Mayan groups criticize new Gibson film

Mel Gibson's latest bloody epic, much like his last, is angering some members of the culture it depicts.

Activists in Guatemala, once a part of the American Mayan empire that provides the setting for Gibson's Apocalypto due for release this Friday in the U.S. and Canada say the film presents an unflattering portrait of theculture.

"The director is saying the Mayans are savages," Lucio Yaxon, a human rights activist, told the BBC.

The criticismcalls to mindreactions to Gibson's2004 epic The Passion of the Christ, an oftenviolent depiction of the final days of Jesus Christ that was accused by some of being anti-Semitic, even beforeGibson's much-publicized outburst against a Jewish police officerin California earlier this year.

Apocalypto, which has drawn largely favourable reviews, tells the story of a young man struggling to flee the crumbling Mayan empire after being chosento becomea sacrifice to the gods.

Like The Passion, Gibson's new film does not shy away from gruesome violence, including scenesof human slayings and beheadings.

"Gibson replays an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue," Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation, which promotes Mayan culture, told the BBC.

Richard Hansen, a consulting archeologist for the film, told the BBC Gibson,who also co-wrote and produced but does not appear in the film, took pains to ensure it was historically accurate.

Latino and Native American groups in the U.S. have praised the film for its dialogue, which is spoken in Yucatec Maya, and for Gibson's casting of indigenous actors.