SOUL FOOD:

To say it would be a sin to miss “The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820” exhibition currently at the Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art is not much of a stretch. Certainly it would be a shame.

The proximity of our burby beachside community to the second largest city in the country is one of our greatest blessings. An hour drive puts a world of culture — sometimes, rarified culture — at our feet.

This is one of those times. “The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820” has graced only Mexico City, Philadelphia and now the City of Angels.

Had Monday not recently been Columbus Day, “The Arts in Latin America” might have closed before I realized it was there. I stumbled across word of it while perusing the Internet last week for meditations on Christopher Columbus.

Better latish than never. And all things considered, the timing seemed serendipitous.

It was during Hispanic Heritage Week, which just ended Monday. And two weeks ago, while visiting San Antonio I was impressed with its preservation of a history that we in California share — the period when the places we now inhabit were in Spanish possession.

It’s nearly impossible to turn a corner in downtown San Antonio without encountering the sense that it was once part of Spanish territory. The Alamo stood adjacent to the historic Menger Hotel where I stayed.

Four of the state’s five missions — established by Spanish Roman Catholic missionaries — form the Missions National Historical Park. The fifth, Mission San Antonio de Valero (a.k.a. The Alamo), is owned by the State of Texas and operated by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

The city’s 276-year-old San Fernando Cathedral is a few blocks from it. Built by 15 families from the Canary Islands, it’s the oldest cathedral sanctuary in the United States.

A short distance from San Fernando stands the well-kept palace of the Spanish governor, founded May 5, 1718. Its artifacts don’t rival those on display at LACMA, but they are still instructive.

In carved, wood pictographs, the palace’s dark and heavy entry doors tell the story of Spain’s exploration and colonialism of the Americas. The furnishings — beds and trunks, game tables and musical instruments, paintings and devotional religious objects, linens and crockery — provide a glimpse of this stratum of Spanish colonial life.

One could live for a lifetime, though, nearly anywhere in California and scarcely consider the place in our history of colonial Spain or its religion. Except as part of the State’s fourth-grade curriculum, we have nearly abandoned our missions — the most tangible vestiges of the era of Spanish possession — to the ravages of time.

Neither state nor federal funds preserve our missions, which The California Missions Foundation believes, as I do, are “an important part of the state’s cultural fabric” and “priceless historic monuments.”

Our neglect, should we care to restore these treasures, will now cost us. The foundation projects it will take $39 million to fund structural repairs, seismic work and deferred maintenance at our 21 missions and San Antonio de Pala, a sub-mission.

Another $5.8 million is needed to restore and conserve their irreplaceable Spanish colonial and mission-era artifacts, including statuary, furniture, manuscripts and textiles. The artifacts brought together for “The Arts of Latin America” exhibition have enjoyed a better fate.

They span three centuries — from the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 to the emergence of national independence movements in the early 19th century. The works were created in the Spanish viceroyalties — now present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Venezuela, Columbia, Chile, Bolivia and Peru — and also the Portuguese colony of Brazil.