Firing Zone: On a Beach in Vieques

“PAZ”

            I could feel the warm sand on my feet even through my beat-up sneakers. A few hours later in the day that sand would be a lot hotter, dangerously so. But at 8:00 in the morning, it felt nice, pleasant, relaxing, even.

            Funny how I was calm, not very nervous at all, even though I knew that any minute I’d be surrounded by men-white, black, and brown-dressed in camouflage, armed with automatic weapons designed to tear into human flesh and bone with total detachment. They were there to protect what they believed to be theirs. How would they know that soldiers and sailors three generations before had come to clear out the property their government had stolen from the people of Vieques? These men, these sailors and Marines recruited off the streets of New York, out of the high schools of DC, off the unemployment lines right here in Puerto Rico, were just following orders: “Detain any civilian trespassers on this base!”
            Standing there in the sand, writing my simple, yet clear message, in letters ten feet tall -P…A…Z- I was at peace. It was like any other meditation, only this time walking, writing in the sand, soaking in the morning sun, soothed by the breeze and breaking waves.
            I focused on the beauty of it all while I mentally prepared myself to be grabbed up and put away for God knows how many days, weeks, or months. I concentrated on the quiet of the moment, before jet fighters would come swooping down to drop their loads of bullets and bombs into now-imaginary enemy targets, soon to be very real ones in places far from this once-upon-a-time Caribbean paradise. I stayed present to the moment so as not to think of what could happen to me there, alone, separated from the many other civil disobedients, obedients of consciousness, demanding respect for freedom, for health, for peace. How could I know if I would have the same fate as Ángel Rodríguez Cristobal, who twenty years earlier on those same beaches had been arrested, only later to be found dead in his federal prison cell? How could I know if I’d ever see my son or my partner again?
            Yet when the soldiers came, I was at peace. When they handcuffed me, and searched my body, I was at peace. When they locked me in a cage, and later ten more, twenty-a hundred eighty peaceful warriors of conscience-I was at peace.
            And while at peace in my mind, I was keenly aware of the quake deep in my soul, the tremor strong in my heart that reminded me that my peace would never be complete while soldiers and sailors roam, while bombs and bullets fall, while cannons blast and projectiles explode, while the planet’s most powerful military force continues to impose its will upon those of this tiny nation, the will of a people who merely want what we all want: health, justice, peace.
             One year later, many are still imprisoned while the US Navy insists on exercising its might. “One more year,” they say trying to appease us, as if anyone in his right mind could actually consent to his own violent abuse for even one more minute. It remains to be seen just how many more people, how many more nonviolent re-occupations of the live-fire range it will take before peace finally comes to the people of Vieques.
             Meanwhile, my own search for peace requires daily practice, as I write, now not in the sand, but on the page, or on the computer. I seek this peace when I speak the truth of our struggle to a large group, or as I try to convey the power of our vision to just one other. Or as I sit, alone, in silence, bearing witness to the beauty of the world and its people, wondering when this realization may also be enjoyed by those in Vieques and by those in uniform… and those in Washington… and those on Wall Street… and in Jerusalem and Gaza… Delhi and Karachi… Beirut… Bogotá… Kabul… Baghdad…

¡Paz!

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  This piece was originally written in the summer of 2002. Almost one year later, on May 1, 2003, the US Navy officially closed its base at Camp García in Vieques. In effect, the largest, most powerful military force in history was overcome by the persistent non-violence civil disobedience of the thousands of people who joined this cause. Having obtained the demilitarization of this island-municipality of Puerto Rico, the people of Vieques continue their struggle for the land’s decontamination, its devolution to local residents, and the sustainable economic development of its community. Meanwhile, the people of Puerto Rico continue their centuries-old struggle against colonialism and for self-determination and national sovereignty.

RQR

 

So, please check it out, and share it with others in your networks, people that might be interested in using my book in their own work.

INTEGRAL REVIEW June 2008 Vol. 4, No. 1

Book Review

Consciousness-in-Action: Toward an Integral Psychology of Liberation and Transformation.
Raul Quiñones Rosado. (2007). ile Publications, Caguas, Puerto Rico.

by Bonnitta Roy

Raul Rosado’s new book succeeds on many levels. He makes an important contribution to integral studies; he describes new ways for understanding group and self identity; he opens new ways for transmuting the processes of fear, oppression and victim-hood into liberation and transformation; he creates a unique synthesis between the highly rational-analytic AQAL model and the native American medicine wheel; and he creates a processural system that overlays and resonates with both models. His writing style is personal and intimate. He allows the reader to feel into his own experiences of oppression, and his own journey toward liberation and transformation. But because Rosado also has worked with various communities on such issues, he is able to put the personal in context with the group—a necessary ingredient of his work. 

The main feature of Rosado’s process model relies on the metaphor of a cyclone. After Rosado identifies the various patterns of oppression with respect to each of the four AQAL quadrants, he shows us that these factors are not merely inter-related, but mutually inter-active and continually reinforcing the system of oppression. When visualized as a process, the system of oppression becomes a cyclone of oppression, “moving” inwards, causing continual contraction of self-identity. He describes two such levels of contraction: 1) the impact of cultural oppression on personal identity and 2) the psychosocial pattern of internalized inferiority. With these system models, Rosado is able to demonstrate how the processes of oppression accumulate tremendous power on the personal, cultural and institutional levels and therefore are highly resistant to change. The systems of oppression, Rosado is warning us, are active not static.

In the second part of his book, Rosado puts consciousness in action. Again, overlaying the wisdom of the medicine wheel with the pluralistic methodology of the AQAL model, Rosado identifies positive patterns called “spheres” of action and influence. Rosado argues, if the direction of oppression is inward, toward contraction and stasis, the direction of consciousness is outward, toward liberation and transformation. With this process framework, Rosado is able to explain the possibility of fighting “fire with fire”, as it were, by activating the positive, outward momentum of conscious liberation. This momentum requires participation at the same levels that feed the cycle of oppression – and so the active response is multi-layered, multi-leveled, multi-perspectival, and integral.

Consciousness-in-Action is a useful and purposeful manual for people interested in social activism at any level. It is also a wonderful personal narrative, giving us an insight into a caring, thoughtful, and hard-working integrated person. Finally, it is a great example for how integral writers can expand the existing models into process versions, into infinite riches of discourse.

Integral Without Borders, a gathering of international and community development workers applying integral theory to their efforts, was indeed a wonderful event. As I mentioned in my previous post, there were people from and/or working in every continent (except Antartica), doing their work through the lens of “integral” as put forth by Ken Wilber and others. During five days (April 22-26), we shared theories, approaches, feelings, lessons and questions that arise from our experiences as we each develop our own integral praxis. A lot was shared through the many presentations, workshops and scheduled activities, and perhaps even more over meals (or coffee and baklava).

It was great to make new friends from around the globe: Walberto Tejeda from Honduras & El Salvador; Fernando Bretas from Brazil & DC; Soledad Teixidó, Chile; Julian González, Argentina & Canada; Yene Assegid, Ethiopia & South Africa; Carissa Weiler and Katherine Coder from the US; Lee White from Canada; and so many others. I was delighted to finally meet Gail Hochachka, who invited me, and the other event organizers, Paul van Schaik and Emine Kiray. It was absolutely wonderful to meet and learn from both Rollie Stanich, of the Integral Spiritual Center, and Diane Musho Hamilton, teacher of Zen and Big Mind/Big Heart. I also got to spend some time with my friend and compatriota, Vernice Solimar.

And, of course, I was more than happy for the chance to share an overview of the Consciousness-in-Action approach and ilé’s work. It was nice to see practitioners recognize its contribution to integral theory and its relevance to their work. It was also nice to be able to sell a few books, too, particularly knowing they would be read and used from Turkey to Chile to El Salvador to Canada to South Africa to the US to Norway and beyond. I look forward to seeing many of my new friends and colleagues at the First Integral Theory Conference in California this August.

Needless to say, I am still integrating a lot of learnings, insights and feelings from the event, as well as from being in one of the oldest cities in the world. Though I would have needed a least another full week to see all I wanted to, I came away more than full from the experience. So much so that I’m not quite sure how I was able to engage and be present at the retreat in upstate New York.

But, I’ll get to that in my next post.

Early in March, I was delighted to offer a Consciousness-in-Action workshop in Amherst, Massachusetts. Held at Hampshire College, the full-day event was organized by the Undoing Racism Organizing Collective of Western Massachusetts for organizers, activists, educators, students and helping professionals from that region and beyond. It was attended by thirty-seven participants, most of whom had previous anti-oppression training of some sort, including ilé’s leadership training and/or The People’s Institute’s Undoing Racism Workshop. The group’s understanding of social power coming into the workshop allowed the process to flow and deepen in the relatively short amount of time we had together. Having said that, some of us already feel the need to make this a considerably longer workshop, so we can delve even deeper into the patterns of reactivity identified and further explore contemplative practices as vehicles toward greater  response-ability and well-being. Meanwhile, I really want to thank Judith Feinstein and UROC for inviting me and organizing this event, and Mary Bombardier, director of Hampshire College’s Community Partnership for Social Change, for co-hosting, as well as the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society for their help in announcing the workshop. And, of course, I want to thank all the great people that attended.

As I was getting ready for the workshop, I received an invitation from one of the organizers of the Global Integral International Development Meeting to attend and present at this year’s gathering in Istanbul, Turkey. This will be a meeting with practitioners, activists, scholars, and social change agents involved in integral praxis addressing issues, such as poverty, community development, education, leadership and capacity building, environment and sustainability, economy, human well-being and resilience, among others. So, from April 20-26, I will be in Istanbul to share the consciousness-in-action approach with, and learning from, approximately forty other participants coming in from Africa, Latin America, Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Turkey. Needless to say, I am absolutely thrilled at the opportunity to share with others around the world who are also involved in developing and applying integral approaches toward collective transformation. Many thanks to Gail Hochachka from Drishti: Center for Integral Action (Canada), and Integral Institute (US), for putting this together and for making my participation possible.

So, stay tuned… I’ll be posting impressions and pictures. That is, as soon as I get back home from the Retreat for Activists & Organizers of Color, organized by the Social Justice Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. From April 29 to May 2, I’ll be co-facilitating this retreat with my dear colleagues, Rev. Ryumon Gutiérrez Baldoquín, Francisco “Paco” Lugoviña, Sensei, Kyra Bobinet, Shásh Yázhí, and Rose Sackey Milligan. We’ll be at the beautiful Menla Mountain and Retreat Center in upstate New York with a group of about 35 participants, supporting their personal well-being and development, as well as their work and leadership as change agents. There still may be room for activists of color interested in attending, so check it out.

First of all, consciousness-in-action.com has been registered as a new Internet domain and my primary cyber-address for matters related to my book, workshops and events in the US and beyond. Moreover, this blog is primarily about the consciousness-in-action approach to personal and social change. In addition to posting announcements of my work (and other acts of blatant self-promotion), I will be posting comments and links having to do with other people, events and issues of interest. (I will, also, still maintain “el BLOG de Raúl,” my Spanish-language blog, to to announce events and address issues closer to home in Puerto Rico; go check that out if you read Spanish.) And please, bookmark both sites and check in every couple of weeks or so.

So, in my first act of self-promotion of the year (on this site, anyway), I’d like to announce the publication of a new book, Counseling in a Complex Society: Contemporary Challenges to Professional Practice. Edited by Nicholas Young and Christine Michael, this book gathers writings from a number of contributors who approach issues in counseling from a broad range of perspectives, including my own chapter: On Counseling, Spirituality and Consciousness-in-Action: An Integral View. My colleague and mentor, Dorothy Firman, co-author of Mothers and Daughters: Healing the Relationship, also contributes two chapters, one on Psychosynthesis as a transpersonal counseling approach, and another on diversity and social justice in the counseling profession. These and other chapters that address issues of race, sexuality and class oppression alone make this book worthy of reading. Counseling in a Complex Society is available at Amazon.com.

In another bit of news: I will be presenting a paper on consciousness-in-action at the First Biennial Integral Theory Conference to be held in August. Hosted by at JFK University and Integral Institute, I’ll be one of about eight to present applications of integral theory to community/activism/diversity. There will be about 100 presentations in all by people from 10 different countries. For more information on the conference, please visit the site. I’ll give more details on my presentation in a later posting.

I might also be presenting this summer at the 2008 Association for the Advancement of Psychosynthesis Conference at Union Institute & University at Vermont College. My proposal is still being considered, though I am quite hopeful. I’ll keep you posted on this as well.

At a later date, I’ll also be able to share the forthcoming review of my book to be published by Integral Review, a peer-reviewed journal (not affiliated with Ken Wilber and Integral Institute). All I can say right now is that it is very positive. If you’re interested in a complimentary take on integral theory and praxis, check out their site and past issues of the journal.

In August, I spoke about the book and ilé’s work on Radio Vieques. ilé has continued to support the struggle in Vieques well beyond the non-violent civil dissobedience actions between 1999 and 2003 that landed my partner and colleague, María Reinat-Pumarejo, and I—along with thousands of protesters—in federal prison. [In fact, María is currently in San Francisco with women from Vieques at a gathering of the East Asia/US/Puerto Rico Women Against Militarism Network.]

Just last week I was in southern California sharing this work with Latinos y Latinas en Acción, a group of community organizers in San Diego. We’re now talking about returning to offer the presentation (or workshop) to a broader audience of community members, service providers, students and scholars.

On October 20th, I’ll be offering an introductory Consciousness-in-Action workshop at the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society in Northampton, MA, an event co-sponsored by the C-Mind and the Community Partnership for Social Change at Hampshire College. If you are in the New England area you might want to come and learn more about this process. Click on the link above and register now!

Meanwhile, book sales continue to increase. Consciousness-in-Action is available at ilé|Publications Online Storefront, as well as on Amazon.com, Border.com and other online bookstores. I must say, though, that we prefer that you buy at ilé’s storefront, simply because we retain a significantly greater percentage of the sale—funds that, in turn, support our community organizing and leadership work.

And I am doubly pleased that with the release of this book, we officially launch ilé|Publications. This has been part of our vision of ilé since its the inception fifteen years ago. My colleagues at ilé and I are quite happy to see this become a reality, and are already planning future works, not only by each of us, but by other colleagues who share the values and vision of liberation and transformation of ilé.

So, please check it out. It is available now at the new ilé|Publications online storefront. To order it now, just click on the link.

You might also be interested in knowing that I am available for presentations and workshops based on this work; these are geared to varied audiences ranging from community activists and organizers, to colleges students and faculty, and to helping professionals, OD consultants and cultural change workers. Maybe even a book signing event at a local bookstore, college or community organization in your vecinity could be arranged. I would greatly appreciate your help in getting the word out about the book and this work to people within your circles of influence.

And, naturally, I would love to hear your feedback. Just post your comments below, or send me an e-mail directly.

Enjoy!

Consciousness-in-Action: Toward an Integral Psychology of Liberation & Transformation
by Raúl Quiñones Rosado PhD 

Description:

Drawing from psychology, sociology, social theory, integral theory, and years of work in communities-of-struggle, this book proposes a unique approach to personal change and social transformation. With implications for helping professionals, educators, community organizers, activists and others committed to social change, Consciousness-in-Action offers an integral view of well-being and development in the context of institutional and internalized oppression. Consciousness-in-action as a personal and group process is presented as a practice to liberate people from emotional and behavioral reactivity of learned superiority and inferiority based on race, gender, culture, class and other social identities, a process central to social transformation and the evolution of human consciousness.

Retail Price: $24.95

ISBN: 978-0-6151-4507-5
Publisher: ilé Publications
Copyright: © 2007 by Raúl Quiñones Rosado
Language: English

 

I happened to meet Paco, along with Rev. Hilda Gutierrez Baldoquín, another one of those few Latino/a Zen priests, at a gathering of spiritual activists at Garrison Institute in June 2005. The three of us met again last fall when, together with several other veteran spiritual activists, we facilitated a retreat for community organizers and activists organized by another dear friend, Rose Sackey Milligan, director of the Social Justice Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. In fact, next week Paco, Rose, the group and I will be meeting again to plan our next retreat for People of Color scheduled for this fall.

My congratulations and heartfelt embrace to Sensei Paco. I look forward to our continued friendship and our work together toward growing this liberation spirituality movement both in the US and here in Puerto Rico.

Buddhist Priest is Successor in Ancient Lineage

February 26, 2007, New York, NY — Rev. Francisco Lugoviña, long-time resident and businessman in the Bronx, New York, was conferred succession in the Soto Zen Lineage and the Zen Peacemaker Order upon receiving Dharma Transmission as Senior Teacher, from his teacher of twelve years, Roshi Bernie Glassman in a ceremony that took place in Montague, Massachusetts at the Mother House of the Zen Peacemaker Order on Sunday, February 25, 2007.

“For me it is the bringing of vocation and avocation together within a spiritual practice that accommodates all paths. My teacher, Bernie Roshi, has charged me with developing a track for social enterprise, drawing on my many years of work as a social activist and as a businessman. The difference is that now there is a deliberate effort to integrate the two streams. It is a sign of the times as I see more and more businesses seeking to recognize that the workplace needs to be more than just a place to make money. People need a deeper gratification and Corporate America seems poised to take this next step,” stated Rev. Lugoviña.

Rev. Lugoviña, generally known as “Paco,” was ordained as a Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen lineage and in the Zen Peacemaker Order in 1996; is a member of the Zen Peacemaker Circles and Peacemaker International; and is the founder of the Hudson River Peacemaker Center-House of One People in Yonkers, New York where he conducts weekly meditation on Mondays and Thursdays, with his associate, Lay Senior Teacher, Grover Genro Gaunt, III. Rev. Lugoviña has participated in pilgrimages—or plunges—to Tibet, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and in the streets of New York City. He is a member of the Board of the Greyston Foundation, serves on the Executive Committee, and chairs the Pathway Committee.

He arrived in New York at the age of six with his parents from Bayamón, Puerto Rico; attended St. Augustine Elementary School and Morris High School in the Bronx; and graduated from Iona College in New Rochelle. Rev. Lugoviña is in the process of developing an interfaith spiritual retreat center in the hills of Cayey, Puerto Rico on a property imbued with history having once belonged to Dr. Ricardo AlegrIa, the Father of Anthropology of Puerto Rico. Rev. Lugoviña has had his Property Management offices in the Bronx on East 149th Street in “The Hub” for over 30 years. He is also a Governmental Relations and Organizational Development Consultant to various firms.

The Zen Buddhist Branch of which Rev. Lugoviña is a member, was started by Taizen Maezumi Roshi in 1978 as the Zen Center of Los Angeles. Maezumi Roshiis student, Bernie Glassman from Brooklyn, New York, who was at the time employed as an Electronics Engineer with a PhD, became his successor and is best known for taking Engaged Buddhism into the streets, departing from the traditional practice of “just sitting.” Roshi Bernie moved east and founded the Zen Center of New York and later founded the Zen Peacemakers that is dedicated to realizing and actualizing the interconnectedness of life. The effects of Zen practice unfolds in the meditation halls, at work, within families and within community. For the past 25 years Zen Peacemakers have been developing new forms, methods and structures in the areas of peacemaking, social enterprise and Zen practice, emphasizing the transformation of the individual and society. Within this, they work on developing social enterprise structures that are self-sustaining, holistic and address important individual and community needs. Beginning with the Greyston Mandala of social service companies in 1980 in Yonkers, New York, they have built innovative nonprofit and for-profit enterprises that integrate individual transformation along with community growth and that function interdependently to create a balanced and harmonious whole. The key Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers are: Not-knowing, Bearing Witness, and Loving Action.

For more information, you can visit Reverend Lugoviña’s website: “http://www.zenhoop.org” and/or “http://www.zenpeacemakers.org” and search “Paco.”

Maya in the Thunderdome
By Marcello A. Canuto

In “Apocalypto,” Mel Gibson paints a feverish, childish version of the Maya — and mangles decades of scholarship about this complex civilization.

Dec. 15, 2006 | As a scholar of the Maya civilization, I was anxious to see Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the Maya in “Apocalypto.” Of course, I realize the movie is not a documentary and was mindful of the director’s artistic license. I was happy to see that Gibson got some details right, like personal adornment, tools and body decoration. Although the main actors are native North Americans, I applaud Gibson’s use of some Maya actors, as well as his decision to have the characters speak in a native Maya language, Yukatek, still heard in Mexico. While these are brave and ambitious choices, they also imply that “Apocalypto” is a sincere depiction of Maya society. In fact, the movie is not an accurate portrayal of the Maya at all; rather, it is a reflection of Gibson’s own feverish imagination.

The movie tracks a young Mayan man who is captured in a surprise raid on his village. Forced to abandon his family, he and his companions are taken to the nearby city to be sacrificed. He manages to escape and, pursued by his captors, attempts to return to his village to save his family. During his getaway, he reaches a beach where he witnesses the arrival of Spaniards.

This final scene tells us that the movie focuses on Maya society on the eve of Spanish contact in the 16th century. Yet the Maya city portrayed in the movie, central to its plot, dates roughly to the 9th century. This is akin to telling a story about English pilgrims founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and showing them living in longhouses described in “Beowulf.” In fact, Gibson incorporates Maya images from as far back as 300 B.C. Throughout the movie, these anachronisms make Maya civilization seem timeless, and undermine the idea that the Maya could and did respond to change.

“Apocalypto” opens with a village of Maya hunter-gatherers living in harmony within a tropical forest. While the Eden-like scene makes for great cinematography, it is not supported by archaeological data. To begin with, the Maya were not organized into small hunter-gatherer groups sustained by the jungle’s bounty. Starting in the first millennium B.C, Maya society was organized into complex farming villages. By 200 B.C, their landscape was dominated by cities of thousands of people composed of monumental temples, royal palaces and public art. Five centuries later, dozens of royal cities like Tikal and Calakmul were thriving in a region with hundreds of thousands of people. During this time, Maya society was made up of farmers, masons, warriors, scribes, priests, artists, musicians, noble elites and holy lords — many of whom are not even seen in “Apocalypto.”

The movie’s infamous violence begins when the tribe’s idyllic world is shattered by a surprise attack of fierce raiders seeking both captives and slaves to take back to their city. The ensuing carnage leaves little to the imagination. But Gibson forces us to empathize with the ingenuous villagers by juxtaposing their baffled terror with the puerile sadism of their attackers.

However, the Maya were hardly babes in the woods. By 300 B.C., the Maya had developed political and economic systems that were regionally integrated. People living in nearby towns, villages or homesteads — within a day’s walk from larger centers — would venture into the city to sell or buy at the market, pay tribute requirements, witness political spectacles or attend to religious devotions. Therefore, populations that lived near larger centers would have been more substantially aware of activities in these capital cities than the movie implies. The villagers would have understood the threat of raids, battles and wars — which were a regular part of Maya society.

The movie continues with a harrowing march of tears and blood. Captured villagers are led to a “place of stone houses.” They witness the felling of the sacred ceiba tree, hear the admonitions of a pestilent infant Oracle and the ravings of a sickly elder, intermingle with a ghostly army of construction laborers, and suffer the degradation of being sold in a slave market. Elites, portrayed as “ugly without silliness,” are shown killing the innocent with schoolyard cruelty.

These scenes reflect the exploitation of natural resources, violence, social repression, and detached ruling class that archaeologists have proposed as causes for the “Classic Maya collapse” in the 9th and 10th centuries. Although the debate about the collapse continues, the images of a diseased populace in the movie do not fit with the data. Maya cities were likely to have been much healthier than contemporary European ones.

Whatever the causes, the collapse was primarily of a system of governance, not a self-immolating culture. The movie misses this important distinction by creating a spurious contrast between a rural idyll and an urban miasma of excess and violence. The truth is that within several generations of the Classic Maya collapse, other regal cities with different forms of government would flourish in other parts of the Maya area. Over several millennia, the Maya underwent many cycles of growth and decline, each with its own major cities. The idea, proposed by the movie, that Maya civilization was at the verge of final self-destruction makes for good drama, but does not reflect the depth of this civilization’s resilience and history.

Once in the city, some of Gibson’s villagers are designated for sacrifice. Slathered in blue body paint, they are led through the central ceremonial precinct of the city. Amid a throng of possessed dancers, they see murals depicting blue-painted figures with their chests cut open. The villagers are led up scaffolds along a pyramid, where a long line of captives are being killed. One by one they are splayed across an altar, their chests cut open and their hearts ripped out by the king. They are then decapitated and their headless bodies flung down the massive frontal staircase to the cheers of the ruck below. Gibson’s portrayal of a fervent and orgiastic mob completely violates what we know about Maya propriety in ritual behavior. Many modern Maya rituals, such as processions or prayers, are deliberate and serious affairs.

The treatment of sacrifice is also inaccurate and misleading. Much of what we see recorded by the Maya is a form of sacrifice known as auto-sacrifice — self-inflicted bloodletting involving piercing ear lobes, fingers, tongues and penises. This practice was often the duty of ruling families, interceding on behalf of the people to the gods. Animal sacrifice was also common. In fact, Gibson’s villagers would have conducted such sacrifices for their household and agricultural rites, although we never see them do so in the movie.

Interestingly, murals recently discovered at San Bartolo in Guatemala depict scenes of auto-sacrifice and animal sacrifice. They reveal gods undertaking rites that bring the world into creation. Gibson cribbed these images for his mural scene but saw fit to alter them to convey a view of the Maya involved in wanton human sacrifice.

Human sacrifice was indeed important to Maya society. The Classic period gives us numerous depictions of severed heads, and even of headless bodies flung down staircases. However, in most cases, such sacrifices were of single victims of noble rank whose identity was prominently recorded for posterity, not a mass of unknown farmers. We have evidence of larger mass graves. But in these rare examples, it appears that warfare between competing cities led to the capture and summary execution of enemies. In either case, the victims would not have been anonymous individuals.

It’s true that sacrificial practices among the Maya did change somewhat during the final centuries before the Spanish arrival. Spanish accounts note that some Maya pyramids along the Yucatan coast were covered with blood — presumably human, though the Spanish never witnessed any of the sacrifices themselves. It is also true that “skull-racks,” as seen in the movie, were found at some sites in the Yucatan. However, these were practices adopted by Maya groups very late in their history.

But in the movie, our hero is spared from being sacrificed, thanks to a fortuitously timed solar eclipse. The king announces that the eclipse is a good omen — the gods are sated and require no more human flesh. This raises the problem of what’s not in the movie.

The prediction of the solar eclipse is the only allusion to one of the more celebrated and important facets of Maya civilization — their advanced state of knowledge in mathematics, astronomy and geometry. Maya calendrical, astronomical and mathematical systems were so advanced that they could predict eclipses, track Venus as morning and evening star, and compute the annual solstices and equinoxes decades in advance. In fact, the Maya made regular use of the concept of “zero” centuries before Fibonacci introduced it to Europe. Although an emphasis on Maya intellectual achievement would have been appropriate, it would have been inconsistent with the movie’s theme of a cruel and savage Maya civilization.

In an action scene that springs entirely from Gibson’s imagination, our hero is able to escape the city. Pursued by his captors, he runs through a dead corn field and hides in a field of decapitated corpses. This “killing field” is perfectly consistent with the movie’s blood lust, but ever more distant from the real Maya. He flees through the jungle, and with only two pursuers remaining, he bursts out of the forest onto a beach. There, where the land ends and the water begins, both he and his tormentors witness Spanish galleons and rowboats ferrying Spaniards and Christianity to the lands of the Maya. His pursuers, as if in a trance, walk weakly toward the arriving Spaniards. Their pursuit is now irrelevant, as their world is about to end.

Again, the historical facts tell a different and more compelling story. Several accounts exist of Spanish expeditions in the early 1500s, sailing from Cuba and making stops along the Yucatan coast for provisions. Invariably these encounters ended badly for the Spaniards. So fierce was the Maya defense of their lands that Cortés avoided much of this coast, choosing to land farther west along what is known today as the coast of Veracruz. The Maya, at the time of the conquest, were intractable and fiercely autonomous. Most villages resisted the Spaniards. In fact, the Spanish conquest of the Maya was a long protracted campaign that some claim goes on to this very day.

In “Apocalypto,” the arrival of the Spanish signals “a new beginning.” Remarkably, the event is portrayed as tranquil, as if the Spaniards are the adults who have finally come to rescue the “littleuns” stranded on the island of William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.” In reality, the arrival was anything but serene.

Within decades of the first contact with the Spaniards, the Maya would die in the hundreds of thousands as European diseases, colonial exploitation and cruelty took root. In 1552, in the name of Christian piety, Fray Diego de Landa ordered that hundreds of Maya codices, carrying sacred knowledge accumulated over centuries, be burned as works of the devil. If there were ever an apocalypse in the history of the Maya — and herein lies the ultimate demoralizing irony of the movie — it would be because of European contact. But in the movie, after two hours of excess, hyperbole and hysteria, the Spaniards represent the arrival of sanity to the Maya world. The tacit paternalism is devastating.

After many centuries of misguided and simplistic views of the Maya, recent scholarship has shown the complexity and historical depth of their civilization. In Maya society, as in all civilizations, violence, surfeit and disparity were balanced by accomplishment, restraint and illumination. Gibson’s feverish vision of a childish Maya society sacrificing itself to extinction is more than inaccurate, it works against the progress of decades of diligent scholarship to restore to present-day Maya people a heritage of which they are proud, and from which we have much to learn. I can only hope that audiences seeing this movie will be motivated to learn about the Maya — present and past — rather than be sated by Gibson’s sacrificial offering at the altar of entertainment.

– By Marcello A. Canuto