“Savagery” in Guatemala stems from U.S. foreign policy – not Mayan civilization
Cruelty has always been a part of the human experience. It manifests itself in different ways, to different degrees, but it has been a constant for millennia. Before European colonization, indigenous peoples were not living a heaven on earth – there were conflicts, war, death and pain. However, we ought to be cautious of their portrayal as bloodthirsty savages that evolved through their contact with the West. Guatemala, the country with the largest population descendant from Mayan civilization, struggles with such misrepresentation to this day. The United States, in particular, often reflects this sentiment – when Kamala Harris told Guatemalans to not go to the U.S. border; when Mel Gibson spent 40 million dollars to make a historically inaccurate movie about a pre-Columbian civilization; while the history of the Mayan genocide is persistently overlooked.
In mainstream culture, ancient indigenous civilizations of the Americas are often depicted as amoral, whose superstitions led to cannibalism and sacrifice. However, much of these representations are based on speculation, rather than archeological evidence. ‘Apocalypto’ by Mel Gibson is a blatant example of this – a visually stunning film with insidious intentions and disingenuous portrayal of Mayan history. Not only was much of the depiction of Mayans in the movie simply wrong, it was also dishonest through omission. It opted for gratuitous gore, and it made no mention of the brilliant scientific contributions that civilization made to the world.
We surely ought not to take a Hollywood movie as a history lesson, much less when coming from a character like Mel Gibson, but the inaccuracies of the movie reveal inexcusable political motivations. Its opening quote by W. Durand, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within”, implies that the Native civilization was already destroying itself before the arrival of Europeans. Indeed, the ‘Classic Maya collapse’ happened, but half a millennium before the arrival of the Spaniards. This conflation of the 9th and 15th centuries, alongside the gratuitous gore, is at best a misguided perspective on natives and, at worst, well-made white supremacist propaganda.
Meanwhile, bloodthirsty savagery we do have evidence for in much more recent history is suspiciously erased from public discourse. The US-backed military dictatorship and civil war in Guatemala, which lasted from 1962 to 1996, led to over 150 thousand deaths – a genocide of the Mayan population which consisted largely of children. According to Jill Marie Gerschutz Bell from Casa Alianza – an NGO that offers shelter to impoverished youth in Central America – the fact that the time indigenous children spend in school is half of the national average speaks to how “discrimination against the indigenous population continues”. In a country where 42% of the population is Mayan, this data means that millions of children have essentially no access to education and live in extreme poverty.
[Trigger warning: violence and torture] In the 90s, government neglect of Mayan children escalated to torture and murder. These so-called “young delinquents” were guilty of living on the streets and sniffing glue to cope with hunger. Police officers routinely killed them – kids and young adults between 12 and 20 years old were beaten, had shoe glue poured on them, had their ears cut off and eyes gauged out. In one instance, a 12-year-old child was given food only to find out that what was inside the package was a bomb.
The Inter-American Commission case against the State of Guatemala was the first one in the history of the court to involve “children as the victims of human rights violations”. This quote is from “The Young Martyrs… The Condemnation of the State of Guatemala for the Extra-Judicial Execution of Street Children”, a book from 2004 which collects articles by people directly involved in the judicial process that succeeded in holding Guatemala’s government responsible for this unspeakable violence against underage Mayans.
[Trigger warning: sexual misconduct] Unfortunately, even some of the people who set out to help these kids also exploited them. The long-term Director of Casa Alianza – a Scottish man called Bruce Harris who won medals, awards, and was often called a hero for his work with disenfranchised children in Central America – was fired for sexual misconduct with young people under his care.
The heartbreaking truth is that the situation is still dire. Young Guatemalans may still resort to prostitution to pay for their journey towards the U.S. border, a set of circumstances which proves to be less horrific than living on the streets at the mercy of the State. In a recent trip to Guatemala, Kamala Harris expressed the desire to understand and address the underlying causes driving Guatemalans to cross the border illegally. She doesn’t have to travel far to find these causes, though – if the Unites States wanted undocumented Guatemalans to stay away from their border, it should have not financed their civil war.
“As the Cold War raged in the 1960s and '70s, the United States gave the Guatemalan military $33 million in aid even though U.S. officials were aware of the army's dismal track record on human rights, the documents show.” (Washington Post archives)
“$33,000,000 in 1960 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $300,116,047.30 today”. (CPI inflation calculator)
These hundreds of millions of dollars did not promote economic development or deter corruption, it exacerbated a precarious set of circumstances. Her “Do not come” speech earlier this month was essentially telling Guatemalan people to not run out of a building the U.S. government has been setting on fire. If the Biden administration truly wants to aid Guatemalan people in their struggle against corruption and for better standards of living, it will set out to make changes in their own house.
“Bloodthirsty savagery”, which is often attributed to the Mayan people, far better describes U.S. foreign policy than any pre-Columbian civilization in the Americas. We ought to remember that the Mayan people still exist today, and they were and still are far from the backwards and underdeveloped stereotype propagated in mainstream media. While their ancient cultural and scientific contributions to humanity are vastly underappreciated, their descendants continue to be brutalized by government institutions. ‘Economic development‘ is fleeting and futile in contrast to true respect and appreciation for a people with magnificent history, language and culture.
MIRNA WABI-SABI
is a writer, political theorist, teacher and translator. She’s site editor at Gods and Radicals, and managing editor at PLATAFORMA9.