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 Editorials | Opinions | January 2007 
For Some Maya, 'Apocalypto' is a Thrill
 Louis E. V. Nevaer - New America Media
Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" has academics decrying the "shallow" portrait of a great civilization as well as Latino activists lamenting that a story of Maya-on-Maya violence - that actually occurred 1200 years ago, long before the Spanish arrived - shouldn't eclipse the white-on-brown violence throughout most of the 20th century.
But what of the Yucatec Maya? What of the people - flesh and blood and very much alive – whose civilization is now on the big screen?
Growing up a child of happily divorced parents, I was fortunate to shuttle between homes on two continents, depending on which parent had custody that school year. My mother's family arrived in the Yucatan peninsula, fleeing the plague of the 1630s that affected what is now southwestern France and Catalonia. They have lived there, among the Yucatec Maya, ever since.
Having lived among the Maya, and being knowledgeable in Yucatec Maya, I eagerly anticipated the release of "Apocalypto" for most of the fall. I knew it would be violent, and contrive historical periods - the classic Maya civilization collapsed about 600 years before the Spanish arrived on the Yucatan, and the first Spaniards did not arrive aboard ships, but washed up as shipwreck survivors who were rescued by the Yucatec Maya.
Here in New York, I know Yucatec Maya who have emigrated in search of work. Pedro Tun and Juan Cantu work at restaurants. The Maya are few in number - the word "Maya" itself is a compound word, formed from "ma" which means "no" or "not," and "ya" which means "many" or "plentiful" – the "Maya" are "not many" - in other words, they are a chosen people. I have met the Yucatec Maya that I know by chance, often at restaurants. When I walk toward the restroom, if I hear a word or phrase of Yucatec Maya I'll just walk into the kitchen and start up a conversation. (The expressions of disbelief are amusing, and when I ask where they're from, that I can describe something from the towns of Oxkutzcab or Motul certifies my credentials.)
Although widely spoken throughout the Yucatan, Yucatec Maya is not often heard. There are public service announcements on television and radio, but these are banal statements: "With dengue fever a threat, free vaccinations are being provided at any school or health clinic." But I have never heard Yucatec Maya on the big screen.
When "Apocalypto" opened, I invited Pedro and Juan to go with me, just to get a kick of watching the film with probably the only two moviegoers who wouldn't need to read the English-language subtitles - which was just as well, since they don't read English all that well.
What a thrill! To hear Yucatec Maya spoken in a movie was a bold affirmation of identity.
The Maya are so off the radar screen of the world's consciousness that most people in the United States don't even know they exist. The Maya Culture Area is generally divided into two regions, the highlands, which extend from Chiapas through Guatemala and into Honduras; and the lowlands, which comprise most of the Yucatan peninsula and extends to Belize. (The Maya divided their world into the hot, tropical lowlands, known as the Land of East, where the sun rises, and the cool, mountainous cloud forests of the highlands, known as the Land of West, where the sun sets.)
But ignorance flourishes. Although Mel Gibson's movie is filmed in Yucatec Maya, the language spoken almost exclusively throughout the Maya lowlands, ABC News sent Latino John Quỉones to Guatemala to interview the "descendants" of those portrayed in the movie - as much sense as if, covering a film about Australia, a reporter went to New Zealand. (For the record, the primary languages of the highland Maya are those of the Quiche family, including Tzotzil, Tzetzal, and Quiche itself. )
Pedro, Juan and I were enthralled with "Apocalypto," riveted by everything Gibson got right - it's common to enter a Yucatec Maya village and see young children playing with a spider monkey as is shown early in the film - and everything he got wrong - human sacrifice ran amok only after the Maya city states began to be influenced by their Toltec occupiers. (Who wouldn't want to share a banana with a spider monkey? Who wouldn't want to climb to the top of a pyramid and shout "I am king of the world!"?)
Mixing history and imagination is natural to filmmaking. "The final decision when making a film is, 'What is the right balance between historical authenticity and making it exciting visually as well?' The film is an all out entertainment thrill ride, and that is what it was always designed to do. It is a work of fiction," said Farhad Safinia, who co-wrote the script with Gibson.
Other detractors complain that the film portrays the Maya civilization as all gore and decadence. So what? Gibson chose to portray the Maya civilization at the apogee of its decadence, when environmental mismanagement, political disarray and growing violence brought it down. If there is very little "civilization" in Gibson's film, well, how much "civilization" was there in Paris in 1789, on the eve of the "Reign of Terror," or in Atlanta in 1864 when William Sherman set fire to the city?
"This is Hollywood, first and foremost," explained Richard D. Hansen, a professor of anthropology at Idaho State University and the historical consultant to Gibson on the film.
The Yucatec Maya - almost 900,000 strong throughout the Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatan - have been more successful as a community in lifting themselves out of the poverty that characterizes so many other indigenous peoples. The Yucatec Maya of today are doctors, lawyers, teachers and bankers who run their own business. They are elected to public office.
Latino writers have complained that the film ignores the plight of the Mayas of Guatemala, who were brutally repressed throughout much of the 20th century. But that's another movie. The Maya of Guatemala are Quiche Maya, not Yucatec Maya. And portraying white-on-brown violence is the stuff of the nightly news, of documentaries on PBS, not the multiplex.
(Throughout the 1980s Mexico offered refuge to almost 250,000 Guatemalan Mayas, and camps were administered under the direction of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees. The Yucatec Maya had little interaction with these refugees, for two reasons: Their languages, though related, are as different as English and German; and although the Yucatec Maya were gracious in offering sanctuary to the highland people, they were also glad when they were repatriated. The Quiche Maya, too, were delighted to leave the hot, humid tropics and return to the cool of their mountains.)
By the same token, although Gibson "ignores" white-on-brown violence, he also chose not to portray brown-on-white violence.
The Yucatec Maya, like humans everywhere, are capable of terrific violence. The last uprising was in the 19th century, when an oracle named Chan Santa Cruz invoked that the "whites" had to be eradicated. The year was 1848, the Yucatan peninsula had declared its independence from Mexico, as had Texas, and the Yucatec Maya, who also lived in "autonomous" communities launched a campaign of genocide against those of European descendent, whether they were "white" or "mestizo." The violence escalated with such frenzy that Governor Miguel Barbachano turned to other nations for help. Mexico, the United States, Cuba and the United Kingdom responded by sending ships, and the wholesale evacuation of peninsula was ordered.
This would have been the only instance in which an indigenous people would have driven Europeans out, but it failed for one reason: winged ants began to arrive, and the Yucatec Maya laid down their arms to plant their fields. "Despite the pleas of their leaders, the Maya soldiers withdrew to their villages and the fields waiting to be planted. Had the rebels stayed one more month, Yucatan would have reverted to the Maya," Larry Desmond and Phyllis Messenger write in "A Dream of Maya." (For a riveting account of this Yucatec Maya campaign of genocide against Caucasians and mestizos, see "The Caste War of Yucatan," by Nelson Reed, Stanford University Press, 1964.)
From New York to Los Angeles, there are an estimated 90,000 Yucatec Maya living in the United States, and some of them loved "Apocalypto." "It was a great action film that kept me on the edge of my seat," Sara Zapata Mijares, president and founder of Federacion de Clubes Yucatecos-USA, told the Los Angeles Times.
Pedro Tun and Juan Cantu could not agree more. For the Yucatec Maya to hear their language in a movie theater is a bold affirmation of identity. It was a rush of adrenaline and sheer joy to hear applause at the end of the film, surrounded by whites, blacks, and Latinos. As we left the theater, Pedro Tun turned to me and wondered, "If this movie's successful, do you think they'll make a video game? That would be nahoch."
"Nahoch" means "a big thing" in Yucatec Mayan.
A video game? Hmmm, I wonder how many beating hearts one would have to tear out to win?
From 1984-92 Louis E. V. Nevaer was editor of Mesoamerica, a quarterly publication about Maya. |
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