Blessed with Tourists: The Borderlands of Religion and Tourism in San Antonio.

Blessed with Tourists: The Borderlands of Religion and Tourism in San Antonio. By Thomas S. Bremer. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, c. 2004. Pp. xiv, 207. Paper, $19.95, 0-8078-5580-4; cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8078-2912-9.)

In Blessed with Tourists: The Borderlands of Religion and Tourism in San Antonio, Thomas S. Bremer addresses the relationship between religion and tourism in an American context using San Antonio, Texas, as his basis for study. Taking as his premise the idea that "pleasure travelers and religious adherents make distinct places out of a shared space," the author looks at San Antonio's five historic Spanish missions and how their contextual meanings, both secular and religious, have changed over time (p. 4). He presents a brief overview of the role of the missions in New Spain and how their functions, both real and perceived, have evolved since their secularization in 1824 by the Mexican government (a decade before Mexico secularized the rest of its missions and monasteries). Taking up the theme of tourism, he discusses visitors to nineteenth-century San Antonio and their perceptions of the Alamo and the other missions. He examines the subsequent history of the Alamo and that of the four remaining missions and the impetus that the personalities of both Ethel Wilson Harris and Archbishop Robert E. Lucey, as well as the 1968 world's fair, HemisFair '68, had on the restoration of the missions. Finally, he considers the issue of the other four missions in their simultaneous roles as parish churches and tourist destinations as part of the San Antonio Missions National Park.

Bremer's contribution to the study of tourism and religion is found mostly in his study of the four missions from Harris's restoration of Mission San Jose as a romantic evocation of what she believed was mission culture--really more of an arts-and-crafts-inspired preservation of Mexican, rather than south Texan, artisanship--and Lucey's efforts to secure funds and support for the physical restoration of mission buildings as both active parish churches and tourist attractions. It is, perhaps, ironic that neither of these figures came from San Antonio and that neither was of the Hispanic/Indian/Anglo-American hybrid culture that exists within the parishes themselves. Bremer's study of the present-day tensions between the parishioners and the National Park Service is particularly perceptive and nicely researched and is the strongest section of the book.

It is a pity that Bremer did not extend his study, at least briefly, to a comparison with California's missions, many of which still serve as parishes while they are also part of the state historic park system. The book also suffers from a rather superficial chapter on nineteenth-century San Antonio that oversimplifies the ethnic diversity of that time period and misses the distinctive character of tourism at that time. For example, the Hispanic population of the city declined in numbers during the nineteenth century, and this did not change until the large influx of Mexican refugees during the years of the Mexican Revolution. Even before the coming of the railroads, the city was a destination for the weak and ill (particularly consumptives) seeking a salubrious winter climate. Once the railroads linked San Antonio to the rest of the country, both businessmen and the city government actively encouraged tourism--not only by encouraging intrastate visits such as German American sangerfests, but also by promoting the city as a perfect place for conventions, both for trades and for the numerous fraternal organizations then prevalent. Sadly too, his chapter on the Alamo is little more than a reiteration of Holly Brear's Inherit the Alamo: Myth and Ritual at an American Shrine (College Station, Tex., 2003). The Alamo's history deviates from those of the remaining four missions, partially due to its location. Relatively far from the others, its accidental conversion into a battle-site made it a secular place of pilgrimage, replete with martyrs and relics. When the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) finally took on its restoration, there were too many layers of intervening history to allow it to return to historic-mission status, not only for tourists but also for San Antonians. With new attitudes and political situations, the so-called Shrine of Texas Liberty continues to reinvent itself in the city's eyes, with and without the DRT.

JUDITH SOBRE

University of Texas at San Antonio