The Feudal System Exposed

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The Feudal System Exposed

In his movie Men With Guns, John Sayles shows his viewer many participants in the feudal, agricultural system of an unnamed Latin American country. The peasants who work the land present, as are soldiers who terrorize the laborers, guerillas and others who try to escape it, and a priest who had been targeted by the military. Even people who are not directly involved in the feudal system are portrayed in Sayles' film; the protagonist is a city doctor who had no idea what life was like in the rural areas. American tourists wander Sayles' countryside, ignorant of the horror that is taking place literally all around them. One group of active participants in any feudal system are conspicuously absent from Sayles' screen; while the plantation owners are mentioned, they are never physically present on the rural landscape. That they are absent, at least in Sayle's film, but always seemingly in control is significant and is important in one's understanding of how feudal systems are reproduced.

The viewer does come face-to-face with a feudal lord, or one at least connected to plantation owners, but he is at a nice restaurant in the city not on the fields in the country. Over the course of the meal he tells Umberto, the doctor, that Umberto knows nothing about the Indians and that people from the city should not try to help the Indians in any way. "The more you do for them," the plantation owner warns, "the lazier they get." The only other image of the peasants comes from a military general who describes the Indians in need of protection from guerrillas. Because the only contact that city people have with the plantation system is through the point of view of plantation owners, they have little idea about the Indians' lives and how they are treated by feudal lords; without accurate information, people from the outside have little interest in changing the feudal system.

After Umberto leaves the city for the country, he loses contact with feudal lords. Instead, he has to deal with the violent reality of the feudal system in the rural areas. In the country, where people work and live on plantations, plantation owners are absent. What is ever present is a military bent on terrorizing laborers. As Umberto's travelling companion, a former soldier, tells Umberto, the army exists for the plantation owners, feudal lords, who depend on force and violence to coerce peasants to work.

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