Chi Canul serving as a linguist on the production.
SPANISH SOAP OPERA MOVIE
The 2006 Mel Gibson movie “Apocalypto,” set during the decline of the Mayan empire, was almost entirely in Maya, with Mr. There are occasional documentaries and Hollywood movies dubbed in Maya. “But many of my friends are wondering why they didn’t learn Maya as children.”Įntertainment offerings in Maya are sparse. “Parents often say, ‘Learn Maya for what? It’s better to speak English,’ ” said José Manuel Poot Cahun, 26, who plays the role of the scheming brother and grew up speaking both Maya and Spanish. During the filming, in fact, he often needed an interpreter to get his point across. Cárcamo estimated that 80 percent of the village speaks it as a first language. Fewer parents seem to be teaching their children Maya, though Mr. Many people said the cycle of loss and gain resonated with them, as dozens of young people have left to work in nearby beach resort hotels or in the United States. I watch a lot of telenovelas, but none like this.” “I could not believe it was in our language. “We should never forget our origins,” said María Elena Tuz Kuvil, 40, who sat leaning forward for nearly the entire screening. “Telenovelas are popular in the Mayan communities, too, but they are not presented in their language or their reality.” “We wanted to show you could still be proudly Mayan even in this modern world with mass media and digital communication,” said Bruno Cárcamo, the veteran film and television producer who made the show and previously oversaw a documentary on fading indigenous languages in Mexico. In the telenovela’s case, the cycle is a metaphor for life’s ever-changing chapters. In reality, one cycle ended and another began. Or his childhood sweetheart, who has taken an interest in his brother.īaktun (pronounced bak-TOON) refers to a megacycle of the Mayan Long Count calendar and was deliberately chosen as the title in light of the attention it received last December, when widespread misinterpretations fanned on the Internet led people to claim that the end of the world was nigh. It has standard ingredients of the form: greed, betrayal, family squabbles, unrequited love and acting that would probably not get the attention of the Emmy academy.īut “Baktun” is as much a cultural journey as one of the heart, using a contemporary story line that blends Mayan ceremonies and beliefs with the tale of a young man who emigrates to New York City to work, distances himself from family and community - even becoming rusty in his language - and eventually returns and learns the value of preserving the community and not forgetting his roots.
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