History buffs revel at local trailblazer’s exploits
CALEXICO — With an ambitious program covering two presentation venues, the 22nd annual Juan Bautista de Anza International Conference poignantly extolled the visionary exploits of a native North American explorer who left a lasting impact on present day California.
Noting the significance of De Anza’s expeditions that would spark critical settlements in developing modern California, Carlos Herrera, associate dean for academic affairs at San Diego State University-Imperial Valley invited seven expert researchers to present PowerPoint shows at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum and at SDSU-IV whose talks reflected different themes relevant to the times of de Anza.
The SDSU-IV Borderlands Institute, in collaboration with the Anza Society, acclaimed the expeditions of de Anza, who charted a route (now, the Anza Trail) from his native Sonora, Mexico, along the Lower Colorado River Valley through Arizona and into California in the spring of 1774 that proved to be a watershed moment.
“He was an important figure who pioneered the route and led 240 settlers to what becomes San Francisco,” said Herrera. “The purpose of the Mission Dolores in San Francisco was to beef up Spain’s presence in California and stem further movement south from Bodega Bay by Russian settlers.”
Leading off the afternoon session was Ron Quinn, Department of History lecturer at SDSU who told of “Tale of Two Governors: The Squabble Between Juan Bautista de Anza and Francisco Rivera.” The two were military captains under Spanish King Carlos III, who ordered his viceroy in Mexico City, Bucareli to have the two rival commanders establish a settlement at the present-day site of San Francisco.
Although superficially civil to one another, de Anza and Rivera harbored a barely concealed contempt for each other and it led to a heated dispute of whether San Francisco was a suitable settlement. Rivera thought it was not but de Anza persisted and established an outpost in 1776.
Rivalries were sometimes based on personal ambitions. A native North American, de Anza gained favor with Carlos III and was promoted eventually to colonel and then made governor of New Mexico, a post he served at for 10 years until just before his death. He rose about as far in the imperial bureaucracy as a native-born person could expect.
But just as important as the trail and founding of San Francisco, de Anza also brokered the Native American peace treaty with the Comanche tribe in 1786 that lasted another 40 to 50 years and probably preserved the entire (now) southwestern U.S. and all the northern Mexican states under the Spanish crown until Mexican independence in 1821, noted Herrera.
Largely because of that peace treaty, Spanish/American culture is still vibrant to this present day, he remarked. “The U.S. and Mexico see celebrations of culture in food, traditions and a continuation of that culture through the names of places in Mexico and throughout the entire southwestern U.S.,” explained Herrera.
The Cavalcade Parades throughout the southwest of nearly a century ago is another remnant of Spanish/American culture that celebrated the cattle drives, Herrera remarked. This eventually evolved into commemorations by other ethnic groups who celebrated their immigration to California. It is perhaps only fitting for a country known as a nation of immigrants and maybe now ironic for all the controversy over immigration since last fall’s election.