Apocalypto under fire from Mayan groups
Story by Jack Foley
APOCALYPTO, Mel Gibson’s violent new film about the Mayan civilisation, has been criticised by indigenous members of the culture, who are angry at being depicted as “savages”.
The film, which opened in US cinemas on Friday (December 8, 2006), provoked the fury of activists in Guatemala – once home to a large part of the central American Mayan empire – who felt the depiction of the civilization was unrealistic.
Human rights activist Lucio Yaxon accused Gibson of “saying the Mayans are savages” while Traci Ardren, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami, backed him up by accusing the filmmaker of racism.
In a review for the Archaeological Institute of America’s journal, she states: “Gibson replays, in glorious big-budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue.”
She continued: “I loved Gibson’s film Braveheart, I really did. But there is something very different about portraying a group of people, who are now recovering from 500 years of colonisation, as violent and brutal.”
However, Richard Hansen, consultant archaeologist for the film, defended Apocalypto by saying that Gibson was “trying to make a social statement”.
He insisted that the under-fire director, who also co-wrote the film, worked hard to ensure the film was both historically accurate and authentic.
The Mayan civilisation went into decline after the 8th century but more than half of Guatemala’s population is descended from the original Maya. Most live in poverty with little access to education and social service.