Every story has a main problem or conflict that the characters must face. Most stories also include a number of other conflicts besides the main one. Answer the question to explore some of the conflicts that fuel the plot of The Pearl.
The Europeans, as they colonized the new world, had two missions: to spread their religion (most often Catholicism) and to conquer the new lands bringing an entirely new lifestyle to the colonized peoples. In all their colonizing, the Europeans felt superior and therefore, kept the colonized people oppressed. They, for example, expected the people like Kino and Juana to automatically adopt their beliefs, even though these native people had a perfectly sensible religious belief as far as they were concerned. The basic conflict, in some sense, was that the Europeans had no respect for the native people and treated them like second-class citizens.
