The fact that I have just now (6 months post-theatrical release) viewed Mel Gibson’s "Apocalypto" bespeaks many things. First, I refuse, as an individual, to support the movie industry. I do this as a futile, personal protest for the type, content and subjects of movies being cranked out for mass consumption. Most are mindless drivel, with an obligate measure of "political correctness": possibly, a spoonful of miscegenation, and a pointless (but prominent) "nod and wink" to the "Evil Empire" – a.k.a. American society as a whole. [This rests with the popular notion of the glitterati that all that is wrong in the world rests squarely on the doorstep of America, whether we existed when it actually happened or not]. I simply refuse, as a futile personal dissent, to subsidize this sort of propaganda. More on this in a later entry but, suffice it to say, this time I made an exception. I will, as in this case, occasionally borrow a film from a friend. The premise of the movie seemed interesting, so I decided to locate a copy.

In typical Mel Gibson fashion, the movie has its fair share of needless gore and violence: a leopard tearing off the face of a man, infliction of a grazing head wound that allows for the victim to be semi-conscious while blood spurts from a severed cranial artery - the usual displays that lend absolutely nothing to the plotline. The storyline was also much as expected in Mel Gibson production: the good guy succeeds in his noble quest (i.e. to save his gravid wife and child for starvation or drowning in an abandoned well). The scenery and casting of the Mayan people and culture was magnificent. And, since the entire dialogue was in the native tongue, you truly felt transported back in time to the 17^{th century.}

Aside from the aesthetic renderings of this ancient culture, the poignancy of Apocalypto is its depiction of the savagery and cultural impact that enslavement carries with it. We see the peaceful hunter-gatherer village of our protagonist attacked and ravaged by the Mayan slave traders. The males were killed or captured and the females were ravaged. The defeated males were then bound and marched back to the decadent capital city in preparation for either slave labor or, if lucky, a rapid sacrifice to the gods.

The movie depicts two aspects of slavery that are often brushed over. First, ^{slavery has been a universal practice within cultures as diverse as world history can produce. The range of slavery - both geographically and chronologically - knows no bounds. Slavery is not, as the teachings of the prevailing academics would have us believe, a uniquely American phenomenon. It has been part of virtually every civilization on every continent and in every century - even in the current one.}

The second aspect of slavery that is often overlooked in depicting the horrors inflicted on the victims is the adverse effect that it has on the societies that practice it. In ^{Edward Gibbon’s classic "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," one of his key points was that the Roman Empire collapsed because of repeated attacks from without but, primarily, because of decadence within. He believed that the Romans had become lazy and soft from massive slave labor and "outsourcing" their fighting to paid mercenaries. Slave labor weakens civilizations because not only is it morally objectionable it is equally dehumanizing to societies which harbor it. Ironically enough, a contemporary of Gibbon, Alexis de Tocqueville had similar observations of the antebellum South. He wrote:}

"An old and sincere friend of America, I am uneasy at seeing Slavery retard her progress, tarnish her glory, furnish arms to her detractors, compromise the future career of the Union which is the guaranty of her safety and greatness, and point out beforehand to her, to all her enemies, the spot where they are to strike. As a man, too, I am moved at the spectacle of man's degradation by man, and I hope to see the day when the law will grant equal civil liberty to all the inhabitants of the same empire, as God accords the freedom of the will, without distinction, to the dwellers upon earth."

After the Civil War, the South stagnated for decades both industrially and agriculturally because of their indolence bred from decades of slavery. As the northern states rose vigorously to grasp the industrial revolution of the late 19th century, the South remained a backward and largely dependent region. This, primarily, from the moral decay that slavery inflicted on their society. Slavery is an evil to all sides of the scrofulous and degrading equation.

Thus, at the climax of Apocalypto, the vision of the Spanish ships off the coast heralded the death knell of the Mayan culture. Degraded and debauched by slavery, weakened from licentiousness and hedonism from within, the once-great Mayan Empire was to be no match from Spanish conquest.

As ^{Will Durant (who was quoted at the entrée to the movie) noted:}

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within."

Slavery – Roman, Mayan, or Antebellum – is an evil, thorough, complete and universally destructive.