A Culture: The Mission And The End Of A Culture

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In both “the mission” and “the end of a culture”, we see how complicated, and overall detrimental colonization was to the existing indigenous population. Masked with claims to “save” the indigenous by converting them to Christianity, the Spaniards forced indigenous native Americans to adopt to their[the Spanish] way of life. Aside from reviewing both films, I will also draw information from the power point lecture to elaborate on how and why the Spanish were able to conquer and subdue such a large area of land and people. Pretty much the entire Indigenous population was forced to convert against their will, and many were killed, forced into slavery, and exposed to diseases that they had never been exposed to. The colonizers were able to conquer …show more content…

The film “the Mission”, attempts to highlight the difficult intricacies that came with colonization. In the view of religious Spaniards, they were trying to do good by establishing missions. The Indigenous were savages who needed to be “saved” and only Christianity could save them. These missions attempted to convert the Native American Indians to good Jesuits, and make them “less savage”. “The Mission” attempts to show perspective from the priests running the missions themselves. “The End of a Culture” attempts to do the opposite. “The End of a Culture” at one point uses an indigenous voice to narrate, and approaches the films from the perspective of the indigenous. The indigenous voice is then able to explain how the conquistadors completely destroyed the indigenous way of life. The power of the indigenous voice helps gain perspective that we don’t see directly in “The …show more content…

Both films attempt to show that the relationships between the Native Indians and the Spanish, is more complicated than “the Spaniards came and destroyed everything solely for malicious purposes”. In “The End of a Culture”, it explains how initially, the Indigenous greeted colonizers like Columbus and Cortez with kindness. Many Spanish priests truly believed they were saving the indigenous. In “The Mission”, the Jesuit Priests developed an amicable relationship between the indigenous. Although the indigenous population was eventually completely dismantled, these priests ended up staying with the indigenous till their deaths, even when that meant betraying the Spanish

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