Christopher L. Bennett
World History III
Voice of
the Oppressed:
Portrayal of Quiché Life in Rigoberta Menchú=s Manifesto
In 1983, anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray published I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, a book constructed from a series of interviews with Rigoberta Menchú, a Quiché woman and leading Guatemalan revolutionary. The first-person narrative was presented as Menchú=s life story. Later scholarship, particularly that of David Stoll, has revealed that the supposedly autobiographical text is more akin to a fictional work based on a composite of many Quiché individuals= experiences, a common practice of Mayan storytelling which Menchú here uses to explain and justify her cause.[1] Though it cannot be treated as a memoir, the text reveals much about the ideologies which drove Menchú and her perceptions of her community, the ethnically-mixed ladinos, and the Guatemalan state.
Menchú presents herself as the voice of Aall poor Guatemalans,@ and her narrative as Athe reality of a whole people.@[2] Primarily, though, she speaks on behalf of the Quiché, an indigenous ethnic group of Mayan heritage. Much of the book is an explication of Quiché cultural practices and beliefs, the subject matter which presumably was of the greatest interest to Burgos-Debray. Though there are no grounds for doubting Menchú=s desire to educate others about her people=s customs, even these anthropologically-oriented sections are strongly politicized. Menchú presents a highly idealized view of her people and their history. She paints them as a peaceful people living in harmony with nature. AWe don=t even like killing animals,@ she says. ABecause we don=t like killing. There is no violence in the Indian community.@[3] The Quiché she depicts are tolerant and accepting of everything in nature, even human variants like homosexuality:
AWhat=s good about our way of life is that everything is considered part of nature. So an animal which didn=t turn out right is part of nature, so is a harvest that didn=t give a good yield. We say you shouldn=t ask for more than you can receive. That=s... a phenomenon which arrived with the foreigners.@[4]
This is not the only instance where Menchú uses the discussion of her people to criticize non-Indian or ladino culture. Her explication of Quiché marriage customs includes a good deal of political rhetoric criticizing the harm Athe White Man@ has brought, presented as part of the wedding ceremony. This includes a mythologized, idealized view of the pre-Columbian past:
A>...Our forefathers told us that our old people used to live until they were a hundred and twenty-five, and now we die at forty or thirty....= ...They blame the White Man for coming and teaching us to kill....
A>Before we weren=t divided into communities and languages. We understood each other. Who is to blame for all this? The White Man who came to our country.... Animals used not to bite us before, but now even that is something which happens.=@[5]
The reader may wonder whether this chimerical image of Europeans as the bringers of all hardship is actually a part of present-day Quiché rituals or an interpolation by Menchú. In either case it reveals much about the mindset of Menchú and her fellow revolutionaries.
Menchú=s image of the ladinos is not so purely negative. She criticizes the Guatemalan society to which they belong more than the people themselves: A>The rich are bad. But not all ladinos are bad.=@[6] She criticizes those ladinos who profit by exploiting the poor: AA bad ladino is one who knows how to... steal from the people.@[7] However, she describes the ladino community as holding ethnically or culturally pure AIndians@ in contempt, resenting any comparison between the two groups. Menchú suggests that this attitude is deliberately inculcated by the Asystem which tries to divide us,@ the oppressive state which seeks to prevent the poor classes from achieving solidarity.[8] Although she calls herself an AIndianist,@ she also seeks to cast herself as a spokesperson for Aall poor Guatemalans,@ as cited above. (It is worth noting that she explains the original mixing of races as the result of rape by Europeans, not acknowledging the possibility of consensual interactions.[9])
A related point which Menchú makes is that the Spanish-language educational system plays a key role in assimilating indigenous persons and making them forget their cultural identity. The narrator persona which Menchú assumes in the text was kept out of school by her father, who is described as saying: A>[I]f I put you in a school, they=ll make you forget your class, they=ll turn you into a ladino.=@[10] This is potentially revealing, given that Menchú actually was educated in boarding schools. Perhaps her desire to identify herself as a symbol of her people is an attempt to make amends for growing away from them.
To Menchú, the Guatemalan state is a clear enemy, a regime unanswerable to the people and indistinguishable from the exploitative landowners.[11] She essentially defines it as a foreign, colonizing power: AIt wasn=t the government of our country.@[12] She describes government atrocities in gory detail to explain the necessity of taking up arms against the state. In her text, the rebels are the common villagers, the united Quiché community taking grassroots action, and pursuing a far less violent approach than their enemies. They are reluctant or even unable to use firearms.[13] On two occasions, she describes them capturing Indian soldiers and convincing them to see reason and recognize the wrongness of their acts.[14]
The one part of non-indigenous culture she embraces is Catholicism, though she does not see it as a replacement for indigenous beliefs[15] and is critical of the Church for supporting the government in violation of Christian principles.[16] She interprets the Bible as a source of inspiration and precedent for her people=s struggle against oppression, citing Moses and David in particular. She acknowledges Christ=s peaceful, Ahumble@ approach but says that A[i]n those days, there was no other way of defending himself or Christ would have used it against his oppressors,@ perhaps suggesting that he would have used more bellicose methods had they been available.[17] This is certainly a distinctive interpretation.
Clearly Rigoberta Menchú feels that her cause is a just one, and that she fights on behalf of her entire people against indefensible oppression. Whether the people she speaks for genuinely approve of her advocacy or not, whether the people she fights for feel protected or endangered by her actions, she is seeking to improve the lives of the Guatemalan poor and to preserve the culture of the Quiché people. Nonetheless, I, Rigoberta Menchú is a work of polemic and political advocacy which needs to be examined critically with its greater context in mind.
[1]From www.amazon.com reviews of I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (London: Verso, 1997) and David Stoll=s Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (1999; further bibliographical information unavailable).
[2]Menchú, 1.
[3]Ibid., 202.
[4]Ibid., 60.
[5]Ibid., 68-9.
[6]Ibid., 119.
[7]Ibid., 24.
[8]Ibid., 165ff.
[9]Ibid., 189.
[10]Ibid., 190.
[11]Ibid., 103-5 passim.
[12]Ibid., 26.
[13]Ibid., 139.
[14]Ibid., 138-9, 147-9.
[15]Ibid., 80-1.
[16]Ibid., 245.
[17]Ibid., 131-3.