Corpus Christi

The history of Corpus Christi as a city is fairly recent, and I don't know of any authentic Spanish colonial buildings there. It is, however, what might be considered a regional capital for the Texas coastal area, which Spanish ships started exploring as early as 1519. The Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History has therefore become the repository for artifacts and exhibits relating to these explorations.

Although Columbus himself never explored this area, Corpus Christi won a bid to house replicas of La Niña, La Pinta, and La Santa María that were built in Spain in 1992 to commemorate his voyage of discovery five hundred years before. Apparently, the replicas crossed the Atlantic and toured several coastal cities in the United States, but completely avoided any of the places that Columbus actually explored! At the end of their voyage, the city of Corpus Christi docked them at the entrance to the bay. A year later a big cargo ship smashed into two of them! La Pinta and La Santa María, no longer seaworthy, are now dry docked at the museum where they are available for tours while they await repairs.

Here is La Niña, which visitors are allowed to board under the supervision of a tour guide.

La Santa María is apparently not in good enough shape to board right now, but you can get close enough for pictures.

While tours of these two replicas are part of the cost of admission to the museum, La Niña can be seen free of charge where it is docked next to the yachts on Ocean Drive. Although still seaworthy, it is also in need of repairs.

There are a number of exhibits inside the museum related to Spanish maritime exploration. The most important is about a 1554 shipwreck off the coast of South Padre Island. The exhibit includes life-size models of ships, a movie dramatizing the shipwreck, and numerous artifacts excavated from the site. Here is the keel from one of the ships:

I don't have other pictures because the exhibit was indoors, but it is extremely fascinating and well worth the visit. There is another exhibit about the Belle, another ship sunk in Texas waters. Although the Belle was commanded by a French explorer, La Salle, its 1684 voyage is extremely relevant to Texas's Spanish colonial history. News of this French incursion motivated Spain to establish the string of missions in East Texas as a buffer zone. I stopped on the way home to snap a picture of Matagorda Bay, where the Belle was excavated:

Artifacts from the Belle are scattered among several museums in Texas, so there are only a few in Corpus Christi. This didn't stop the curators from constructing an awe-inspiring exhibit space for them, which includes a magnificent fifteenth-century mudéjar-style ceiling transported from Spain:

Most people go to Corpus for the sea and sand:

The best way to avoid the crowds and imagine how this area would have looked before there were hotels, however, is to explore the maritime exploration exhibits at the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History.

Goliad II

In my last post I talked about the Misión Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga at Goliad. You can see the whole mission and even hike the nature trail in one morning, and then drive five minutes back to downtown for lunch next to town hall:

This leaves plenty of time in the afternoon to see Presido La Bahía, which is just a little down the road from the mission. In fact, you can see the mission from the presido parking lot:

The proximity surprises me a little. Although a presidio's purpose was to protect a mission, the padres often saw the soldiers themselves as the biggest threat. They feared that the soldiers would seduce or otherwise corrupt their neophytes, and probably with good reason. This would at least explain why the mission and the presidio had separate chapels: Spanish theater is full of romantic intrigues in churches. The presidio's chapel is both lovely and imposing.

It certainly looks more fortress-like than the mission chapel, but this may simply be because the foundation that maintains it has chosen not to restore the outer coating of adobe and whitewash. The rest of the compound, however, is unmistakably designed for defense.

The front entrance contains a museum that is mostly dedicated to La Bahía's place in Anglo-Texan history: the massacre of Colonel Fannin's troops. Although, as I mentioned in the previous post, I wish that there were more of a political and economic will to preserve sites for their Spanish heritage, I was impressed with this museum's relatively nuanced look at the Texas Revolution. There was some attention paid to the bigger picture of what was going on in Mexican politics at the time.

The foundation that maintains this site is a Catholic organization, so it is no surprise that they keep the presidio chapel in working condition.

The chapel wings, however, are used as additional museum space. Here is the bell that used to hang in the bell tower:

Across the street from the presidio is a replica of the home where Ignacio Zaragoza was born.

If that name doesn't ring a bell for you, you are not alone. Many North Americans mistakenly believe that Cinco de Mayo is Mexican independence day. It is in fact a celebration of Mexico's victory against the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Ignacio Zaragoza was the general who led the Mexican forces to victory at that battle. Since he was born in what is now the United States, Cinco de Mayo has become a celebration of Mexican American culture. Near the replica of his first home is a monument to him:

The inscription, in typically romantic spirit, reads "Mexicans: the children of this generation were born free. We shall remain so or die demanding it."

Goliad is a small town but well worth the visit. It is also only about 1 1/2 hours from Corpus Christi, which, although lacking in missions, is rich in maritime history from almost the earliest days of Spanish exploration in the New World. More about that in the next post.