Saturday event will celebrate Padre Kino’s legacy

TUCSON—More than 300 years after he first rode into this valley, the name Eusebio Francisco Kino still has meaning here.

The pious, intellectual, and exceedingly tough padre who, among many other accomplishments, established this region’s world-renowned mission system and introduced cattle ranching to the Santa Cruz Valley, is a unifying figure in this culturally mixed locale.

This Saturday, a group dedicated to keeping Kino’s legacy alive will present “La Entrada de Kino” in Tucson, an all-day event featuring reenactments, lectures, and ceremonies in honor of the would-be saint of the Arizona borderlands.

“At a time when there is so much violence on both sides of the border, let this man of peace bring us together; let us remember a higher calling, and find it in Kino,” said event organizer Gloria Alvillar, who recently returned from a visit to the padre’s hometown of Segno, Italy.

Alvillar is part of the nonprofit group Patronato de Kino, which has as one of its stated goals to “promote Padre Kino to beatification,” or sainthood. That is a process they hope to conclude by 2011, on the 300th anniversary of Kino’s death, said Raul Ramirez, the Patronato’s secretary.

“We think about him as a symbol of hope,” Ramirez said. “In the Catholic tradition you pray to saints for intercession with God, and we think that Kino would be a good symbol of unity; he tried to unite the tribes of Primeria Alta, and we are looking at him as a source of unity again.”

The road to beatification, however, is likely to be even longer and more difficult than the thousands of arid and dangerous miles the padre traveled in the latter 1600s to arrive in what is now Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, where he not only attempted to convert the native people to his way of thinking but also introduced new lifeways that survive to this day.

The Patronato’s main goal, Ramirez said, is to educate people about Kino’s legacy, and the schedule of events for this weekend certainly bears that out.

Those attending will have the chance to hear a lecture by anthropologist and writer Tom Sheridan, who will speak about touring Kino’s missions throughout the border region. Historian Michael Weber will speak about the “world at the time of Kino’s time here,” and Alvillar will talk about her visit to the Segno, and Kino’s relatives there. Diana Hadley, Associate Curator of Ethnohistory at the Arizona State Museum, will give a lecture entitled “What Kino Found When He Arrived.” Other events include Ballet Folklorico, poetry readings, reenactments, and blessings.

The event is scheduled to get under way at 9 a.m. at the Rio Nuevo Site (west of Interstate 10 on the south side of West Congress at Avenida del Convento and West Congress), with a reenactment of the padre’s horseback entrance into Tucson, using horses that are descended from the original bunch brought here by Kino himself, Ramirez said.

The lectures and other events are set to get started about 2 p.m. at 340 N. Commerce Park Loop. For more information and a schedule of events, go to www.patronatodekino.org.

Tim Hull is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News.