Cabeza De Vaca Themes

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Recommended: European colonization and its effects on Native Americans

The relationships and encounters made between the Europeans and the Indigenous peoples is explained through the use of anti-conquest love plots. Anti-conquest love plots are stories narrated not to be a story of colonization, but to be a story of survival containing messages about colonialism, race, and the culture of natives. In anti-conquest love plots, the narrator is present in the context of colonialism, but is characterized to be disinterested in colonizing the indigenous other. The narrator is more concerned with surviving during their dangerous adventures and with gaining understanding, knowledge, and a clearer sense of self from these adventures. Even though the narrator is set in a context of military invasions, colonization, or imminent colonization, he is uninvolved in these endeavors and instead learns to love the native people. At the ends of these stories, the narrator questions the society he …show more content…

The last scene of the film shows the natives carrying the Christian cross across the land, marching into the storm. The deeper they go into the storm, the worse it gets. This foreshadows negative outcomes from colonialism and the spread of Christianity. The natives had to literally bear the burden of Christianity and colonialism, which portrays Christianity to be evil. This final scene is interpreted to be sad because the film previously showed the relationships made between Alvar and the natives and how upset Alvar was when he realizes that the Europeans who rescued him were the ones who enslaved his native friends. Even though Alvar is saddened from his friend's death and from seeing his friends captured, he still doesn’t take the blame for it because he believes he is a good colonist. Alvar can now see that colonialism is bad and that it is a painful experience for the natives, as shown when the natives carry the cross, but he is able to move on from these

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