[ProphetM]

Originally Posted by tovangar2

Was there anything that didn't get the word "Mission" applied to it? Ramona, La Fiesta de Los Angeles & The Mission Play certainly had an effect on marketing and the rewriting of history. Even Plaza Church got "Missionized" ("Taco-Belled"?) at the turn of the 20th century, complete with signage (which is still in place).

"...the chain of Missions along the coast might best be described as a series of picturesque charnel houses...the Franciscan padres eliminated Indians with the effectiveness of Nazis operating concentration camps.''
-Carey Mcilliams, Southern California, an Island on the Land.

Not that secularization of the Missions helped much. The Indian slave-labor market was located next to the Downey Block. Any Indian found to be drunk or loitering was imprisoned for the market, sold and paid the following Friday with aguardiente, starting the process over again and destroying thousands of lives.

“on most Mondays, a local administrator auctioned off Indians who had been imprisoned for one week of servitude. The ironically named California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians of 1850 allowed any white person to post bail for convicted Indians, whom he could then require to pay off the fine by working for him — a new form of slave labor. According to George Harwood Phillips, in 1850 the Los Angeles Common Council declared, “When the city has no work in which to employ the chain gang, the Recorder shall, by means of notices conspicuously posted, notify the public that such a number of prisoners will be auctioned off to the highest bidder for private service.”
- From the third installment of A People’s Guide, “We Built This City,” by Laura Pulido.

(http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/post....5LMdBXm3.dpuf)

Plaza Church, built 1861:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7294653@N07/1353010000/

Plaza Church, after being Taco-Belled:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7294653@N07/420571865/

History successfully rewritten:

"Across from Union Station stands the city's newest museum, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, which is free and a must. The museum takes up two historic buildings next to the first church of Los Angeles (dating back to the late 1700s)."
http://www.mercurynews.com/travel/ci...ts-coming-2013

That's not entirely wrong. An asistencia to Mission San Gabriel was founded on the plaza in the pueblo of Los Angeles in 1784, to minister to the people of the pueblo, and raise crops and livestock for the mission. The 1822 church was built amid the asistencia's ruins, and the current 1861 church was rebuilt from the ruins of the 1822 church. As such, the plaza church is legitimately (though perhaps tenuously) tied to the California Mission system and does indeed trace its origin to the late 1700's, even though the current structure does not (and the author of that piece is of course wrong to say or imply that the actual building is that old).