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The Mission and Historical Missions: Film and the Writing of History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

James Schofield Saeger
James Schofield Saeger*
Affiliation:
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
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Extract

Because of the power of film, movies with historical themes affect public perceptions of the past more deeply than do scholarly reconstructions. Film makers and historians search for meaning in separate ways, but their quests can converge. Examples of different approaches to similar destinations are found in a newer film and older historical views of Catholic missions in South America. Released in 1986, The Mission, directed by Roland Joffé with a screenplay by Robert Bolt, displays paternalistic attitudes like those of an earlier generation of North American academic historians. The film's voice is a white European distortion of Native American reality. This essay will examine that voice, offer alternative explanations of historical events, and suggest a research agenda for future study of the Guarani missions of Paraguay, often mentioned in surveys but seldom studied by North American historians.

Type
Research Issues
Information
The Americas , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , January 1995 , pp. 393 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1995

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References

1 Haring, Clarence, The Spanish Empire in America, (New York, 1947; repr. 1952), pp.184–189 Google Scholar; Gibson, Charles, Spain in America, (New York, 1966), pp. 81–83 Google Scholar; Lockhart, James and Schwartz, Stuart B., Early Latin America; A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (Cambridge and New York, 1984), pp. 260–265 Google Scholar; and Mcalister, Lyle N., Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492–1700 (Minneapolis, MN, 1984), pp. 320, 366.Google Scholar

2 Bolton, Herbert E., The Mission as a Frontier Institution in the Spanish-American Colonies (El Paso, Texas, 1962 Google Scholar; repr. from American Historical Review, v. 23, Oct., 1917), 1; Peter Masten Dunne, S.J., Pioneer Jesuits in Northern Mexico (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1944)Google Scholar; and John Francis Bannon, S.J., The Mission Frontier in Sonora, 1620–1687 (New York, 1955).Google Scholar

3 (New York, 1976). The film credits Caraman as a technical advisor but does not mention Lost Paradise.

4 Father Daniel Berrigan, actor and technical advisor for The Mission, acknowledges that the missions of the film never existed, except as the film makers imagined them. See Daniel Berrigan, S.J., The Mission: A Film Journal (New York, 1986), p.4.Google Scholar Berrigan knows little about Native Americans. See his comments on the Onaní, p. 64. Born in Sale, Manchester, England in 1924, Bolt attended the University of Manchester and taught English. Of his many plays, A Man for All Seasons, a sympathetic portrayal of Sir Thomas More, is best known in the United States. Bolt also wrote screenplays for Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago. Director Roland Joffé, born in London in 1945, also attended Manchester University. His first film was The Killing Fields.

5 Furlong, Guillermo [Cardiff], Misiones y sus pueblos de guaraníes (Buenos Aires, 1962), pp. 646–56.Google Scholar

6 The seven rebel missions were San Nicolás, San Luis, Santo Angel, San Lorenzo, San Borja, San Juan, and San Miguel; Guaranis and Jesuits settled them in the 1600s; Furlong, , Misiones, p. 656.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., pp. 102–107, 117–132.

8 The Mission was filmed mostly in Colombia, although a few exteriors were shot in Argentina at Iguazú Falls. The film’s flaws, though, arise from insensitivity to Native Americans and ideological confusion, not erroneous geography.

9 Susnik, Branislava, El rol de los indígenas en la formación y en la vivencia del Paraguay (Asunción, 1982–1983), 2 vols., 1, pp 33–56.Google Scholar

10 ibid.

11 Estrago, Margarita Durán, Presencia franciscana en el Paraguay, 1538–1824 (Asunción, 1987), pp. 93–101.Google Scholar

12 Ibid, pp. 99–164, 101.

13 Susnik, Branislava, “Etnohistoria de Paraguay,” América Indígena, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Julio-Septiembre, 1989), 472.Google Scholar

14 Benítez, Luis G., Historia del Paraguay; época colonial (Asunción, 1985). pp. 100–111 Google Scholar; Warren, Harris G., Paraguay; An Informal History (Norman, Oklahoma, 1949), pp. 81–100 Google Scholar; and Caraman, , Lost Paradise, pp. 79–81.Google Scholar

15 Father Gabriel’s arduous, lonely voyage upriver in 1750 lacks authenticity. Guaranis accompanied historical Jesuits to help found new missions, and Jesuits expected Indians to work. Showing a lonely Father Gabriel paddling his own canoe alters the nature of the historical Guarani-Jesuit relationship. See Paucke, Florian, Hacia allá y para acá (una estada entre los indios Mocobíes, 1749–1767), 4 vols. (Tucumán-Buenos Aires, 1942–44), 1, Lámina XI (opposite p. 164)Google Scholar; and Saeger, James S., “Eighteenth-Century Guaycuruan Missions in Paraguay,” in Indian-Religious Relations in Colonial Paraguay, Ramirez, Susan E., ed. (Syracuse, N.Y. 1989), p. 61.Google Scholar

16 When this essay was presented as a paper at the 1991 Latin American Studies Association meeting in Washington, D.C., Professor Murdo MacLeod asked of Father Gabriel’s ascent, “Why didn’t he go around?” The question remains.

17 Lost Paradise, pp. 212–14.

18 In fact, Guaranis in Guairá liked European music, but they joined missions for hand-held metal hatchets, which replaced tools of wood, bone, and stone; Susnik, Branislava, El rol de los indígenas en la formación y en la vivencia del Paraguay, (Asunción, 1982–1983), 2 vols., 1, p. 138–39.Google Scholar

19 I cannot imagine what a “mercenary” did or who would have paid for his services in colonial Paraguay, a poor frontier province with no standing army and no paid force. The crown repeatedly rejected Paraguayan requests for a salaried military. See, e.g., Informe del gobernador Agustín Fernando de Pinedo al rey, Asunción, January 29, 1777, ANA (Archivo Nacional de Asunción), Sección Historia, vol. 142, no. 4. The movie Mendoza is apparently Paraguayan, but Robert Bolt’s novel The Mission (1986) published with the film's release, says that he is from Cádiz, Spain. Ignorant of things Hispanic, Bolt demeans Spanish culture more in the novel than on screen. Indian laborers in Paraguay in the novel are encomiendaros, not encomendados, as they should be. One character is named Gaspachio. A Guarani slave sells for “three quarters of a dinero.”

20 The Jesuits’ “Spiritual Conquest” of the Guaranis embraced several strategies for gaining converts, most involving non-violent persuasion. Nevertheless, one Jesuit method of recruiting Indians for missions was to hunt them, as they did for example, with Guayakies, whom they then sent to Guarani missions. Susnik, , Rol de los indígenas, 2, p. 27.Google Scholar

21 Gutiérrez, Ramón, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away; Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford, 1991), pp. 149–56, 180–90Google Scholar; Doucet, Gastón Gabriel, “Sobre Cautivos de Guerra y esclavos Indios en el Tucumán; Notas en torno a un fichero documental salteño del siglo XVIII,” Revista de Historia del Derecho, vol. 16 (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1988); 59–152 Google Scholar; and Saeger, James Schofield, “Survival and Abolition: The Eighteenth Century Paraguayan Encomienda,” The Americas, vol. 38 (July, 1981), 59–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Like the Franciscans in Yucatan, Paraguayan Jesuits denied their interest in Indian labor. Only they were disinterested; others were greedy; Clendinnen, Iriga, Ambivalent Conquests: Spaniard and Maya in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (Cambridge, New York…1987),Google Scholar passim.

23 In the 1620s and 1630s, Jesuits Roque González de Santa Cruz, Alonso Rodríguez, Juan de Castillo, and Cristóbal de Mendoza lost their lives while laboring among the Guarani. Dobrizhoffer, Martin, An Account of the Abipones; An Equestrian People of Paraguay, 3 vols. (London, 1822 Google Scholar; repr. New York, 1970), III, pp. 413–14.

24 San Miguel had 6,954 inhabitants in 1751. Santo Angel had 5,186; San Nicolás, 4,453; San Luis, 3,653; San Borja, 3,550; San Juan, 3,560, and San Lorenzo, 1,835; Furlong, , Misiones, p. 674.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., pp. 649–51; and Caraman, , Lost Paradise, pp. 236–42.Google Scholar

26 The historical San Carlos was located in the very heart of the missions between the Paraná and the Uruguay rivers, was founded not around 1750 but in 1631, and did not rebel; Furlong, , Misiones, p. 114.Google Scholar

27 Dobrizhoffer, , Abipones, 2, pp. 127–28.Google Scholar

28 We will know better the degree of Guarani acceptance of Christianity after the rising generation writes ethnohistories of missions. Frequently cited in this essay, Furlong’s Misiones is the best traditional survey of the reductions, but the author’s paternalistic attitude toward Guaranis and emphasis on Jesuits need ethnohistorical revision. The recent Estrategias de desaroUo rural en los pueblos guaraníes (1609–1767) (Barcelona, 1992) by Rafael Carbonell de Masy, S.J. is an excellent macro-economic study of the missions’ economy. It contains great insight into Guarani life. Told from a Jesuit point of view, it supplements but does not replace Furlong’s survey.

29 See Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr. The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York, 1978), pp. 3–31.Google Scholar

30 Susnik, , El Rol, 1, pp. 106–07Google Scholar; Furlong, , Misiones, p. 114.Google Scholar

31 Caraman, , Lost Paradise, p. 214.Google Scholar

32 Haring, , Spanish Empire in America, pp. 41–57 Google Scholar; and Hanke, Lewis, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Boston and Toronto, 1949, repr. 1965), pp. 91–95 Google Scholar; and Mora Mérida, José L., Historia social de Paraguay, 1600–1650 (Seville, 1973). pp. 164–84.Google Scholar

33 Susnik, , El Rol, 1, p. 133 Google Scholar; and Caraman, , Lost Paradise,pp, 157–58.Google Scholar

34 One finds this idea in ibid., p. 41. Caraman cites Bartomeu Melià, S.J., an anthropologist at the Catholic University in Asunción, who unlike the English author knows and respects Native Americans.

35 Fathers Martin Dobrizhoffer and Florian Paucke condemned infanticide in their chronicles of missions cited above.

36 Susnik, Branislava, Los aborígenes del Paraguay 7 vols., (Asunción, 1978–86), 5,Google Scholar Ciclo vital y estructura social, p. 16.

37 Much of the work of the Jesuit hacienda at Paraguarí, for example, was done by Jesuit-owned, Afro-Paraguayan chattel slaves. Missions also invested in slaves. The film makers dissemble when they have Jesuits denounce slavery. Jesuits in fact had little objection to the slavery of Africans, but accuracy would require slave-owning Jesuits with whom contemporary audiences would not sympathize.

38 Susnik, , “Etnohistoria,” pp. 473–80Google Scholar; Caraman, , Lost Paradise, p. 163 Google Scholar; and Furlong, , Misiones, pp. 372–75.Google Scholar

39 See Cushner, Nicholas, Jesuit Ranches and the Agrarian Development of Colonial Argentina, 1650–1767 (Albany, NY, 1983).Google Scholar

40 Susnik, , “Etnohistoria,” pp. 478–79.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., p. 472.

42 In the Paraguayan mitaria, males owed two months labor a year to their encomendero. Females also contributed, spinning, performing domestic service, and sometimes going to the fields. Men in the pueblos also grew subsistence and cash crops for the community. Another labor obligation, the levy (leva), was owed to the crown; officials used Guarani labor to build and repair forts. Susnik, El Rol, passim.

43 In 1754, the seven rebellious missions owned about 600,000 head of cattle and 500,000 of horses and mules; Furlong, , Misiones, p. 652 Google Scholar; Southey, Robert, History of Brazil, 2, pp. 356–62Google Scholar; López, Adalberto, The Revolt of the Comuneros, 1721–1735; A Study in the Colonial History of Paraguay (Boston, 1976), pp. 24–29 Google Scholar; Mönter, Magnus, Actividades políticas y económicas de los Jesuítas en el Río de la Plata, rev. ed. (Buenos Aires, 1968)Google Scholar; Caraman, , Lost Paradise, p. 121 Google Scholar; on the yerba trade, see Whigham, Thomas, The Politics of River Trade; Tradition and Development in the upper Plata, 1780–1870 (Albuquerque, NM, 1991), pp. 3. 10–13, 107–32.Google Scholar

44 Dobrizhoffer, , Abipones, 1, p. 31.Google Scholar

45 Susnik, , Rol de los indígenas, 2, p. 22.Google Scholar

46 The Onaní actors, of course, spoke no Guarani, a language familiar to virtually all Paraguayans.

47 Susnik, ,“Etnohistoria,” p. 477.Google Scholar

48 This thought certainly comes from The Uruguay (Canto II), a 1769 poem written by the Brazilian José Basilio da Gama. I am grateful to Professor Stuart B. Schwartz for calling this to my attention.

49 Southey, , History of Brazil, 2, pp. 328–32Google Scholar; and Caraman, , Lost Paradise, pp. 69–81.Google Scholar The eight-day battle of Mbororé in 1641 had naval and land engagements. Its resemblance to the conflict that brings The Mission to a climax cannot be coincidental. Guaranis, however, won at Mbororé; Furlong, , Misiones, pp. 126–27.Google Scholar

50 Scholars have generally understood that urban riots in Spain in 1766, not events in Paraguay in the 1750s, sparked Charles Ill's decision to expel the Order. Other explanations include the conflict between the nationalism of the Spanish crown and the ultramontanism of the Jesuits, royal desire to acquire Jesuit wealth, Spanish regalism, and several conspiracy theories. Yet the monarch was provoked by such intransigence as movie Jesuits display. See Mòrner, Magnus, ed., The Expulsion of the Jesuits from Latin America (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; and Hernández, Pablo, El extrañamiento de los Jesuítas del Río de la Plata y de las misiones del Paraguay por decreto de Carlos III (Madrid, 1908).Google Scholar

51 Susnik, , El rol de los indígenas, 1, pp. 181–96.Google Scholar

52 Dobrizhoffer, , Abipones, 2, pp. 57, 67Google Scholar;

53 In Bolt’s novel, Gabriel is Irish, but Irons plays the part without hinting that he was Irish. Thus three of four Jesuit resistance leaders of the movie are English. Only a few English Jesuits came as missionaries to Paraguay. Peter Poole, e.g., was miserable as he assisted Father Florian Paucke in the Mocobi mission of San Javier, and Thomas Falkner's labors in Patagonia are well known. Pedro Polo, S.J. al visitador Nicolás Contucci, S.J., San Javier, April 28, 1762, Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sala IX, 6–10–5; and Falkner, Thomas, A Description of Patagonia and the Adjoining Parts of South America (Hereford, 1774 Google Scholar; repr. Chicago, 1953). Despite the movie’s fascination with English missionaries, however, most priests in Paraguayan missions were Spanish. Foreigners were more often Italian or German than English; see Padres, curas, y compañeros de las nuevas reducciones del Chaco en la frontera de Tucumán…July, 1765, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Argentina, IX, 6–10–6.

54 At this point, the movie becomes even more confused. Exactly how many movie missions Spain trades to Portugal is unclear. The Asuncion debate is about the fate of missions “above the falls,” but the great mission of San Miguel was never there.

55 Other Jesuits, including Father Sebastian (Berrigan), return to Asunción.

56 Furlong, , Misiones, pp. 383–90.Google Scholar

57 How Mendoza’s sword avoided rust the film makers let the viewer wonder. Weapons deteriorated quickly in the subtropical Platine climate.

58 Hemming, Red Gold, pp. 469–74Google Scholar; Furlong, , Misiones, pp. 659–63Google Scholar; and Dobrizhoffer, , Abipones, 1, pp. 27–33.Google Scholar

59 Pedro de Cevallos, the governor of Buenos Aires who ordered an investigation, found no direct Jesuit participation.

60 Hemming, , Red Gold, p. 470 Google Scholar; and Dobrizhoffer, , Abipones, 1, p. 23.Google Scholar

61 Casualty figures in the most important historical battles were overwhelming. Thousands of Guaranis died; almost no Spaniards did. Drawing on the “Diario da expediçâo de Gomes Freiré de Andrada ás Missoes do Uruguay pelo Capitâo Jacinto Rodrigues da Cunha (1756),” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geographico Brasileìro 16, pp. 139–328, (1853), John Hemming reports that at the battle of Caaibaté on February 10, 1756, Guarani forces lost 1400 dead and 127 captives to the allied armies, whose casualties were only three dead and twenty-six wounded; Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (Cambridge, MA, 1978), pp. 472–73. Furlong says that 1511 Guaranis and only three Spaniards and two Portuguese died; Misiones, p. 669.

62 In fact, Guarani guerrillas not European troops first practiced the scorched-earth policy.

63 Although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose The Mission as a finalist for best picture, the only important Oscar that it received was the award to Chris Menges for best cinematography.

64 Descendants of Guaranis in the 1860s and 1930s fought two of the bloodiest wars in the history of South America.

65 Susnik, , “Etnohistoria,” p. 480.Google Scholar

66 Bolton, , The Mission As a Frontier Institution, p. 1.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., pp. 2, 6, 18.

68 Weber, David J., “John Francis Bannon and the Historiography of the Spanish Borderlands: Retrospect and Prospect,” Journal of the Southwest, vol. 29:4 (Winter, 1987), 336.Google Scholar

69 When filming in Argentina, Berrigan drove to the booming border city then named for the Paraguayan tyrant, General Stroessner. Although many Paraguayans and Brazilians there were improving their standard of living, the Jesuit says, “The atmosphere here turns one into swine. One should snoop about on all fours, going ‘oink, oink’.” Berrigan thus sullies all Paraguayans in the city; The Mission, p. 141.

70 See, Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr., “Cultural Pluralism versus Ethnocentrism in the New Indian History,” The American Indian and the Problem of History (New York, 1987), Martin, Calvin, ed., pp. 35–45 Google Scholar; and Salisbury, Neal, “American Indians and American History,” ibid, pp. 46–54 Google Scholar; Martin, Calvin, “Ethnohistory: A Better Way to Write Indian History,” Western Historical Quarterly, 9 (January, 1978), 41–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71 For suggestions about how Spanish sources can yield Native American reality, see Clendinnen, , Ambivalent Conquests, pp. 131–38.Google Scholar

72 Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. doubts that we can “throw out the ethnocentric bath water of Indian history without also tossing out the baby…While cultural pluralism expanded the horizons of traditional history…it also placed certain conceptual constraints upon its transformation. History-as-understanding and history-writing are parts of specific cultures, hence ethnocentric in their presuppositions about the nature and ordering of the past-as-lived. Without these constraints, there can be no formal history-as-now-understood…” “Cultural Pluralism versus Ethnocentrism,” p. 44.

73 Susnik’s treatment of religion shows why her indispensable books invite historians to study Guarani missions. Although she compares Guaraní and Catholic ideology to explain how fundamentally aboriginal Guarani beliefs in missions remained, her chronology is casual. She neglects, for example, the two centuries from 1640 to 1848, and her primary sources are inadequate. Although she investigates manu script sources in Asunción for the Paraguayan tava, she generally ignores archival sources on the missions, most of which are outside Paraguay. See El rol de los indígenas, esp. I, pp. 181 ff.

74 Census information is found in ANA, Sección Nueva Encuademación vols. 166, 143, 16, 14, 61, 1145, 1784, and 1785. See Presentación del gobernador a Maria Isabel Cavallero, Asunción, November 10, 1772, ANA, NE, Vol. 9.

75 Letters of Francisco Oliden to Governor Ribera, October 30, 1797 and from Ribera to the administrators Ytá, Guarambaré, and Yaguarón, November 8, 1797, cited in Cooney, Jerry W., Economía y sociedad en la intendencia del Paraguay (Asunción, 1990), pp. 103–04.Google Scholar

76 “Las fuentes de informació sobre las misiones jesuíticas de Guaraníes,” Teología, Tomo XXIV, Año 1987:2 (Buenos Aires, Argentina), pp. 143–63.

77 See Becker, Felix, Un mito jesuítico: Nicolás I, Rey del Paraguay: aportación al estudio del ocaso del poderío de la Compañía de Jesús en el siglo XVIII (Asunción, 1987),Google Scholar versión castellana por Lorenzo N. Liveres Banks Y María Jesús Rodero.

78 Dobrizhoffer, , Abipones, 1, pp. 22–40.Google Scholar

79 Paucke, , Hacia allá, 11, pp. 18, 31–38, 66Google Scholar; Dobrizhoffer, , Abipones, 2, pp. 117–18.Google Scholar

80 SLPC, I, pp. 295–98.