ABSTRACT
The Yucatan, which includes the famed Riviera Maya, has undoubtedly become one of the prime locations for international travel. This chapter explores the fascination with the Mayas, and Maya cosmology, as it has been represented since the initial modern European depiction of the civilization's ruins in the late 1800s. Mayas have been portrayed and represented in popular culture by archaeologists, historians, filmmakers, politicians, artists, etc., in multiple manners. The chapter utilizes Mel Gibson's recent Maya epic, Apocalypto, to explore the manners in which notions of historical authenticity, popular culture, and notions of archaeological heritage have been used in recent Western representations. Several scholars have critiqued Apocalypto as a neo-colonial attempt at doing visually what was historically done to the Maya population at the onset of the European conquest of the continent, and for some is still being done. The Maya region and Yucatan peninsula, as all tourist landscape, are always a space of negotiation, conflict, and contradiction.
