The Mission Movie Essay

474 Words2 Pages

The Mission
The Mission begins with a slave trader who later becomes a priest after becoming remorseful for his actions and deciding to join the Jesuit mission. The movie then introduces how the Jesuit mission converted the Guarani to Christianity. While this was happening in the Americas, Spain and Portugal had reformed the Treaty of Tordesillas which gave Portugal the land where the mission was located. The mission resisted the Portuguese and there is a war over who had ownership of the land. In the end, the Portuguese won and gained control. In the movie The Mission there are many examples of colonization, the Columbian exchange, and mercantilism.
Colonization is the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial control over another country. In The Mission you can see an example of colonization by the cardinal choosing to allow Portugal to take the land from the mission, as this shows how the development of Portugal is prioritized over the lives of the Native tribes. We also see colonization in how the Portuguese start building huge homes in South America in an effort to create cities. They viewed themselves as more civilized than the native tribes and tried to force the tribes to join them in the cities. At the end of the movie, the natives reject the Portuguese want …show more content…

One way this was shown in the movie were the Christian values that the Jesuits were spreading to the natives on their mission. Another of example from the movie of the Columbian exchange are the guns and clothing that were brought to the native land. Also, language was displayed as an example of the Columbian exchange it the movie as we can see the Guarani teaching the jesuits their language. Overall, Christian values, guns, clothing, and language were all examples of the Columbian exchange in the