The Mission Analysis

"The Mission," filmed in the year 1986, manifests the story of a Jesuit missionary, Father Gabriel, who journeys to the South American jungle, around the year 1750, with the hopes of converting the native Indians to Christianity by setting up religious missions. The movie clearly portrays the truculent conflict that was taking place between the native Indians and Europeans in the 18th century. The movie also describes the attitude of the Europeans toward the Indians, which can be understood as disdainful and supercilious. Many colonizers believed that they were superior to the Indians and that they had the right to take over their land. Despite the culture and society that the natives had formed and were practicing, the Europeans would often charge in and work to eradicate their culture and force them to adopt a new, European culture. These sentiments were markedly delineated by the Europeans in "The Mission" when Cabeza called the boy who sang for the Cardinal "a child of the jungle" and "an animal with a human voice." Cabeza's comments about the young boy were indicative of how many felt about the natives and, ultimately, slavery.

In "The Mission," Don Cabeza is a lobbyist for the dehumanization of Native Peoples in South America. During a presentation of the Guarani's ability to sing, Cabeza speaks his opinion. When asked by the Cardinal how he could ever consider the child an animal, Cabeza states, "These creatures are lethal and lecherous. They have to be subdued by the sword and brought to labor by the whip. What they say is sheer nonsense." Clearly, you can construe the fact that Cabeza has no sympathy for the Indians in South America. Settlers during this time, like Cabeza, looked for new places to live and treated the Indians with harsh brutality and disrespect. They forced the Indians off the land, giving them no place to go.

The Europeans believed that their way of life was the only true way to live. Indian culture was different, so in the eyes of the Europeans, they were inferior. They thought, for example, that because the Indians couldn't build proper houses they were less intelligent. They believed that by teaching the Indians to speak English they were doing the natives a great favour. American treaties made to settle differences were always broken. Certainly, war was inevitable. The arrival of Europeans also initiated the decline of the Native Indians. Entire villages were wiped out by diseases such as measles, smallpox, cholera and pneumonia to which the Indians had no immunity. Others were forced to leave their traditional hunting and farming lands and found it difficult to re-establish themselves elsewhere and suffered malnutrition and death.

The mission that Father Gabriel was trying to establish was special to the Guaraní because it was one of the only places left for the natives to live without slavery and keep their dignity