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GUATEMALAN ACTIVISTS AND INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS FIND NEW MAYAN MOVIE RACIST, REVISIONIST, DANGEROUS TO INDIGENOUS.

Article Excerpt
Indigenous leaders in Guatemala have appealed to the government to censor a film they consider racist and offensive to Mayan descendents, their culture, and their history. The film is Apocalypto, directed by US actor and director Mel Gibson. Presidential commissioner against discrimination Ricardo Cajas told reporters on Jan. 8 of his intention to request that the Ministry of Culture condemn this film that "resumes racial and offensive persecution" against the country's Mayan majority. It has not yet been shown publicly in this nation where 60% of the population has some indigenous heritage.

The movie is set around the time of the conquest and is filled, say scholars, with anachronistic and historic inaccuracies, but these are not the focus of Cajas' objections. He said the film is intended to "present a society filled with deprecations and self-destructiveness" without taking notice of the scientific advances of the ancient Mayas. "It presents the Spanish conquest as the only solution and justifies the barbarities committed during the conquest up until today, which seems to us highly racist because it induces thinking that society internalizes and creates a rationale for...

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