We, the Indigenous people of this continent, were hoping that the Walt Disney Company would show the beauty and great accomplishments of our Maya people in Mel Gibson's new film APOCALYPTO. We were hoping to see recreations of our great cities, our art, our libraries, our calendar systems, our superior knowledge of astronomy, or at least some of our great accomplishments in a positive light. Sadly, this movie is a series of nightmares of the same old racist ignorance, distortions and exaggerations, stereotypes, and lies and omissions that present our people as a violent and irrelevant savage people.
Apocalypto is Gibson’s ignorant and criminal white supremacist vision of Maya civilization. Hitler’s minister of propaganda could not have done a better film to destroy the true beauty of our Maya heritage.
Before the European (the only real illegals) invasions of our continent began, we were a great collection of sophisticated and egalitarian civilizations with accomplishments in medicine, writing, engineering, architecture, laws, agriculture, mathematics, literature, and so much more.
Does Gibson focus on our accomplishments in Apocalypto, even in a minor way? No! He is obsessed with downgrading us as human beings, lessening our accomplishments, showing us as the worst of people committing human sacrifice; a people worthy of being destroyed by Europeans. The Nazis demonized Jews to have Germans hate Jews and their culture in order to make it easier to destroy them. Gibson has accomplished the same thing toward all Indigenous people with this film.
Gibson, like most European descent people, conveniently ignores the fact that Europeans were doing more human sacrifice with the inquisition’s torture killings of wayward Christians, the burnings of women, and the public executions of poor people who had stolen a piece of bread. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans were sacrificed to keep the god-like royal elites and the church in power.
In those centuries that Gibson’s Apocalypto takes place Europeans never bathed and were mostly illiterate, while our people were bathing daily in cities that had public toilets and free hospitals. We had mandatory and free education for males and females in all ranks of society. We had great universities and libraries, poets and philosophers, courts with fair laws, and more democracy than any place in Europe.
With all of these facts that could easily have been researched, without Eurocentric bias, why is Mel Gibson obsessed with doing a film about Mayas and the violence of human sacrifice? He will likely respond with, "It was the truth!" If that logic holds, will Mel Gibson’s next film be one about Greeks, in a manner that is obsessively graphic showing the "Greek Love" of men and boys that was a key part of Greek civilization. Probably not, because it would belittle and lessen the great accomplishments of the Greeks.
Today we see human sacrifice in children’s books about the Mexica (Aztecs) and Mayas all the time. Somehow the Indigenous human sacrifice subject is acceptable truth, truth that lessens our children’s self-esteem. Meanwhile “Greek Love” truth is unacceptable because it would lessen the self-esteem of European descent children and their pride in Greek culture.
What needs to be known behind all of this is that Europeans destroyed the last Maya city in 1541. Hernandez de Cordoba was the first Spaniard to land in Maya lands and was promptly killed in 1517. In 1518 Grijalva's invasion force was turned back. Hernando Cortez landed in Maya lands in 1519 and suffered a series of losses.
Overall, Europeans destroyed all of our great civilizations and killed 70 to 100 million of our human lives in the Western Hemisphere. We are the 5% that survived. 95% of our population was killed in a very uncivilized (savage) way, in a very un-Christian way, in a very immoral way, in a very cowardly way, using biological warfare (mostly smallpox), enslavement, and lies and deceit. The massive series of massacres, executions and use of smallpox as a weapon of mass destruction fits the criteria for what is called genocide.
Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as 'a composite of different acts of persecution or destruction'. His definition included attacks on …culture, language, national feelings…. Even non-lethal acts that undermined the dignity… of a group constituted genocide if they contributed to weakening the viability of the group…(from David Stannard’s book AMERICAN HOLOCAUST)
Mel Gibson has just committed an act of genocide with this film because he has actively initiated and participated in the distribution of racist lies, distortions, and omissions that will damage all the Indigenous people of this continent in their sense of worth and their already damaged pride. You can destroy a people by denying them the dignity of having pride in their heritage. Who could have pride in the Maya monstrosity that Mel Gibson calls APOCALYPTO.
Why do European people feel that they can
obsessively and graphically show human sacrifice
every time they do films, books (including children's books),
when our civilizations are presented?
THE ANSWER IS:
The white supremacists who are the cultural elites
of worldwide European colonial interests
feel that it is absolutely necessary that they
belittle, lessen, desecrate, and destroy
any knowledge of the accomplishments of our people.
They do this because if they don't do this
they will have to explain to the world why they destroyed a people
of great civilizations and great accomplishments.
They will have to explain the totally dishonorable crimes of their ancestors.
They will have to explain that
we would have continued to make great progress
in the development of our civilizations if Europeans had not
broken and entered into our continent.
They will have to explain how they intentionally used smallpox
against our population in order to defeat us.
They would have no justifications for stealing our lands, our continent,
or stealing all of the wealth of natural resources of this continent.
So for now, they can just say,
"See, they were savages. They were just committing human sacrifice. How uncivilized.
It's good that we came here to end this savage life.
The land was empty. They didn't believe they owned the land anyway.
We do believe in owning land and this land is now ours.
Everything is better now that we are here.
Anyway their civilizations weren't real civilizations."
How convenient for Europeans to tell those lies.
They came here unwanted.
They came here with criminal intent.
They came here as terrorists
pirates, rapists, thieves, murderers, grave robbers, as criminals of the worst kind.
EUROPEANS WERE VERY DISHONORABLE
AND VERY CRIMINAL IN THEIR ACTIONS AGAINST US!
And that is something that they don't want the world to know.
It is something they don't want their own people to know.
Because all of those cowardly and dishonorable crimes would be very embarrassing for them.
It should be very embarrassing for Europeans
to know of all of the crimes that their ancestors committed
so that they could live in the manner that they now live!
EUROPEANS NEED TO FEEL THAT SHAME
AND THEY SHOULD FEEL GUILTY
OF SO MUCH CRIME.
THEY HAVE COLLECTIVELY BENEFITED
FROM CRIMES OF THEIR ANCESTORS,
THEREFORE THEY SHOULD COLLECTIVELY
MAKE AMENDS FOR THE CRIMES OF THEIR ANCESTORS!
One final note: This is a Disney film. The same Disney company that is promoting white supremacy on ABC radio. The same white supremacist company that was going to hire a Spaniard to play Emiliano Zapata.
Yeah, think about that one next time you go to Disneyland, "I'm giving money to people that are participating in the oppression and genocide of my people".
Olin Tezcatlipoca, Nelyollotl Toltecatl, Jesse Rivera
Directors,
Mexica Movement
Mexica Movement is An Indigenous Rights Educational Organization
for People of Mexican, Central American, and Native American Descent
CHECK OUT THIS EXCELLENT ANALYSIS OF "APOCALYPTO" BY JUAN SANTOS:
http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/