For Some Maya, 'Apocalypto' is a Thrill
New America Media, Commentary, Louis E. V. Nevaer, Posted: Dec 19, 2006
Editors Note: From 1984-92 Louis E. V. Nevaer was editor of Mesoamerica, a quarterly publication about Maya.
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 QuiÒones 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?
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Apocalypto Ascribes Violent Outlook to Wrong People
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User Comments
Martin on Jan 30, 2007 at 15:26:35 said:
APOCALYPTO
I'm baffled by all the bad press Apocalypto is getting. It's typical
prejudice against Mel Gibson for his opinions on other subjects.
It's most unfair and slanderous.
I watched this movie and was again impressed by what a good film
maker Gibson is. With the Jesus movie he made a classic, I thoroughly
enjoyed it and saw no racism in it, the Romans kill Jesus, not the
Jews, and these denounce Jesus like they would have done any other
Jew of his time for blasphemy, it was the law of the land... It's
just that Christians claim for Jesus a special status which he
hadn't for the Jews of his time, he had to respect and obey the
laws, religious and others, that applied to all Jews. Period.
In Apocalypto what I think Gibson tries to show is the weakening
of an empire, it doesn't matter if it's Maya or Aztec, its cruelties
and abuses and how common people suffer from them, it doesn't
matter if he was not impeccably accurate in his facts, it's a story and
recreates the pre-columbian world quite well, not a slander against
the Mayas.
The Spanish conquistadors arriving at the end are no saviours
like some have said but the ones to punish the local empires
by their abuses and criminal acts, something like the agents
of fate rendering some kind of brutal justice, also cruel and
abusive. That's why probably the hero chooses to go back to
the jungle at the end, with his family.
Pretending that Gibson shows those invaders as missionaries
bringing salvation is a whimsical and imaginary version in order
to slander him, if that were the case the indian family at the end
would have run to them with open arms, BUT THEY DON'T...
Nobody can deny that the story is entertaining and the brutality
necessary because indians were no sissies or quakers anywhere
in old America, c'mon, let's be realistic.
So please, stop knocking Gibson for his (drunken) opinions or
because of prejudices, he is a film maker at the level of
Stanley Kubrick, methinks, and I'll be looking forward to his
next project. He will surely be remembered well in time, when
contemporary prejudices subside and go.
Martin
movie watcher on Jan 02, 2007 at 07:06:41 said:
In the article above, Mr. Nevaer quotes one of the co-writers, Farhad Safinia as saying, "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."
If so, why the quote at the start of the movie:
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." Ariel(?) Durant
This quote clearly shows that the movie is intended as more than a thrill ride.
Erica Verrillo on Dec 29, 2006 at 07:21:25 said:
This was a confusing article, especially coming from a former editor of Mesoamerica, whom, I should think, would know better.
The origins of the word "Maya" are not known. Linguistically, it cannot mean "not many" simply because there are too many Mayan languages to pin a literal translation on the term. (Proto-Maya probably originated in Guatemala, not Mexico.) In short "Ma ya" may mean "not many" in Yucatec, but it certainly doesn't in Tzotzil, or Kiche, or Jakaltek.
Mr. Nevaer says that the Yucatec Maya offered sanctuary to Guatemalan refugees, but had little contact with them due to the language difference. The Mexican state which borders Guatemala is Chiapas. It was Chiapas which originally hosted 250,000 refugees, not the Yucatan. (A small number of refugees were later moved to the Yucatan in yet another of the UNHCR's ill-fated, and ill-managed projects.) The Mayas who hosted the refugees were, for the most part, Tzotzil and Tzeltal speakers. The differences in language between the Mayan refugees (who spoke a number of Mayan languages besides Quiche, including Jakaltek, Kaqchikel, Kekchi, and Mam) had absolutely no effect on the communities which hosted the refugees. In the ten years that I worked with Guatemalan refugees in these border communities, I saw nothing but selflessness and generosity on the part of their hosts.
As for the Caste War, I have never seen it referred to in any respected historical literature as a "genocide" against the Spaniards much less Caucasians! It was an uprising against colonial rule, bearing a great deal of similarity to other Native American uprisings of the time--all of which were ruthlessly suppressed.
Pedro and Juan may have been delighted to hear Yucatec spoken in a film, and I am sure they enjoyed all the violence, but I would have been very interested in hearing their interpretation of the ending. Did they get the impression that the Spanish missionaries had arrived to put an end to the reign of the corrupt Mayan overlords? (Given Mel's religious background, this was undoubtedly his intent.) Or do they know, unlike most of the Americans watching this film, that the Spanish invasion of the New World led to the extermination of 90% of its inhabitants? A few hundred human sacrifices were peanuts next to the conquistadores.
Gibson may have intended this to be a commentary on our own failing empire. That being the case, he would have been much better off sticking to Rome, which is the true model for our demise. Rome, like the Mayan Empire, did not fall due to inner rot and corruption, but to bankruptcy.
Now there's a story.
Working Gringo on Dec 20, 2006 at 08:27:12 said:
Young men, like Pedro and Juan, who enjoy violent action films does not come as a surprise, no matter what their ethnic heritage. I liked those kind of films when I was young, too, and I didn't care about any larger issues like historical accuracy or social conscience. The same was true for liquor, drugs, sex and cars. But I did eventually grow out of it, one way or another.
-->I'm a white guy of Irish decent who was born in California. Mr. Nevaer, the writer of this article can claim to have lived in Yucatan, but he's as Maya as I am. I think I'm a bit closer to the realities in Yucatan than he is because I actually live and work here, and unlike the casta divina, of which Mr. Nevaer is a part, I have spent a lot of time with the Yucatec Maya.
The majority of Maya in Yucatan do not own businesses or go to college; they are not particuarly modern at all. They live as they always have, on traditional subsistance farming or by serving wealthier castes in tourist hotels and restaurants. This may be changing for some of the youngest generation of Maya, especially those who immigrate to the U.S., learn English and then return, but these are still relatively few.
Yucatecos, on the other hand, are a different story. They have Maya heritage, but their families moved to Merida or Campeche or Villahermosa years ago and became working class Mestizos. They don't identify with the Maya. They identify with the Spanish-Mexicans. In fact, they try to hide the Maya part of their family history. But they can never hope to be casta divina like Mr. Nevaer.
Other "facts" in the article don't hold up - they sound a lot like the white-identified "facts" cooked up by my race to keep down the natives. For example, the idea that the Maya civilization collapsed 600 years before the Spaniards arrived is false. The last city state in Yucatan fell about 100 years before the Spaniards arrived (Mayapan) due to civil war. But many of the city states continued to be used as centers of worship, trade or as destinations for pilgrimages even after the Spanish started to take control. These are the places where the Spaniards erected cities like Merida and Izamal, or haciendas. Even though the so-called classic period had ended, the Maya still lived in large, organized agricultural communites, interconnected by roads and trade routes. They also continued to use their calendar, written language and maintained their histories.
In all the Spanish history I've read, there are no eye witness accounts of the Maya yanking hearts out of sacrificial victims. One account by Bernal Diaz says they found a bloody altar and skull rack on an Island off of modern-day Veracruz (which is not, by the way, in Yucatan). To the contrary, there are multiple accounts of Spanish contact with the Maya where they observed sacrifices involved birds, animals and self-mutilation. The problem, of course, is that the Maya Culture has (since the first occidentals "discovered" mesoamerica) been confused with the Aztec culture in Tenochititlan.
Calling the Yucatan Caste War a genocide perpetrated by the Maya on the Spaniards is a sick joke that has often been repeated by the Yucatan's casta divina for the last hundred years. The Maya had as much right to rise up against their masters as any slaves in history, and despite their near-victory, far more Maya were killed in the course of the Caste War than Spaniards.