document.write(' temporarily unavailable. It will be back up shortly.
'); } Genocides and Dramas, Histories and Fictions
Ronald Reagan's Bloody "Apocalypto"Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto," a violent capture-and-escape movie set 500 years ago in a brutal Mayan society, ends ironically when European explorers arrive and interrupt the final bloody chase.
The surprise appearance of the Europeans was good news for Gibson's hero - distracting his last pursuers - but, as history tells us, the arrival of the Europeans actually escalated the New World's violence, bringing a more mechanized form of slaughter that devastated the Mayas and other native populations.
An even greater irony, however, may be that the U.
S. media has done a better job separating fact from fiction about Gibson's movie than in explaining to Americans how some of their most admired modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, were implicated in a more recent genocide against Mayan tribes in Central America.
America's hand in the later-day slaughter of these Mayas traces back to Dwight Eisenhower's presidency in 1954 when a CIA-engineered coup overthrew the reform-minded Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz.
The coup set in motion waves of murder, torture and assassination against almost anyone or any group deemed leftist, including Mayan tribes in Guatemala's highlands. The violent repression often benefited from U.S.
advice and equipment, according to U.S. government documents that were released during the Clinton administration.
In the mid-1960s, for instance, the Guatemalan security forces suffered from disorganization, internal divisions and possible infiltration by leftist operatives. So, the administration of President Lyndon Johnson dispatched U.S.
public safety adviser John Longon from his base in Venezuela.
Arriving in late 1965, Longon sized up the problem and began restructuring the Guatemalan security forces into a more efficient - and ultimately, more lethal - organization. In a Jan.
4, 1966, report on his activities, Longon said he recommended both overt and covert components to the military's battle against "terrorism."
One of Longon's strategies was to seal off sections of Guatemala City and begin house-to-house searches. "The idea behind this was to force some of the wanted communists out of hiding and into police hands, as well as to convince the Guatemalan public that the authorities were doing something to control the situation," the report said.
On the covert side, Longon pressed for "a safe house [to] be immediately set up" for coordination of security intelligence.
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