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January 16th, 2007

   

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Guatemala: Apocalypto in Context

A small portrait of the translator Renata Avila · 20:10 · Americas

Nowadays about 80% percent of the population in Guatemala has their genetic and cultural origins in ancient Mayan culture; that was not a uniform group but a Society formed by alliances among several groups in Mesoamerica, reaching its highests point in the Classical Period. The biggest mayan city, Tikal, is located in Guatemala, showing the splendor in architecture and science of Mayan culture. Indeed, Guatemalans are proud of such cultural heritage, and ancient Mayan civilization is always used as an example to follow in school here of how a small country can do great things to amaze the world.

That´s why the film Apocalypto, directed by Mel Gibson (who is now visiting Guatemala for a couple of days), found everywhere in the “black market” of DVD´s throughout the city, is controversial. Even the Ministry of Culture has been asked to censor the movie which will arrive to theaters in March. Here some abstracts of what Guatemalan bloggers are saying about it:

Journalist and Photographer Leon Aguilera writing at KLAVAZA [ES] points out that even while the director did a great job with photography, the mixture of colors, and, in the end, made an entertaining movie, it is full of unforgivable historical mistakes, such as the language used in the film (never spoken by post classical Mayas), and it shows 100% pure fiction. It is not a historical movie at all. He does, however, affirm that the film can be useful as an example to Mr. President Bush, and quoting Will Durant, continues that: “civilizations fail when they begin to rot from the inside”. He had found certain parallelism between the Spanish Conquerors actions shown in Apocalypto and methods by the Bush administration in Iraq.

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Caught On Camera: Human Rights Videos on GV

Witness Hub
Sameer Padania · 11:00 · East Asia , South Asia

You'd be forgiven for thinking it's been Saddam, Saddam, Saddam, in recent weeks, but GV has covered other human rights videos that deserve a bit of limelight - so, in this regular new feature, I'm going to round up the best of those recent stories.

Something for WITNESS's Amazon Wishlist [via Veronica]

First to Pawlina, host of a Ukrainian radio show in Vancouver, Canada, who blogs about human trafficking at The Natashas. After her post in late December commending Ukrainian pop star Ruslana for releasing a video condemning human trafficking, Pawlina praises another musician, Peter Gabriel, for founding WITNESS, but, under the title “Some human rights abuses harder to expose than others”, offers some advice:

It's very commendable of rock stars to help expose human rights abuses around the world.

British rock legend Peter Gabriel has formd an organization called Witness that provides video equipment to human rights activists to record such abuses.

I suspect he may not be aware of the horrific abuses suffered by hundreds of thousands of young women and even children, at the hands of human traffickers pandering to men seeking instant, no-strings-attached sexual gratification.

In which case, someone should send him a copy of The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade.

Then again, no doubt it would be extremely difficult to film what goes on behind the closed doors and barred windows of brothels and “breaking grounds”, much less expose it to public view.

In fact WITNESS did produce a documentary about trafficking in 1997, Bought And Sold, but Pawlina's right - it's proving quite difficult to find footage from behind those “closed doors and barred windows” - so if you have seen, or even filmed footage of that kind, please email me (email address at the end of the article) to let me know.

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Ethiopian bloggers fear for future in Somalia

A small portrait of the translator Andrew Heavens · 08:04 · Sub-Saharan Africa

The Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is ending freedom of speech in Somalia.

That was the blunt conclusion of undercover Ethiopian blogger Seminawork in his post Somali media under attack, as news came through that Somalia's Ethiopia-backed Transitional Government had shut down independent radio stations and even closed the offices of the international news station, Al Jazeera.

Somalia had some of the freest media in Africa. The Islamists who were labelled as enemies of freedom hadn't tried to close the radio stations which are under attack from the [Transitional Government] now.

Seminawork was one of many Ethiopian bloggers to cast a critical eye on the aftermath of the Ethiopian Government's decision to send its soldiers into Somalia to drive out Islamist forces and restore the Somali Transitional Government to power. (Here is the BBC timeline of the conflict.)

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