Rigoberta and Her People

A Guatemalan Story

By Andrew Mandell

A young woman comes out of a land where dreadful things have been done to her family and people. Those that could help the most live in lands where such dreadful things are so unusual that they pay to see them in movies. They live, shall we say, uphill of the troubles. Not that these people on high ground have never heard that monsters walk the earth in the lower regions. Just the contrary. So much horror exists outside their safe zone that mere pain and injustice done to average lowland citizens seldom makes the news.

One of the queer rules is that those who live downhill seem to have time to clearly see their uphill neighbors while the uphillers rarely see anyone but themselves wherever they look. A young woman, Rigoberta Menchú, knows this. Rigoberta believes, in spite of her own experiences, that not all high grounders are unmovable and if they once saw her people they would not turn away. She must tell her story and with it as much of her people’s story as possible. The world throws people together; as it does she gets her chance. The book, I, Rigoberta Menchú, is fascinating and terrible. Memories and feelings are mixed with history and insights into Mayan culture to form a tapestry subjective yet solid as the historical reality they were woven in.

An anthropologist, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, interviews Rigoberta for seven days. She later edits and forms those talks into the young woman’s testimony. Through the thick mesh of observances and feelings, Rigoberta’s story can be a bit hard to follow in any strict chronological order. Born in the late fifties into a Quiché Indian family near San Miguel de Uspantán in northwestern Guatemala, Rigoberta leads the life typical of her people. Farmers with little usable land of their own must travel back and forth between their village and the plantations. They work in miserable conditions for little pay. As her village fights for more land of its own, young Rigoberta finds others willing to struggle alongside her people and eventually ends up working for the Committee for Campesino Unity.

Tragedies begin to rapidly accumulate as the Guatemalan government reacts viciously. Rigoberta walks us through her most painful memories, memories similar to thousands of others in Guatemala. Hiding very little of her rage and conflicted feelings, she lays many things on the table that leave her vulnerable to criticism. From her brother’s burning and death to her father’s murder at a demonstration to the kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder of her mother, Rigoberta is not merely reciting history.

Maybe that is why hers is just the sort of story that bypasses the newsrooms and finds its way into all sorts of living rooms where uphill folks seem to have time to think. This puts the high-ground residents in an embarrassing position. The leaders of the uphill worlds have often thumped their chests and made paper proclamations of how they would frown deeply towards anyone committing the sort of horrors that the leaders of Rigoberta’s nation have been involved in. Awkwardly, many of the bloodiest hands involved in Guatemala often have been found attached to leaders warmly embraced by the high grounders themselves.

Her story becomes even less desirable to discuss when the wise old guard uphill begin speaking in ominous tones about security and the uphill society’s dependency on the lowlands staying low. But it is too late. Too many people have begun to see the true picture of Rigoberta’s people. This has made Rigoberta officially worthy of having a shadow cast over her character. She has turned heads towards Guatemala and those heads must once more be turned the other way or business as usual might become impossible. The game begins.

Enter anthropologist David Stoll, who steps forward with Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Stoll claims affinity with Rigoberta and the struggle against the military, but states he is compelled by his research to question her integrity.

Stoll goes over Rigoberta’s story piece by piece, spending the next ten years studying her testimony. He researches and talks to people, trying to determine how her story matches up to his findings. He compares her narrative to his collection of information and finds (surprise, surprise) differences. These differences then are used to launch his message to the world: Rigoberta Menchú had ideologies and hurts that colored her testimony (surprise, surprise). The guerrillas she at times supported were not always the saviors of the people, and many times their actions brought more suffering for the people. As the proverb goes, war is a mess and there are no purely good sides.

The recently released report from the Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) acknowledges clear instances of guerrilla crimes. However, it is equally as clear that the foundation, will, strategy, and engine of the horrors belongs to the state.1 “Using the National Security Doctrine as its justification, and acting in the name of anti-communism, crimes were committed which include the kidnapping and assassination of political activists, students, trade unionists and human rights advocates, all categorized as ‘subversives’; the forced disappearance of political and social leaders and poor peasants; and the systematic use of torture.” 2 The CEH paints a portrait of a state turned violently inward, where even the judicial system was a major player facilitating the violence.

Throughout the report it becomes obvious that escalation of repression and violence backed those hoping for change into a desperate corner. Often, calmer voices were forever silenced and the powerful, nonviolent protests met with deadly force.3 This is not to excuse any human rights violations by the guerrillas, but when a state crushes down its people and resorts to torture, mass kidnapping, and genocide to keep the advantage, it is primarily responsible for the environment that results. The extent of guerrilla excesses can be debated forever, but desperate people fight in desperate ways.

Stoll’s book was received by the high grounders with much attention. Newsrooms, recognizing a sound bite, ran it in the finest sorts of places. The extremists picked it up. The Center for the Study of Popular Culture launched a campaign to ban I, Rigoberta Menchú from school reading lists as Marxist lies.

Problems like those in Guatemala will never be contained in any single perspective, and there is a place for Stoll’s concerns. Accuracy in testimony is important and exaggeration is not without a cost. Stoll has a right to question whether the peasants are being coerced or are choosing freely to work with the guerrillas. Many students of Guatemala, however, are taking issue with his analysis.4 Numerous essays were written by Guatemalan experts trying to be heard over the voices using Stoll’s book for reactionary purposes.

Many who have spent their lives working on this issue are desperately trying to set this back into the historical context from which it has been removed.5 Neither Stoll nor serious students of Guatemala question the main points of Rigoberta’s testimony. Historically, land distribution in Guatemala has been outrageously disproportionate, with the large Mayan population basically left to dig for the scraps. The life of Ms. Menchú’s people has been harsh and trying by any standard. Her father, mother, and many other family members were brutally killed in Guatemala during what has perhaps been the worst genocide in Central America in the twentieth century. Truth Commission reports6 identify the military as responsible for 93 percent of the 100,000 political deaths7 during this period of struggle, a number which may be conservative.

These powerful circumstances must define and undergird all other discussions of the events. As the Guatemala Scholars Network points out, Ms. Menchú was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize only because she went through these horrors, still less because of any of the details debated by Stoll, interesting as they may be. Rigoberta Menchú received the Nobel Peace Prize because “she experienced these things and they did not break her. Instead they made her a political activist struggling on college campuses, in church basements, in refugee camps from Chiapas to Thailand, in the United Nations, and in the battered justice system of Guatemala for human rights.”8

Should it be surprising to anyone that the memories disclosed by different victims of an atrocity might contain the marks of varying perspective and distance? Must we deny a survivor’s testimony at the first sign that the pain and the damage may have caused some mild distortions? This is not about ignoring the facts in favor of subjectivity, this is about the objective truth that overwhelming injustice and terror cannot be recorded like a voter’s poll.

Frequently Stoll simply just missed the obvious. As a brief example, he alleges that Rigoberta’s account of witnessing her younger brother Petrocinio’s public burning in Chajul is a fabrication. Stoll finds a longtime resident of the town who denies knowledge of any public burning in Chajul at all. In addition, Stoll has sources who witnessed Petrocinio’s equally brutal death at a slightly later date. However, independent human rights records do report a public burning in Chajul at a time that Rigoberta’s family very well could have been present.

Rigoberta’s testimony may hold the key to the rest of the puzzle. She tells how only her mother can recognize her brother among the prisoners; she herself is not sure. Why? The prisoners, who are about to be burned alive, have been tortured to the point of disfigurement. It seems odd to her that the boy believed to be her brother seems not to know them. Her grieving, terrified mother is sure.9 The possibility exists that some other mother’s son was burned to death in the family’s presence, but who has the gall to fault the objectivity of a mother and a sister tormented with a “disappeared” child.

I, Rigoberta Menchú may have some problems, but was it ever meant to be the exacting history some wish to discredit? When Rigoberta came to Paris and allowed anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray to record her testimony, Guatemala was out of the news and under the knife. For the safety of those still in danger many things could not be told.

Yet there is little in her stories that cannot be found in the blunt words of the Truth Commission reports and the history of her people. Listen to the opening words of I, Rigoberta Menchú.

My name is Rigoberta Menchú. I am twenty-three years old. This is my testimony. I didn’t learn it from a book and I didn’t learn it alone. I’d like to stress that it’s not only my life, it’s also the testimony of my people. It’s hard for me to remember everything that’s happened to me in my life since there have been many very bad times but, yes, moments of joy as well. The important thing is that what has happened to me has happened to many other people too: My story is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.10

Rigoberta has continued to work long and hard in the human rights movement since her Peace Prize was awarded. The Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation was set up with the award money and continues to be involved in Guatemala.

Why has a whole century’s worth of Central American grief been overlooked or upstaged by Lewinsky-like infotainment? Our voices should join those like Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American citizen raped and tortured in Guatemala in 1989, who is seeking full disclosure from our own government of their complicity and knowledge of these events. The judgment must begin in our own house. Once we remove the plank in our own eyes we can offer to evaluate our neighbor’s.

Along with the Guatemala Scholars Network, we ask why Stoll’s story merited front-page coverage in major news outlets when the 1998 findings of the Catholic Church’s Truth Commission, presented by Bishop Juan Gerardi, did not receive this kind of attention? Nor did the assassination of Bishop Gerardi two days after the report’s release get much coverage.11 The actions of the principalities and powers may not be as surprising as they are sad, but what about the rest of us? Why do we know so little about these people who died beneath our noses? And finally, for the believers among us, what place do we hold in all this? Who are the “least of these”12 in Guatemala? If the city on the hill can’t hide, it better not be caught on the wrong side of His little ones because their angels are always before the face of the Father (Matt. 18:10).

Endnotes: 1. The CEH report is on-line at http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/
2. http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/report/english/conc2.html Paragraph 83.
3. http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/report/english/conc2.html Paragraph 84.
4. http://www.cs.org/AVoices/articles/LevelFour-Grandin http://www.cs.org/AVoices/articles/LevelFour-Sommer.htm http://www.cs.org/AVoices/articles/LevelFour-Beverley
5. Ibid. 6. http://www.fhrg.org/truth5.htm
7. http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/report/english/conc2.html “Acts of violence attributable to the guerrillas represent 3% of the violations registered by the CEH. This contrasts with 93% committed by agents of the State, especially the Army” (Paragraph 128). 8. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/GSN/nelson.htm
9. I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, ed. Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, trans. Ann Wright (London: Verso, 1984), 176-179. 10. Ibid., 1.
11. http://diana.law.yale.edu/cehg/pr-eng.shtml 12. Matthew 25:45