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The City of Santa Cruz unanimously resolved to remove all El Camino Real bell markers from public property, following requests by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band—and has now become the first city in California to do so.
The Amah Mutsun are calling for the statewide removal of El Camino Real bell markers and all other monuments that attempt to glorify and celebrate the domination, dehumanization and erasure of the Indigenous people of California. Mission bells symbolize the enslavement of Indigenous people in the California Mission system. The El Camino Real bell markers were created in the early 1900s to promote automobile tourism and visitation of the missions and to celebrate a white-washed, romanticized and distorted history.