The Mission by Rob Dufour

The Mission is a movie I watched recently that depicts the cultural diffusion that occurred when western European monarchies sent representatives and colonists to the South Americas, Jesuits sent missionaries as well. Culturally there was a clash between the aristocratic and bureaucratic European representatives and the Guarani Indians who inhabited the land before the colonial presence. A dispute occurs between the monarchies of Spain and Portugal that puts many of the Missions, including the one that Father Gabriel helped to create, at risk of being shut down and converted into a source of slave labor. The Spanish crown wished to sell the Brazilian colony to the Portuguese; this development affected the Missions in that the Portuguese laws allowed the trading of slaves, whereas the Spanish laws did not. The Jesuit missionaries ventured up into the mountains and created a relationship between themselves and the Guarani Indians. The chasm between the Indian oral culture and the European literate culture was crossed by the use of Father Gabriel’s flute. Father Gabriel first identified himself as non-hostile by presenting himself out in the open and playing soft, calm music to the Guarani. Then from there he was accepted and brought into the Guarani community. He began to preach to the Indians while helping them build up a new Mission called San Miguel. However the relations between the Jesuits and the Guarani were not accepted by the Monarchs of Europe or by the Pope in Rome; and therefore the Indians were attacked and moved from the Missions all throughout the newly Portuguese territory. This was known as the Guarani War and also as the War of Seven Reductions; because it was between the Guarani of seven Jesuit reductions and joint Spanish-Portuguese forces. In the end Father Gabriel risked and lost his own life while attempting to protect the Guarani from the oncoming attack, although he did this peacefully in a procession of prayer. The movie portrays the sharp contrast of ways that each side felt about the Indians; the Jesuits were civil and attempted to convert them to Christianity, while the state-representatives treated the Indians as though they were naturally slaves. The director leaves us to decide how we feel about the decision that he made and what occurred because of it; I feel as though he made a decision that was politically correct for the time, but also one that will be morally wrong forever.