Driving thru San Antonio, it can be breathtaking to suddenly come across the old Spanish Missions: Concepción, San José, San Juan and Espada.
To see them jutting out of the urban landscape — you are immediately confronted by the weight of history and the display of beauty. The stone walls, archways and sacred spaces are robust with meaning.
It might appear like a postcard image but for more than 300 years, these places have never been static. They are part of the Texas origin story — instruments of empire, conquest, anchors of community life, symbols of pride and also sources of pain.
The Alamo City has grown around them and so has the debate over what they represent.
A new book “San Antonio and Its Missions: Three Centuries of History, Memory and Heritage” traces not only how the missions were built, but also how they’ve been used, abandoned, re-used, and reinterpreted by church leaders, local families, preservationists, tourists, tribal communities, and generations trying to make sense of the past.
The shifting meanings of the missions is the throughline of a new book by Joel Daniel Kitchens, “San Antonio and Its Missions: Three Centuries of History, Memory and Heritage.” It’s published by Texas A&M University Press.
Kitchens argues the missions’ public image was shaped as much by tourism and politics as by preservation. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he notes, the missions’ “ruinous” look could actually boost their allure—romantic remnants that fit the “See America First” pitch aimed at convincing travelers to spend their money at home rather than on a European grand tour.
But admiration existed alongside prejudice. Kitchens describes a Texas cultural landscape marked by white Protestant mythmaking, lingering hostility toward Spain and Mexico, and open anti-Catholic sentiment that could diminish urgency for restoration. Some writers, he says, framed the crumbling missions as relics of a “dead past,” useful mainly as symbols of a new American order built atop the ruins of the old.
Kitchens ultimately calls the missions “sites of memory,” borrowing the concept from Pierre Nora. For some families, including descendants of Coahuiltecan peoples, they are places of return and identity; for others, they’re sacred spaces for weddings, funerals, quinceañeras, and celebrating Mass. And for everyone, he warns, preservation is never finished—because a 300-year-old building is always asking for more care.
