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must teach (Mexican) Lamanites the gospel. Mink argues that Hess included a Mexican character to highlight the migrant community’s almost invisible contri- butions to Preston and other rural towns in Idaho and throughout the western United States.34 He provides an excellent discussion about the discrimination and marginality that migrant workers have historically faced in Preston, but he ignores the implicit Lamanite identity that the town’s LDS majority ascribes to migrant communities. Perhaps by accident, then, Mink highlights the fact that despite – or perhaps as a result of – doctrinally signaling Amerindians and Latin Americans as a chosen people separate from white Gentiles, Lamanite identity also extends an irreparable Otherness to people from these communities. As Hess emphasizes the contributions of Mexican people like Pedro to Pres- ton and similar communities, he reminds his LDS viewers of the Lamanites’ spe- cial role in building a New Jerusalem – which the faith’s founder, Joseph Smith, prophesied would be built in Jackson County, Missouri – prior to the Second Coming.35 As the film shows, many North American Mormons have ignored certain aspects of the Lamanite prophecies as they have minimized the con- tributions of Mexican and Chicano actors in their communities. Hess critiques this (white) Mormon ambivalence to immigrant communities through Napole- on and Pedro’s friendship, which represents the communion of Lamanites and Gentiles in the Promised Land. My reading calls for a reevaluation of Joseph M. Spencer’s assertion that Napoleon Dynamite has “not a word to say about scripture”.36 While the film never explicitly mentions any sacred texts, it defi- nitely operates within an LDS imaginary based on scripture. Indeed, Hess al- ludes to the teachings of Mormon scripture to critique the racist elements of small-town Mormon communities. Napoleon allegorically preaches Pedro “the gospel” by showing him how to navigate a small-town US high school. The pair meets shortly after Pedro arrives in the country. The migrant goes to school, where his new principal – who seems to take no interest in his foreign student – constantly humiliates him. Napoleon intervenes on Pedro’s behalf, and the prin- cipal asks him to show Pedro to his locker. It does not take long for Napoleon’s pupil to become the master, a fact that becomes especially clear when Pedro announces that he will run for student body president.37 Napoleon has never taken such a step despite years of experience at the institution. This inversion of master and pupil resonates especially well with Mormon doctrines, which hold that the Lamanites will one day assume the principal role in building the Kingdom, after the Gentiles have shared the gospel with them. 34 Mink 2008, 163. 35 See 3 Nephi 21:23 in The Book of Mormon 2013. 36 Spencer 2012, 171. 37 Several activists have cited this aspect of the film when advocating for a more liberal border policy. For example, see Hoyt 2009, 21–24. On (Dang) Quesadillas and Nachos | 149www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 141–165