I missed that it opened on Dec. 8. I'm sure you saw that there is a prayer in the movie to a "Mother of Mercy," when the children are left abandoned as the prisoners are taken away. There was probably a goddess in Mayan beliefs, although I didn't know this.
The Western civilization reference is only at the end, when the ships appear. There is sudden calm, as both pursuers and pursued stop in their tracks. The men on the ships are just sitting or standing there calmly. Gibson leaves it to us to breathe a sigh of relief.
Although I know the white man was not a total blessing to the natives, to say the least, Columbus's diaries reveal that he was on a mission from God, which is conveniently left out of all elementary school teaching on the subject. Europeans brought Christianity to the New World and that is a fact that eclipses their aberrant brutalities.
Yes that prayer to the "Mother of Mercy" is the one I think is the key to the story. I looked up the Mayan pantheon and didn't find any kind of analog to Our Lady although I think the woman names Ixchal.
The Spanish while present are not characters. The sole thing they do is bring Christ. I guess you could say that bringing Christ brought judgment on the Aztec/Mayans. The Spanish or Western civ. is the enemy that the Aztec/Mayan were turned over to but that's not in the movie. What is shown is that the culture of life slips back into the woods, safe but not yet born.
The imagery I think is what's important to the movie and maybe why Gibson chose this particular material. I really think this is an anti-abortion film. The human sacrifice scene in the temple is Gibson's version of pictures of bloody aborted babies and the culture of death that produces it. Therefore if we are western civilization I didn't see Gibson saying we are better than the Aztec/Mayans but rather analogous to it.
I agree completely about Columbus and the way our history is taught now. I would go further and say there is still too much anti-Catholic (much of it turned into generic anti-Christian) propaganda masquerading as history. The true story of the Church in the New World (or even in the US) is a tale yet to be told.