THE MISSION
Plot
The film takes place in the Iguazu waterfalls, where the Jesuit father Gabriel starts a mission for evangelizing the indigenous people and to protect them from becoming slaves, which the Spanish Crown banned. However, in Portuguese territory this was allowed.
In his mission, Gabriel meets Rodrigo, hunter that, after murdering his brother for betrayal, is taken to the mission and experiences a psychological transformation. Everything is going well for the Jesuits when the bruise Altamirano travels there to eliminate the Jesuit communities in a diplomatic way without altering the Portuguese and Spanish powers.
The bruise finally retreats, causing later the Seven Years War. The Jesuit will have to face a political and belic conflict that will end with the annexion of those territories to the Portuguese crown.
History:
In 1586, the first Jesuit arrived Tucumán (Paraguay) and iniciated Evangelist missions and made autosuficient Christian villages. They were sended by the Council of Indians. Years later, during the government of Charles III in Spain the Jesuit were expelled in 1767 by the Pragmatic Santion, leaving the guaranies communities to the franciscans and dominics.
In 1763, during the Seven Year’s War, the Portuguese were conquering many Spanish colonies of Rio Negro and Mato Grosso. However, the Spanish conquered South Brasil. Under the Treaty of Paris of 1763, the colonial map of these two countries was reshaped, meaning the beginning of the end of the Jesuit missions.
Treaty of Madrid
The Treaty of Madrid (1750) was an agreement signed by Ferdinand IV of Spain and John V of Portugal (after the fail of the Treaty of Tordesillas) to define the limits of their colonies in South America. It extended the Portuguese the possessions of Portugal in the New World.
As a consequence of the reshaping of the colonial limits, the region of the Oriental Missions, which included the 7 villages that were near the banks of river Uruguay, became Portuguese.
This treaty is related to the movie because in the film it means that the Jesuits had to fight for the conservation of this territories in Spanish hands. The Jesuit didn’t want this villages to become Portuguese because in the Portuguese Crown it was allowed to take the indigenous as slaves, so the Treaty of Madrid, discussed by the bruise in the New World, was a huge issue for them.
The Jesuit Reductions
The Jesuit Reductions were a group of missioner villages founded in the XVII century by the Jesus company in the guarani villages.
Their objective was to make self-sufficient villages and to evangelize the indigenous people. They taught the guaranis how to read and write Spanish, the Bible, Maths, etc. The girls were taught the same values but also how to sew and cook.
The reductions had no concrete leadership, but they did have a militia armed with fire guns and modern warfare strategies to defend themselves against the Portuguese attackers, which wanted to take the indians as slaves and to eliminate the Jesuits (obstacle for the Portuguese).
How is it related to Zamora?
One of the Jesuit missioners who went there, Diego de Torres Bollo, was from Zamora. He also was one of the most important defensors of the right of the indians against slavery.
He was born in 1555 and his father was the governor of the States of the Condestable. His ambition was to make a religious and peaceful utopia in the Jesuit reductions. He crossed the Atlantic sea on 1580 to go to Peru, where he preached the values of spiritual and moral transformation. After working all his life for the Jesuit reductions, he died in 1638 fainted.
