# Maya Are People

Many explorer-adventurer hosts of historical/cultural films viewed their subjects as "objects" (e.g. C. Ernest Cadle and Carveth Wells), their colonialist attitudes seeping precariously through the safety-film. Not so the wonderful and forgotten Les Mitchel, who arrives in the Lacandon area of the Yucatan, shows the chief Obregon K’in (of Agua Azul village, Palenque) how to fire a pistol, takes him on a plane-ride to view his ancestral ruins at Palenque. Much of this magnificent film was shot at Lacanha Chan Sayab. Viewers can find much to like about this filmmaker-adventurer, lost to history. Overly-sensitive individuals will be put-off, no doubt at Mitchel’s politically-incorrect use of cigarette-as-tool, burning the leave of a jungle plant to show its reflex to heat. At the end of the film, Mitchel delivers a heartfelt plea to save the culture from encroachment. All our attempts at finding any information on the filmmaker have failed.

- Kind: Educational
- Year: 1951
- Runtime: 22 min
- By: Les Mitchel
- Genres: Education
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/maya_are_people)
- Licence or status: none stated by the archive
- Who can watch: Kids profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/maya_are_people?play=1)