On January 13, 1750 the kings of Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Madrid, which redrew the lines of control between the two countries’ South American possessions. As a consequence seven independent Jesuit missions of the upper Uruguay River (in what is now Paraguay), passed from Spanish to Portuguese control. Four years later the so-called Guarani War (1754-1756) began to forcibly expel the Indians from these missions. It is against this historical backdrop that the 1986 film The Mission is set.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://spectrummagazine.org/article/film-reviews/2008/09/24/movie-classics-mission