The MissionCulture is the expression of the creativity of a people - everything they create and which distinctly belongs to them: language, music, art, religion, healing, agriculture, cooking style and institutions governing social life. Suppressing culture is shooting someone in the heart. Such a conquest is more accomplished than a massacre. "We have seen that colonization kills the colonized materially. It must be added that it kills them spiritually. Colonization distorts relationships, destroys and petrifies institutions, and corrupts...the colonizers and the colonized." is whether the Jesuits were guilty of cultural genocide in their interactions with Native Americans. I believe that under the definition of cultural genocide, the Jesuits were guilty, but they also had a positive impact on Native Americans. They gave the Guannini a home and protected them from slavery. The community described in The Mission was one of common benefit. The Guannini were able to feed and support themselves, allowing them to live somewhat happy and prosperous lives. I believe in the movie it says that the San Carlos Mission made almost 14.xxx pounds from exporting some of their products. The Jesuits were guilty because they took their beliefs (which were paganistic) and replaced them with those of the Bible. When the Cardinal makes the decision to have the Guannini leave the mission (the Spanish and Portuguese do what they want), the Guannini do not understand why God wanted them to leave and feel betrayed. They think this is not the case. It is right that God could abandon them and that they should never have trusted the Jesuits. The Guannini were not, however, forced to make the decision to convert. From what the film showed us, their decision to convert was not forced upon them by social forces or implicit threats from more powerful entities. They could have proceeded as before without much resistance. I believe the reason the Guannini chose to convert to Christianity was because they were very intrigued by the technology brought by Father Gabriel. At the beginning, the flute played a leading role in this regard. Father Gabriel may have done this deliberately to trick the Guannini into making him seem like a more spiritually powerful being..