Negative Mission Experience

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Mission San Buenaventura, located in the picturesque downtown Buenaventura is the epitome of hokey small town tourism. Located on the Main street, Mission San Buenaventura is surrounded by thrift stores, beach wear outlets, and old time-y restaurants, not the typical surroundings you would expect to find a structure with such great history and controversial past. Parking on the street in front of the mission, I was a little shocked to hear a jazz band playing in the background and to find a bustling street fair being held on the street parallel to the mission. Combing the street in front of the church tower and courtyard, it took a good five minutes to find the entrance. To my surprise, the only entrance for visitors happens to be through the gift shop. The room, bigger then most others that I viewed on the tour is full from wall to wall with cheap knick-knacks that can be found in tourist's shops everywhere. Here I was given a small brochure, which was our guide on our tour through the mission.

After browsing through the shelves full of tacky religious paraphernalia I made my way to the entrance to the "museum". The room that was no bigger then my dorm room was filled with a few shelves of relics from the past. The most interesting items were the old wooden bell that used to adorn the bell tower, and an old confessional booth. These two items were the only two of substance, the only two items that gave a vague recollection of what daily life in the mission may have been like. The worn and wooden bell rang with memories that once filled the vibrant mission community. Other items included small statues of saints and Indian children, a few tapestries and paintings, all of which painted happy pictures of what the mission ...

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...eople in power. The appalling past of mission life is left out of history simply due to the fact that the conquerors of the land want the masses to believe that what they had done was right, and was needed to be done. The people in power at the time needed to show that the missions had a purpose to better the lives of the Indians that they were converting, and by converting them, they were saving them. This outlook on the mission system soon grew into public fact, when in reality it was far from the truth. When studying history, one has to be careful, because there is no way to be certain if the history they are getting is fact, or fabricated history. The best solution to this problem is to make sure to get many outlooks and recordings of the past and try to form the a clear and concise view of what happened in the past taking in all accounts of recorded history.

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