Ronald Reagan's Bloody 'Apocalypto'

By Robert Parry
December 17, 2006

Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto," a violent capture-and-escape movie set 500 years ago in the territory of a fictional Mayan city-state, 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.

Read on.