, as
has been recognized in later dates, the book was not a clear-cut manual on
nature of the museum and its discourses; recognizing the
lack of knowledge and understanding of the diverse audi-
ences; pointing at the implicit (or explicit) hierarchies
within the museum staff and its areas, which generally
gave more value to their curatorial and research offices
over education and outreach; recognizing the importance
of the geographical, social, and political context of the
museum; underlining the lack of transparency and
accountability within the institution, and externally, in
relation to the surrounding communities and stake-
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holders; and, finally, recognizing the need to embrace and
incorporate other narratives and voices beyond the dom-
inant ones.20
As a result, modifications and new practices developed
during the last decades of the twentieth century were
adopted by many institutions, but not all of them. Fur-
thermore, there has also been a difficult recognition of the
limitations of the New Museology itself. Some of the
main criticisms emerging in the twenty-first century have
had to do with claiming that change was not as profound
and thorough as needed; in other words, museums con-
tinue behaving as if they were “neutral” or have not yet
fully accepted the implications of their political nature;
work and staff relations are still marked by unfair or
hierarchical structures; and, more importantly, giving way
to other voices and narratives has only been partial or
limited to the domain of discourse, without further social
implications or application. Consequently, both museum
practice and museum theory continue to strive beyond
their own current barriers.
In this landscape of criticisms, the concept and calls for
an activist museum have been significant. Embraced by
different museum scholars and practitioners, the idea of
an activist museum or of a socially engaged practice in
museums considers that these organizations are not only
about presenting and highlighting the social challenges
-
what the New Museology was, and there is to date a diverse range of un-
derstandings and theories within that umbrella term.
20. Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures. The Poetics
and Politics of Museum Display (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1991); Julia D. Harrison, “Ideas of Museums in the 1990s,” Museum
Management and Curatorship 13, no. 2 (1994): 160–76; Gail Anderson,
ed., Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on
the Paradigm Shift (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2004); Pedro Lorente,
“Nuevas tendencias en teorı́a museológica: a vueltas con la museologı́a
crı́tica,” Museo.es: Revista de la Subdirección General de Museos Estatales, no.
2 (2006): 24–33; Vikki McCall and Clive Gray, “Museums and the ‘New
Museology’: Theory, Practice and Organisational Change,” Museum
Management and Curatorship 29, no. 1 (2014): 19–35.
Dialogues 87
ahead, but also about using their resources (whether
collections, building, staff, or otherwise) to actually help
effect positive change in their communities.21 The con-
cept of the activist museum sees the institution more
affirmatively involved in addressing contested issues such
as violence, inequality, environmental crisis, discrimina-
tion, and so forth.
In order to become activist museums or develop
a socially engaged practice, museums need to undergo first
an internal process of critique and restructuring. Perhaps
this has been one of the main criticisms and shortcomings
of previous attempts to renew museums: the realization
that in order to become more socially minded and respon-
sible organizations, museums need to transform from the
inside out, to become self-aware and consistent at all levels
(first internally and then externally). This means mu-
seums need to understand and clarify their own values,
power dynamics, ideologies, and other not-so-evident
traits, as well as face up to the challenges and contradic-
tions that may arise among its staff, board members, and
other stakeholders. It is then that the institution may be
able to achieve the desired level of transparency, social
accountability, power sharing, and activism.
James Clifford’s idea of “museums as contact zones” is
useful here.22 Based on Marie-Louise Pratt’s original idea
of the contact zone,23 Clifford’s text was a key departure
point for museum literature in the late 1990s and the
next decade. Clifford suggested that museums could
become those places where groups that did not normally
come together could do so, becoming mutually trans-
formed as a result: for example, the museum on the one
hand, with the communities whose collections were exhib-
ited within on the other. Written at the height of the New
Museology “era,” Clifford’s ideas became seminal because
they addressed several of the issues that were then at the
heart of museum theory and practice debates (e.g., sharing
of authority, participation, politics, representation).
Clifford’s ideas continue to be relevant twenty-five
years later, even in the face of significant criticisms, like
that of Bennett and Boast regarding the “inherent
21. Janet Marstine, Critical Practice: Artists, Museums, Ethics (Abing-
don, UK: Routledge, 2017); Robert Janes and Richard Sandell, Museum
Activism (New York: Routledge, 2019); Kylie Message, Museums and Social
Activism: Engaged Protest (New York: Routledge, 2014).
22. James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twen-
tieth Century (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
23. Marie-Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transcul-
turation, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 1991).
88 L AT I N A M E R I C A N A N D L AT I N X V I S U A L C U LT U R E
asymmetry” and power imbalance of the very idea of
contact zones.24 However, Clifford’s ideas remain relevant
for Critical Mission Studies for several reasons. First, he
highlights the “diasporic” character of objects; that is, as
“unfinished historical processes of travel, crossing and
recrossing,” full of entanglements, which significantly
applies to the collections held at the missions. Addition-
ally, because he recognized that contact zones (and thus
contact histories) involve mobilization of power, contin-
gency, and constant negotiation; there is no “easy
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solution” nor “formula,”25 and as such it provides CMS
a general framework of reference where resilience,
patience, flexibility, and dialog are essential elements to
carry forward the project. Finally, Clifford’s call for insti-
tutional self-awareness and social accountability, concepts
now prevalent in ideas of museum activism and socially
engaged practice, are especially pressing for reconsidera-
tion of the missions. For example, this is how he elabo-
rated on the process of consultation on certain objects in
the Portland Museum with Tlingit Native communities:
What transpired . . . was not reducible to a process of
collecting advice or information. And something in
excess of consultation was going on. . . . Tlingit
history did not primarily illuminate or contextualize
the objects of the Rasmussen Collection. Rather, the
objects provoked (called forth, brought voice) ongoing
stories of struggle. From the position of the collecting
museum and the consulting curator, this was
a disruptive history which could not be confined to
providing past tribal context for the objects. The
museum was called to a sense of its responsibility, its
stewardship of the clan objects. . . . The museum was
asked to be accountable in a way that went beyond
mere preservation. It was urged to act on behalf of
Tlingit communities, not simply to represent the
history of tribal objects completely or accurately.26
The idea of the mission museums as contact zones,
together with recent developments in museum theory and
practice, can be great allies to CMS. Because of the par-
ticular heritage context of the USA, any project moving
forward needs to be aware of the specificity and identity
of each one of the missions. This involves knowing, doc-
umenting, understanding, and working within their
24. Robin Boast, “Neocolonial Collaboration: Museum as Contact
Zone Revisited,” Museum Anthropology 34, no. 1 (2011): 56–70.
25. Clifford, Routes, 208, 213.
26. Clifford, 193. Italics in the original.
individual contexts. Before effecting or trying to achieve
any change in the way the California missions exhibit the
past, it will be necessary to first understand each one of
them as an organization with its own board, power
dynamics, policies, stakeholders, values, interests, and
resources. Furthermore, it is likely that there will be inter-
nal contradictions or clashes between the stakeholders,
which may hinder a smooth path to change. Getting right
(or at least complete) this first step of organizational aware-
ness is essential to taking redevelopment and rethinking of
the missions to the next stages, such as to the stage of
knowing their audiences and communities, and of redesign-
ing contents, interpretation, and exhibitions. In other
words, in order to turn the missions into contact zones for
different sectors of the community, it needs first to become
a contact zone itself for all staff involved in the process,
both the one at each mission and CMS members—
whether parishioners, devotees, academics, volunteers, stu-
dents, guides, or otherwise. CMS participants and those
responsible for or interested in implementing changes in
the California missions must understand first the need to
start “from the inside” before reaching out to communities
to involve them in the process.
It is reasonable to assume that not all twenty-one mis-
sions will have organizational conditions to support or
carry out changes—at least not yet. Therefore, in order
to minimize frustration and possible unnecessary con-
frontations, and to optimize efforts and resources, it will
be essential to identify where change is possible—even if
incremental—and who the key allies are. The ultimate
goal is to locate spaces (missions) that are or have the
potential to become contact zones where dialog is possi-
ble, in order to start unpacking all the challenges that
difficult heritage brings about.
Once this has been carried out, CMS could move
forward into thinking about and designing the next steps.
At each mission the timing for this will be different, as
will be the prioritization of needs and issues to tackle. For
this stage, CMS can draw on a series of tools and meth-
odologies such as:
1. Visitor studies and evaluation. Whether quanti-
tative, qualitative, or mixed, there is a range of
approaches and techniques to better know and
understand the characteristics, behavior, expec-
tations, needs, and emotional/intellectual re-
sponses of the diverse audiences to which the
missions cater.
2. Interpretation. A large area in itself, with diverse
approaches, from thematic interpretation to
storytelling and film-inspired narratives, inter-
pretation recognizes that the communication
process that takes place in museums and heritage
sites cannot be simplified as one of “information
transmission.” Not only are visitors active
meaning-makers, but also the creation of narra-
tives is a political and creative act where posi-
tionality, emotions, and ideologies are present.
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The power of a narrative lies not only in accu-
racy but also in its capacity to engage with and
move people.
3. Public programs and outreach. These have to do
with the recognition that museums need to go
beyond their walls, understand and liaise with
different communities, and provide services to
them. It is not enough to only exhibit perma-
nently collections and wait for visitors to come
and engage with them.
4. Co-curatorship, collaboration, and other similar
practices. Recognize that a more “horizontal”
relationship with visitors and communities is
needed, where the museum works not only for
but especially with them. This involves, at its
most radical extreme, the “letting go” of
authority and the creation of other paths for
historical representation and visions of historical
accuracy.27
If the task seems daunting, it is important to note that
in the USA there are significant examples to follow and
from which to draw inspiration. In particular, the expe-
rience of former plantation sites is relevant, as these places
faced the challenge of opening up, addressing, and chang-
ing the narrative of a highly contested past.28 They have
succeeded in not only bringing forward histories and
voices that had been erased but also changing attitudes
and social awareness to the past and present histories of
the USA. Missions could become not only places to tell
different experiences around processes of colonization
and catechization that took place in the past, but also
27. Bill Adair, Benjamin Filene, and Laura Koloski, Letting Go?
Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World (Philadelphia: Pew
Center for Arts & Heritage, 2011).
28. Richard Handler and Eric Gable, The New History in an Old
Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1997).
Dialogues 89
“valuable opportunities to extend Indian story beyond the
mission period.”29
CMS has a large but commendable challenge ahead. The
California missions are both a witness to a troubling and
complex history and a contemporary heritage with the
power to unite or draw apart even more the diverse com-
munities that live around the missions today. A comparison
with Mexico, which is also an intimate part of the story,
shows that despite the different institutional configurations
of the heritage landscape, there is striking similarity in both
countries as regards the lack of consultation about the
meaning of conquest and colonization for contemporary
communities, in particular Indigenous ones. Starting to
do this may mean opening a Pandora’s box, but it is nev-
ertheless necessary. And in doing so, a case-to-case approach
may be the most viable way forward. As demanding as this
may be, it offers a unique possibility to tell the different
stories that are relevant for the different communities in
each region, instead of having one overarching, centralized
“meta-narrative” that hinders nuance and detail where it is
most needed. The efforts of doing so could be rewarding:
29. Dartt-Newton, “California’s Sites of Conscience,” 100.
90 L AT I N A M E R I C A N A N D L AT I N X V I S U A L C U LT U R E
both Mexico and California are highly multicultural places,
with a shared history and present, and where decisions
around the use and interpretation of difficult heritage will
set a significant precedent for how we deal with contested
present issues. When sites and museums become contact
zones, it is possible to envisage a way forward.
Cintia Velázquez Marroni
National School of Conservation, Restoration and
Museography
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/lalvc/article-pdf/2/3/84/412017/lavc.2020.2.3.84.pdf by University of New South Wales user on 31 October 2020
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cintia Velázquez Marroni is associate lecturer
at Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración
y Museografı́a (ENCRyM; National School of
Conservation, Restoration and Museography). She has
twice received the Miguel Covarrubias National Prize
from the National Institute of Anthropology and
History (INAH). She is interested in collections, the
relationship between history and museums, and
museum organization and policy.