Mayans
One more movie and I’ll be convinced that Mayans are stalking me. There they are sacrificing their captives to Kukulkan in Apocalypto; there they are guarding the hidden pyramid and the Tree of Life in The Fountain. I’ve always been curious about the Mayans—curious and scared, because when I was a kid I saw these Tagalog komiks (Was it Zuma? Anak ni Zuma? I saw the movie on cable years ago—a scream!) in which they practised human sacrifice (Drawing of a hand clutching a throbbing heart). Or were those Aztecs? Incans? The Mayans came earlier, I think, and after their great cities died, some Mayan communities survived. They were an advanced civilization. They built pyramids, invented the idea of zero, and set an exact date for the apocalypse. They played football with human heads. A documentary called Ancient Apocalypses says the Mayans were done in by a terrible drought. The more they suffered, the more humans they sacrificed, hoping to propitiate their gods. Their underworld was called Xibalba. Some new age practitioners claim to incorporate the beliefs of the Mayans in their teachings. I suspect that the Mayans would decapitate them and play football with their heads. Even before they hear music by Yanni.
The Spanish Inquisition (No one expects the—!) also figures in The Fountain and Alatriste. I read somewhere that there was an Inquisitor’s Office in Manila in the 1600s. Who did they torture, I wonder? Must look it up in Blair and Robertson, or ask Ambeth.
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February 17th, 2007 at 02:33
If you were reading Liwayway komiks, it probably was ‘Malinche’. The villains were the Shamans and in the end he converted to Christianity when the Conquistadores arrived.