FROM THE EDITOR.

• Author: Kiernan, James Patrick
• Position: Brief Article - Editorial

The world, including that of Islamic scholarship, recently expressed its outrage with the decision of the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan to destroy priceless ancient art, including the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan. The Taliban is a product of twenty years of devastating civil war, which has isolated them even from the rest of the Islamic world and historical perception. The Taliban minister of culture, surprised at the universal protest, responded, "but they're only stones."

In the Western Hemisphere, fine and popular arts--either the product of individual artists or craftspeople or as the product of a particular society--are revered as part of our common cultural patrimony. We preserve structures, sacred and profane, to mark the physical trajectory of our past. The reuse of structures--old movie palaces, railroad stations, urban residences--to support our current artistic, cultural, and social need is part of that process.

This issue of Americas visits the Palacete Murtinho, a former mansion in Rio de Janeiro, which has not been restored to its early twentieth-century splendor, but stabilized and adapted as an effective twenty-first century cultural and social space, called the Parque das Ruinas. We also explore the restored Spanish mission churches of California, which were founded largely over the course of the eighteenth century. While the remains of some of the missions were grander than others, their extension over 650 miles on El Camino Real tracks the historical confrontation and competing...