Ronald Reagan's Bloody 'Apocalypto'

By Robert Parry
Created Dec 18 2006 - 8:10am

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.

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