Racist movies that rewrite history

Total Eclipse of the truth

The Mel Gibson movie, “Apocalypto”, features Mayans acting like Aztecs on a souped up road to hell, their long abandoned cities now suddenly flourishing with a huge amount of people that like to sit and watch the most outlandish executions producing mountains of dead bodies, and rivers of blood. The Mayans in this movie make all previous bloodthirsty savages in all other cultures seem tame by comparison.

After reading viewer reviews at Yahoo Movies, of the film, “Apocalypto”, I must add my own review of this movie. Having lived in Mexico many years and studying Mayan culture and history in Chiapas, my perspective on this film is quite different from the "Spanish teacher", that spent a few days in Cancun and thinks he knows Mayans. Besides being saved from death by insane bloodthirsty demons, otherwise known as Mayans, by the sudden appearance of a total solar eclipse, then a chase through the jungle by a small army of the aforementioned really pissed off and super nasty bloodthirsty demons, our hero gets more miracles than a Catholic saint and should therefore be canonized. Near the end we see him get saved again, this time by the sudden appearance of magnificent white men with Catholic priests, just arriving on the beach. Saved yet again by yet another miracle! Oh my, or as the say on SNL, “how convenient!”.

I have some questions and one comment.

Is this what Mayan movies made by Catholics are supposed to look like?

Why are Catholics trying to rewrite and fictionalize the history of the Mayan people? Aren’t these the people that did some sort of Calendar that still astounds historians?

Now Mel, if you really want to make a bloody, bloody, bloodfest movie, how about the total extermination of the millions of natives living in Hispaniola by Chris Columbus and his band of bloodthirsty demons that make the Mayans look like amateurs? Cutting off limbs of those who refused to work in the gold mines, feeding babies to packs of starving dogs should be some of the highlights of your new film and would for a change be historically accurate.

Victor Forsythe
1705 14th Street #408
Boulder, CO 80302