THE MISSION AND SANTO LUZBEL: APOLOGY AND SUBALTERNITY

In this essay I analyze the films The Mission (dir. Roland Joffe, 1986) and Santo Luzbel (dir. Miguel Sabido, 1997). Although at first glance these movies deal with the problematic of the situation of indigenous peoples in Latin America during the colonial times and the present, respectively, I propose that what both films actually do is to to manipulate the topic of indigenous subalternity as a pre/text to advance and develop an apology of contemporary religious ideologies such as Theology of Liberation and Indian Theology. By means of an interdisciplinary analysis, I examine the literary and historical subtexts that make up the underlying context of these works.