Searching for a Lost Cemetery at Mission San José: Cristóbal López, Intern

Conservation Diaries: Cristóbal López, Cultural Resources Intern. National Park Service.

The podcast

Conservation Diaries is a National Park Service podcast in which young people — interns, volunteers, fellows and employees — talk about conserving the country's natural and cultural treasures, and why youth should help care for public lands. In this 2021 episode, host Nicole Segnini interviews Cristóbal López, a Latino Heritage Internship Program (LHIP) intern in cultural resource management at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. All episodes.

Cristóbal with former LHIP interns Chantelle Ruidant-Hansen and Tanya Helbig at San Antonio Missions. NPS photo.

Who he is

López comes from the small town of Dublin, Texas, and is studying for an M.A. in history at the University of Texas San Antonio. His parents are both immigrants from Mexico who came in the 1980s, leaving everything behind to build a new life — and they are his motivation. He wants to preserve the history of people like them, whose stories are often lost or left out:

"I like to study and to write about kind of like the underrepresented classes that don't fit the grand narrative, the bigger narrative, usually overshadowed by other histories."

The park

San Antonio Missions — with the Alamo, a UNESCO World Heritage site — protects four Spanish colonial missions: Concepción (Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña), San José, San Juan (San Juan Capistrano) and Espada (San Francisco de la Espada). Founded more than 300 years ago as tools of Spain's colonization of New Spain, they shaped San Antonio's culture, and the park tells stories of colonization, acculturation and survival.

Mission San José is the most restored, giving a glimpse of mission life. Its walls, part of its church and its granary were restored in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration, and the mission moved twice before reaching its present site.

The mystery

In front of San José's church are just two graves. One headstone is worn smooth; the other marks Juan J. Huizar, a descendant of Pedro Huizar, the man widely believed to have carved the famous Rose Window. López's job was to find out whether there were more burials, and what became of them. Community stories disagree: some say the dead were reburied in one of two other cemeteries, others that they were reburied under the church during restoration.

The Rose Window, said to have been carved by Pedro Huizar. NPS photo.

The two graves in front of the church at Mission San José. NPS photo.

What he found

He worked through archives at Texas A&M-San Antonio, the San Antonio Conservation Society Library, the Bexar County Spanish Archives and the park's library, and in online genealogy databases.

• Photographs: pictures of Mission San José from the late 1800s show several burial plots in front of the church, each ringed by the little wooden fences common in Hispanic cemeteries across the Southwest. "Now we know it was a cemetery," he said.
• Burial records: at Mission Espada, the burial book of Father Francis Bouchu lists about 21 burials "at San José" from 1880 to around 1902 — including Juan Huizar — matching the photographs. It can't be proved the burials were there, he says, but it's likely.

He never found what finally happened to them. But many mission descendants don't know where their ancestors lie — one told him a great-great-great-grandfather was buried in front of the church — and even evidence that they were there, he says, gives families answers and closure.

Mission San José's church and cemetery. NPS photo.

Why many voices matter

History like this isn't seen the same way by everyone. López argues that people from different backgrounds bring different readings of the past, and a park should bring them together, not rank one above another, to tell the fullest story. With only 5 to 6 percent of Park Service employees Hispanic, his advice to Latinx and other underrepresented young people:

• find the part of conservation and preservation that motivates you, "and just run with it. Just go for it";
• reach out with questions — to professors, supervisors, family, friends, or him — which builds relationships;
• when plans go wrong, keep looking forward.

Many questions about the cemetery remain, and he hopes the park keeps researching it and other graves. His detailed report will be kept in the park's library. More on the missions: nps.gov/saan. The Park Service offers jobs, internships and volunteering for people aged 15–30 and veterans 35 and younger: nps.gov/youthprograms.

Meet the host

Nicole Segnini. NPS photo.

Nicole Segnini, born in Venezuela, created Conservation Diaries in 2021 during her own LHIP internship in the Park Service's Office of Communications. Drawing on her work in journalism, social media and TV news production, she set out to help young people of every background picture themselves in conservation careers, telling their stories in their own words.

Sources

Based on "Conservation Diaries: Cristóbal López, Cultural Resources Intern," a podcast episode and article, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.