Mission San Juan Capistrano’s 250th stirs America’s mirror

On a cloudy visit to Mission San Juan Capistrano’s 250th anniversary, the author finds a clash between a nostalgic, politicized version of history and a more complete telling that includes Indigenous dispossession and its human cost—then draws a line to modern

On a cloudy weekday morning last month, I went to Mission San Juan Capistrano looking for the future of this country in a place that seems determined to stay stuck in its past.

The city. home to about 35. 000 people. has long styled itself as an island of Old California—reachable in mood even as clogged roads and McMansions blemished the once-pristine hills. Physically and spiritually, the mission anchors it. San Juan Capistrano is one of 21 missions established by the Catholic Church under the Spanish crown in the 18th and 19th centuries. forming the scaffold of modern-day California.

That matters in Orange County, too. The southern reaches, one of the few parts of an increasingly “purple” county, voted for President Trump all three times. And outside the mission on this particular day, the downtown looked like a MAGA wonderland. Drivers carried their allegiance with Trump decals and bumper stickers. Banners on light poles proclaimed “250,” tying the mission’s birthday to the United States. It’s a number the president has tried to hijack—by attaching a love of this country’s history to fealty to him.

How Mission San Juan Capistrano’s story is told has always felt like a reflection of Orange County itself. with its streaks of avarice. retrograde conservatism. and suburban sprawl; its hostility toward immigrants and liberalism; and a civic religion of nostalgia for a bucolic yesteryear enjoyed only by a few.

I first visited my local mission in fourth grade. In that classroom version. we learned about the annual return of swallows. admired blooming roses and citrus trees. and absorbed a clean narrative: Spanish conquistadors and Catholic priests “tamed a wild land. ” and Americans should follow their example. We didn’t hear about Europeans bringing diseases that decimated Native Americans. We didn’t hear that Franciscan fathers—an order dedicated to lives of poverty and humility—forced tribes to give up their foods. customs. and religion in the name of Christ. rewarding them with serfdom. We didn’t hear that swallows don’t come in the numbers they used to because they have fewer and fewer places to build nests.

Now the problem felt familiar in a different costume. It reminded me of one of Trump’s most insidious projects: distorting history so it only celebrates winners. Tragedy for minorities gets rewritten as inevitable. Struggles against white supremacy get dismissed as “diversity. equity and inclusion nonsense.” The method is the same. too—control how society remembers the past. control the present and the future. In that framing, those who want a full telling of American history become unpatriotic, even treasonous.

Inside the mission, the space was mostly empty as I moved in with a map and a handheld speaker playing short recorded narrations. Spanish guitars strummed beneath a cheerful introduction welcoming visitors to the “Jewel of the Missions,” a slogan boosters coined decades ago.

I rolled my eyes. But the longer I walked the grounds, the more it felt like a new Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Exhibits now offer a grittier, more problematic version of what happened—less rose-tinted than what generations of Californians absorbed. There are nods to environmental devastation caused by the cattle industry that dominated Southern California in the first half of the 19th century. There are also references to a bargain Indigenous people were pushed into when they converted to Catholicism.

The lives of the Acjachemen—Native Americans who populated modern-day South O.C. before the Spaniards arrived and who continue to live in the region—are described as having “changed forever” under the watch of “poor and uneducated” soldiers. The narrator doesn’t hide the sentence itself; it leaves you to sit with the words.

In a well-lighted room dedicated to precolonial ways of life, there is even a letter from Mission San Juan Capistrano Executive Director Mechelle Lawrence Adams. She admits that “well-intended missionary purposes also resulted in challenges and in some cases, devastating consequences.”

The overall effect, though, doesn’t feel like caricature or slogans. Another room is dedicated to Father Junípero Serra, the founder of California’s mission system. Pope Francis declared him a saint in 2015, despite protests from Native Americans because of his treatment of their ancestors. Yet the tour doesn’t look away from mission sins over the 250 years. It demystifies what supposedly carefree life was during the height of the missions’ operations—before the United States conquered Mexico.

If historical reckoning can happen here, the argument goes, it can happen anywhere.

As the nation marks 250 years. the point hits hard: the country needs more honest reflections about its national journey. not the historical revisionism and triumphalism that Trump wants. Acknowledging and even criticizing past mistakes doesn’t cheapen love of the United States—at least that’s what the author’s own family story insists.

Five generations of the author’s family have lived in Orange County. tracing back to a maternal great-grandfather and grandfather Plácido and José Miranda. who arrived in Anaheim in 1918 from the copper mines of Arizona to pick and pack oranges and live in a segregated neighborhood. The author’s aunts and uncles share stories of discrimination they faced as teens in the 1960s—not so the family would hate America. but so they would understand how they refused to be deterred from building something better for their children. even if it was imperfect.

Change has become visible in Orange County since then. The author describes nearly all cousins still living there, buying homes on blue-collar salaries and sending children to colleges their parents hadn’t had a chance to attend because they were discouraged. The family “took the good with the bad.”

The contrast is sharp: unlike “other self-professed patriots” who watched southern California shift and left for other. redder parts of the country. Orange County became majority minority in 2004. The author adds that a new generation is fighting Immigration and Customs Enforcement. helping create a new identity for O.C. The author says. bluntly. “We’re not in John Wayne’s Orange County anymore.” Then. “Hell. we don’t live in my Orange County anymore—and that’s a good thing.”.

That’s the kind of message you can feel in your chest while walking through old stone.

The author’s walk ends at the ruins of what’s now called the Great Stone Church. The structure collapsed in an 1812 earthquake and killed 40 Acjachemen worshippers. Staring into empty niches where massive wooden statues of saints once stood. the author focuses on the fragility of democracy—“one catastrophe” away from failing. no matter how strong a foundation might feel.

The lesson. as framed here. lands like mortar: preserve the republic by strengthening today’s pillars with the mortar of the past. The author wonders whether that’s what Serra and his Spanish hosts thought when they established the mission system. or what “white saviors” had in mind when they began restoring the buildings in the early 20th century. The author’s answer is less certain about the past than about the present: a healthy democracy is where you can find unexpected lessons. and where you’d better be willing to accept them.

The day doesn’t end with mission stones. Across the street, the smell of tallow drifted from massive smokers at Heritage Barbecue. Chef and co-owner Danny Castillo has earned national acclaim for Texas-style smoked brisket. chickens. sausages. and other meats informed by the ethnic backgrounds of his crew—white. Mexican. Argentine. Filipino. and others.

Castillo opened Heritage in 2020. Skeptics said no one would eat barbecue made by a Mexican American in South Orange County. For years, eaters kept asking him where the “real owner” was, something Castillo said he took in stride.

Now, Castillo is finishing up a massive expansion. “We diversified this area, and I can say it proudly,” he said. Castillo is of Mexican, white, and Indigenous blood, and his ex-bracero grandfather was the first Mexican to own a home on his block in Westminster. “Look around,” Castillo said.

In the kitchen, the crew buzzed. On the patio, people waited in a line easily an hour long—people of all ages and ethnicities. Castillo talked through what that meant while his brisket taco arrived: “You’ll find the guy who’s saved up three months to be able to splurge for one day and the couple for whom money means nothing.” Then he emphasized the shared reality of the line. “It doesn’t matter—they all have to stand in this line, together. And then they have to eat alongside each other in benches, together.”.

When asked if he’d done the Mission San Juan Capistrano tour recently, Castillo hadn’t. But the author says Castillo applies lessons learned from the past every day at Heritage Barbecue. “This country is a place where we’re forced to come together and create something out of it,” Castillo concluded. “We still can’t figure it out, but that’s OK—we’ll get there.”.

Mission San Juan Capistrano 250th Orange County President Trump historical reckoning Indigenous Acjachemen Junípero Serra immigration Heritage Barbecue Danny Castillo democracy