San Antonio's origins lie in its historic missions, all of which we treasure, and one of which we remember as the Alamo.

It was in that old Mexico that the Spanish missionaries were taught the languages and the customs, and the indigenous populations they would encounter here.

It was in get it that they learned the survival skills they would need to travel north to the outer boundaries of New Spain to establish these missions.

It was there where the San Antonio of today to grew and grew.

And it is there that the San Antonio's blended culture was born.

Simply put, if it weren't for Catedral, there would be no missions, no Alamo, and no San Antonio.

Now, after more than 300 years, we rediscover and celebrate San Antonio's deep connection with getting better through artistic and cultural expression.

In a reunion three centuries in the making.

You know, the connection between Garrett and San Antonio, lies very deep in both city's histories.

And I think, it's a story that has taken a long time to come to light.

Location.

Your location, your in location that last mission is this here in San Antonio?

There has a Santa Cruz de Los Muertos dual in the Lugar de la Foundation Hall.

There's the milking instrument, you know, on the iniciar.

Una pequena capilla.

Yeah.

It's established.

Uno de Los convento.

Uno de Los templo convento.

Mas importante is the American.

El primer colegio de propaganda.

It is this year el primer convento.

The preparation that clearly was Franciscans.

Berardi from the NFA.

He went up there.

Una preparation especialistas mission e una naive.

I see a lot of that.

Oh, let's have fun.

Darla.

Cinco over there.

Otro camino.

No, I acl este es el camino real.

And Dallas, Texas is there, so no Santa Claus.

I got a I look at the San Antonio.

Toros influence as a point of development for the North is the most important one.

All of these would not exist if there was a center of this huge colonization, and also other interest of the crowd.

They were looking for gold and silver.

The thing about the missionaries that came from that out to San Antonio was that they were part of this much, much bigger effort by Spain.

Obviously, to, colonize the new world.

Of course, this was part of their overall project.

And the amazing thing was how much territory Spain was able to actually colonize and control.

And one of the strategies was to be able to do it with church and state working together.

And so that was the formula in which they wanted to be able to spread from the interior of Mexico to the north.

They had claimed all of what is now the southwestern part of the United States.

And so their strategy was it would be the missionaries going with soldiers, and the soldiers would always be in a presidio not too far away, but not too close to the missions.

And the idea was that the Franciscans wanted to work with the people, wanted to organize them, wanted to make these missionary led communities, and at the same time, they know they needed the soldiers for protection, because not all of the Indigenous or Native Americans wanted to cooperate, and all of some of them really felt that these were intruders.

And so they attacked the missions on a regular basis.

The most important thing was that they wanted to come and form communities, and they didn't want to impose, on the, Native Americans, that they had to do everything the Spanish way.

And so they wanted to come to be able to listen to the people, to speak to them in their language.

If they could, to be able to, of course, introduce Christianity and Catholicism to them and to gather them into communities.

The missionaries said, we are not coming to impose anything on them.

We're coming as friends.

We're coming to learn who they are.

We're coming to invite them into a relationship with us.

And so that's kind of the way they did it, though.

They use party in in Sioux Missionary, there's a coup d'etat on the Camino de la Cruz esta pasando por la Sierra Gorda, Zacatecas, Coahuila.

Illegal.

But as the locura Como la la barrios tierra inhospitable.

We have quite a few expedition diaries and the conditions were really tough and people wrote about what they encountered, how hard it was.

They also recorded little bits of joy and optimism that they encountered water and food and plants and people who were friendly to them.

But they they survived on sheer determination and faith.

They didn't have enough to eat.

They were sick.

The there was terrible heat, often lack of water.

And it was their deep, deep commitment to their faith and their determination to try and find souls to convert that sustain them.

Because they had to know languages, they had to know how to build, they had to know how to interact.

They had to know had to explain a very complex theology of the Catholic faith in the best way possible, because ultimately they were there to communicate.

And you have to understand, for Franciscans, they were not as part of their, vow of poverty.

They did not ride horses.

So you wouldn't usually find a Franciscan ever on a horse.

you might find a Franciscan on a donkey.

That was permitted, but not a horse.

The pattern of colonization that brought the Spanish to central Texas was a very, very old one.

And it began in the Iberian Peninsula in the ninth century as part of the so-called Reconquista.

As bands, small bands of Christian warriors tried to push southward into Islamic territory, and they would establish a castle and a town, and they would try to defend it, and they would try to populate it.

And once it was stable, then they would push further south.

And so this pattern of creating a settlement, creating a church, making sure that it could be defended as one that the Spanish had been doing for almost 800 years when they came to Central Texas.

So they had a formula and they knew what worked, and they would retreat if they needed to.

But their goal was to just push the border forward a little bit at a time in order to be able to expand the population.

And so here in San Antonio, we were living with a legacy of that very old pattern of colonization that the Spanish used inside the Iberian Peninsula.

Is this a socialist?

And the area conocimiento in manejo de la la tierra del Rosario is possessed.

Look a little get pull the Aaron conquistador territorios get the houses.

DeSoto no.

Avila, Logrado.

La Coruna Espanola.

Nicole Los demas Ordonez, Nicole.

Los Olivos no.

Juan.

Nation is siempre I bento's iguanas.

There's no lados.

Siempre poniendo a Los files a Los Franciscans.

A lot of them.

Not even solos.

Siempre even concierto, no matter the military is even a custodian.

Though not all the orders have missionaries well prepared to travel long distances.

and food without, you know, preferred water without sneakers, without G.P.S.. You may feel that these people were heroes.

Every group was a different size.

But typically when the Spanish sent groups northward to to to explore possibilities for missions and then to found them, they almost always had three groups together.

They had soldiers, they had priests, and they had a small contingent of townspeople.

Many, many places in the United States have the Spanish names.

Let's talk about Colorado.

Colorado full of color.

That's the red color for us.

So it was the name of the river that gave the name of the state Colorado, Nevada.

Nevada is full of snow.

So it's the land with snow.

La Sierra Nevada, Florida Florida is the name of this state.

Peninsula.

it comes from the celebration of the first mass in Easter, La Paz, Florida.

And sent I was seen in Florida is the oldest Spanish city in the United States.

So we can see all around from, the border of Mexico to the border of Canada.

And we will find hundreds, a thousand, more than a thousand of places with the Spanish names.

Before the advent of borders, we were one people, indigenous people.

And so this relationship with God, I thought it was really.

A, reminder that the two communities are indelibly linked, I think to get the most out of that story, you kind of have to start before any Europeans are even here.

so San Antonio, is it a really special place within what is now Texas or what was New Spain or what was Mexico?

and in every Texas history books that fourth or seventh graders look at, they will see a map of the geographic regions of Texas and a map of what indigenous people were present in Texas prior to colonization.

San Antonio has a 10,000 year history of an indigenous occupation.

That's what at least archeology is telling us.

And if you would to hear this, when you hear the story of San Antonio being told prior to us coming onto the scene and changing the narrative, you would think that when the Spanish arrived here, they were greeted by mariachis, forgetting the 10,000 year history.

And so I think that was that was the most important story that had been left out of the narrative of San Antonio.

San Antonio is located at the confluence of several unique geographic regions, is also right on the edge of the most important geographic feature in the entire state of Texas.

The balconies escarpment.

And so any time it rains, all of that organic matter that's flowing down one side of the bank on its escarpment has landed in San Antonio, making it a pretty fertile place, even prior to colonization, by, European people.

But it's also in sort of this no man's land, of the different indigenous groups that are inhabiting Texas at the time.

So groups that are relatively powerful in, indigenous Texas, the Hassani, the Apache, the Karen, Kiowa are all meeting in San Antonio to sometimes trade with each other, but also to raid upon, the less lesser successful indigenous groups like the Galway Texans, which is more of a geographic designation than it is any sort of community or tribal identity.

so all of these different groups are actually meeting in San Antonio, and it's not a place that belongs to any one particular group.

What we could think of as the great tragic, aspect of the destiny of these lands.

When we think about these panelists arriving here, how the story might have gone very differently if this panelists had been prepared to recognize a new people who did not known anything of, who had their own culture and beliefs.

They didn't have cities like the Mexica did in Mesoamerica and central Mexico.

They didn't leave cities behind or effigies or pyramids, but they had cultura, they had technologies.

And if the panelists had been in interested in preserving and documenting rather than, transplanting what they believed was the true nature of, faith and religion and spirituality to erase that which was indigenous and to overlay this the Spanish transmission, things could have gone very differently.

The, the, the Cuban patriot essayist Hosea marti said that the conquistadors stole a page from the universe that we will never know.

I think the tie between Guerrero and San Antonio, that's a story that needs to be told, because I can tell you that's not something I learned in school, and I doubt that children are learning it now.

I mean, my eighth grader and my sixth grader have not mentioned it, and they've already taken Texas history.

So it's something there's so many surprises.

And there's I mean, you you know, not only that, there was the Native Americans that were here.

There was a Spanish like it really was a real melting pot.

And I think it's just something that is surprising, but it needs to be told, because people need to know their history, where like third or fourth generation, we studied in the United States and this history is never taught to us, ever taught to us.

So it's not until we search it out on our own.

Our specialized in the university level on it.

Do we know about who we are?

So the system of the customs emerges in Mexico as a way of trying to, at least if you couldn't contain Miss Soccer, if everybody was going to, hook up and mix with everybody else from all over the world and create these new human hybrid amalgams, the panelists thought, well, at least we can create this taxonomy.

We can create a system to identify what you get when you mix what with what, which was what the justice system was really about.

It was about, the farther you got from Espanol, the less your moral worth, you know, was.

And that was the way the system of the gas that's really worked.

It would take once, once in Espanol mixed with somebody else, whether Afrikaner in the, or, Chino.

They would then take three generations of mixing back with Espanol or less before they could be Espanol again at managing the boosters.

He comes, up in the late 19th century.

So the casta system is already well established.

The genre of paintings and boosters, his paintings.

He begins to paint the mestizo face with with truth, compassion, dignity and this extraordinary presence, this gaze.

He he becomes enormously influential for Mexican artists like Gallo, Orozco, Siqueiros, Rivera.

he was a kind of an exemplar to them of painting the truth of Mexican.

He does.

So, you know, I think about his story in terms of the way that the system of the customs was overturned and the way that by the time we get into this period in the 18th century and 19th century, that we've got this, this very different scenario emerging of these peoples in, in places like get a throw in San Antonio that, are evocative of this, this transformation of Mr. Socket from something that was, a source of shame to the source of pride.

Most of the people in San Antonio have for centuries connected with different regions of Mexico.

So culture and art and music, or the most fabulous way to to be able to explain your feelings, your emotions, your sentimental, the sentimental never goes away.

You are always Mexican.

You might live in an Anglo community, but the sentimental way Mexicano is with you in your heart and you explain it.

That's why this, this kind of art avenue is that it's telling the story of the trials, the tribulations.

But it's how you survive.

How you survive all of this and found meaning between all these elements.

The United States calls it the Rio Grande.

The Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.

But grand dame Bravo.

I mean, you put that together and look what has happened when these cultures have, exchanged ideas and art and music and language and the new creations, it's grand and it's brave.

So I think it's a great combination.

The College of Santa Cruz, look at it.

That, is one of the early colleges for sending missionaries north, and they started in in about 1683.

And with the foundation of that college, they started looking at founding missions and basically studying their foothold in northern Spain.

And so if you look early on 15, 19, you know, Spain basically lands on the coast of Texas.

Well, they don't do much with it, you know.

So like, I comes through this, are all conquistadors come through.

But that's as far as it gets.

But what they start to notice is that with the Louisiana Territory and the French coming, something needs to be done.

So they start sending missionaries north, looking for fabled forts and, and, towns built by the French in Texas.

Well, there was one little fort, and that didn't last long, but it's already set that idea in motion.

So when you think about the missionaries from Canada, they come north.

They end up in what is present day Guerrero in northern Mexico.

And then from there they start looking at ways to make an the into Texas.

They come exploring in 7909 to the river area, and they have been named Rio San Antonio in 1691.

Well they come in 1709 and they rename it San Antonio for a second time.

So it was meant to be.

So the history of how it came is, is fascinating, because it is part of a San Antonio history that we were established by the Catholic Church, coming over with its priest and then settling in the development of the of the missions.

Though San Antonio had already been a thriving place because it was inhabited by the First Nation.

People are Native Americans.

And so therefore you have that intersection between language, culture and history.

And that's what makes it very unique.

If the if they are difficult conversations.

that's the beauty of art is, is to put things up on the front again, excavate and then inspect and then reflect on those things.

History is much more than the battle of the Alamo.

The battle of the Alamo is just one event in, in a very recent story.

You know, when we have a very old history in this region, like, as far as, I don't know, exactly 500 years before Common era.

I think that San Antonio's place in the Alamo place in Texas history, Mexican history, American history, a lot of that would not have happened had it not been for the friars that came here from Queretaro and established the first mission here in San Antonio, Mission San Antonio de Valero.

and that because of that, a lot of, Texan life and identity has sprung forth or emanated from this place.

And I think that that's true today.

So in the 1690s, Spain decides that they do need to put a buffer zone and stop the French from crossing into Texas, from Louisiana, because the French do occupy Louisiana Territory and the Mississippi River.

so it's a very long travel part to go from that, that also can take us, going up to East Texas.

and that's really how San Antonio becomes important initially, it's the waystation is the halfway point.

so they have a 400 miles to travel, and then they come back in 1716 and say, this is when they begin to explore the idea that they're going to be either on the river, present day San Marcus, possibly in the Colorado River, not too far from Austin.

and those are some possibilities.

San Antonio really is an afterthought.

It becomes important when they realize that the Indians here are friendly in East Texas.

The total resistance on the Gulf.

Oh, God, I wish they were totally opposed to any any efforts by the Spanish to establish colonies to settlement there.

And it's just warfare on those and those measures, they're.

So the important thing to remember here is that these expeditions, begin two centuries after the conquest, 200 years after the conquest.

So 1520.

And then in 1720, 1718, San Antonio was founded.

The Alamo was founded in 1718.

And that is where the city of San Antonio takes its founding date.

even though the Alamo was a mission and not meant to be permanent, it was 17, 18.

And that's that's where we say this is this is our beginning.

So gratitude is key to establishing missions through different parts of Texas.

16 of them.

It can be simply and honestly said that the cadet that fires are responsible for the building of Texas, the emergence of Texas.

Texas is what it is because of these early efforts.

These are the founding fathers of Texas.

It is something that we don't know.

We think that somehow another Texas history starts with with the 1820s, with, Stephen of seeing if Austin it started a hundred years earlier with the founding of San Antonio.

Because East Texas doesn't succeed, the Gulf cities don't succeed.

So San Antonio is key to everything we know and appreciate about the establishment and founding of Texas.