Study guide

The Mission

We will be watching the film The Mission on Tuesday, July 21. As you watch the film, keep the following questions in mind:

1. What is the historical setting of this film? From whose point of view is the film made?

2. What is the role of the Spaniards in this film? the Portuguese? the Church? the Jesuits? the Guaraní? How does this film portray each of these groups of people? Who are the heroes, the villains, the victims? With which group do you sympathize? How accurate do you think the film's portrayal of these groups is?

3. How is life portrayed in the mission? Outside of it? Which is better? safer? What is the role of the mission? How has the mission changed the lives, actions, dress, and thoughts of the Guaraní? Why don't the Guaraní want to go back to the forest?

4. Does this film portray the Guaraní as having an active role in the development of their historical identity?

5. Examine power relations as depicted in this movie. How do the church, state, and Indigenous peoples interact?

6. Pay attention to the language, dress, actions, cinematography and music used in this film. What is the role of music in the life of the Guaraní?

7. Compare the actions of religious workers, governmental officials, explorers, Indians, and others with those in Aguirre: Wrath of God.

Internet Sites

• The Jesuit Missions: Shattered Dreams
• Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay in the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Jesuit Resources on the World Wide Web
  Music from the Jesuit Reductions
• Guarani Home Page
• Paraguay on the Ethnologue database
• Ruinas Jesuíticas del Paraguay
• Guarani Ñanduti Rogue, Informaciones y materiales sobre la cultura paraguaya de expresión guaraní
• Movie Reviews
  • The Mission on the Internet Movie Database
  • 'The Mission' does not demean reality of 1700s
  • Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Washington Post
  • Washington Post

Bibliography

Bolt, Robert. The Mission. Jove Publishers, 1986.

Caraman, Philip. The Lost Paradise. London: Sidgwick and Jackson Limited, 1976.

Ganson, Barbara. "Like Children under Wise Parental Sway: Passive Portrayals of the Guarani Indians in European Literature and The Mission." Colonial Latin American Historical Review, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 399-422.

Hemming, John. Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Hu-DeHart, Evelyn. Missionaries, Miners, and Indians; Spanish Contact with the Yaqui Nation of Northwestern New Spain, 1533-1822. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1981.

Langer, Erick and Robert H Jackson. The New Latin American Mission History. Latin American studies series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

Mörner, Magnus. The Political and Economic Activities of the Jesuits in the La Plata Region: The Hapsburg Era. Stockholm, 1953.

________. The Expulsion of the Jesuits from Latin America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.

Mecham, John Lloyd. Church and State in Latin America: A History of Politico-Ecclesiastical Relations. Revised Edition. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.

Metraux, Alfred. The Guaraní, in the Handbook of South American Indians. Volume 3. Washington, D.C: n.p., 1948.

Saeger, James Schofield. "The Mission and Historical Missions: Film and the Writing of History." The Americas, no. 51 (January 1995): 393-415.

Service, Elman R. Spanish-Guaraní Relations in Early Colonial Paraguay. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1954.

White, Richard Alan. "The Political Economy of Paraguay and the Impoverishment of the Missions." The Americas 31, no. 4 (April 1975): 417-33.