The Mexican authorities threatened legal action this week over a video featuring the YouTube sensation MrBeast at ancient Maya ruins, suggesting that a production company had violated an agreement for filming at the site.
The video, titled “I Explored 2,000 Year Old Ancient Temples,” was posted online on Saturday and had been viewed more than 60 million times by the end of the week.
“Everything you guys are seeing now the Mayans didn’t want us to see,” says a voice during the first moments of the 15-minute clip. “Nobody gets to go where we’re going.”
They were going to the Maya city of Chichén Itzá, an archaeological site on the Yucatán Peninsula with structures more than 1,000 years old, that is considered a wonder of the world and is visited every year by two million tourists.
Visitors are welcome to roam the ruins of city with a few conditions, including no climbing on the pyramids or staying past nightfall.
The video featuring MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, shows him inside of ruins, at an archaeological site at night and clambering up a pyramid, with a voice saying, “I’m climbing these stairs like a dog.” Toward the end of the video, he displays candy under his Feastables brand, which he calls “the only Mayan-approved snack on the planet.”
Not long after the video was posted online, it provoked outrage among some Mexicans, who noted that Mexico’s archaeological authority, the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, forbids some of what the video appeared to show.
The controversy drew even the attention of President Claudia Sheinbaum who, when asked about it, said on Wednesday she wanted a report about what had happened.
“The information is that he had permission from the INAH, and now we need the INAH to tell us under what conditions this permission was granted,” she said. “And if the permission was violated, then what sanctions will be imposed.”
Mexico’s culture secretary, Claudia Curiel, went further, saying on social media on Thursday that the authorities were weighing legal action because Full Circle Media, the local producing company representing Mr. Donaldson in Mexico, had not been authorized to publish “false information or the use of images of heritage sites for commercial advertising.”
The anthropology institute soon posted a statement saying it condemned those who violated “the terms of granted authorizations” and those who “with commercial ambition and aims of private profit, dare to distort the value of archaeolgical zones that are he legacy of our original cultures and the pride of our nation.”
A representative for Mr. Donaldson declined to comment on the record. A representative for Full Circle Media could not immediately be reached for comment.
The video filmed in Mexico resembled in some ways another video Mr. Donaldson posted this year, showing him visiting the pyramids of Giza. In that video, Mr. Donaldson said he had gained “unrestricted access to all the great pyramids of Egypt” and had gone into “places that are literally illegal to enter.” He also displays MrBeast branded toys that he says “are flying off the shelves.”
On Monday, INAH clarified that the video filmed in Mexico “clearly underwent extensive audiovisual post-production and alludes to events that did not occur.” Those included people spending the night in the site, descending from a helicopter into the ruins and handling a mask that, the institute said, was actually a contemporary replica.
It was also not clear how much of the video was filmed at Chichén Itzá as opposed to other sites in the Yucatán Peninsula, where archaeologists have found many other ruins.
Mr. Donaldson also had defenders, however, including Gov. Layda Sansores of Campeche State, who thanked the influencer on social media for visiting. She said on Wednesday that complaints about the video should be sent to her office, saying, “We assume responsibility for showing the world the cultural and natural wealth that defines us.”
The video set off a sprawling debate on Mexican social media about how it presented Mexico’s history, whether it presented a romanticized vision of archaeology and who was able to gain such privileged access to national heritage sites.
Nonetheless, INAH tried to put a positive spin on the controversy. “Despite the distorted information provided by the YouTuber,” it said, “the dissemination of this type of material may motivate young audiences in Mexico and around the world to learn about our ancestral cultures and visit archaeological sites.”
Elda Cantú, an editor in the Mexico City bureau, writes El Times, a newsletter in Spanish. She also reports on current events in Mexico and Central America.
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