Colonialism 19

I am angry with the padres, and all of those of the mission, for living here on my land, for trespassing upon the land of my forefathers and despoiling our tribal domains.

Thomas Workman Temple II (1958): Toypurina the Witch and the Indian Uprising at San Gabriel,’’ Masterkey 32, no. 5: 136–52.

Toypurina, 1760-1799, was a Tongva/Gabrieliño medic and leader of a rebellion against Spanish missionaries in what is now California.

Toypurina led a rebellion against the San Gabriel Mission in California. The missionaries under Junipero Serra pioneered the Spanish colonisation of California. Serra was canonised in 2015. Across the Americas, indigenous peoples were stripped of their lands by European colonisers or, post-independence, by the countries' non-indigenous elites. In Argentina, which is almost 8 times the size of Germany, the southern half of the country was independent indigenous territory until the late 19th century. From 1878-1885, the brutal military Conquista del Desierto was carried out. After the sell-off and privatisation of the land that followed, only 12,500 hectares of territory remain today (1 ha ≈ 1 football field). The largest landowner since the land privatisation campaign under neoliberal President Carlos Menem in the 1990s is the Italian fashion group Benetton. A law passed in 2011 by the Cristina Kirchner government (2007-2015) to prevent land sales to foreign companies - but not to Argentine ones - was reversed by President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019).

*Suppressed Histories: The holy woman Toypurina *Indian Country Today Media Network: Junipero Serra as Indian Killer *Petition: Urge Pope Francis to abandon the canonization of Junipero Serra  *Eduardo Galeano (1997): Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. New York. Monthly Review Press.

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