I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala
Menchu, Rigoberta. 1987. I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Verso.
Rating:
1
Summary:
The book is primarily an autobiography, but it was derived uniquely. According to the introduction, Rigoberta Menchu, the subject of the biography, recounted her life story to Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, an anthropologist, during a visit to France. Burgos-Debray then transcribed and translated the stories, edited them, and compiled them into this biography.
The book is mostly chronological, following Menchu’s life growing up in what she refers to as the “altiplano” – the mountains where her family’s farm and permanent home was – as well as her family’s regular trips to the “fincas,” which were farms owned by wealthy landowners who paid Guatemalan Indians to work the crops. As conditions worsened for Menchu, her family, and other Indians and poor “Ladinos” (mixed Spanish and Indian individuals) in the 1970s, Menchu finds her entire family caught up in the revolutionary conflict that includes incessant raids by the military on villages. According to her story, Menchu’s father, Vicente Menchu, was the first to get heavily involved in organizing the poor and raising consciousness. Rigoberta soon follower her father and became involved in organizing the poor in an effort to raising their standard of living and to find ways to clean up the corruption and greed that was the Guatemalan government of the time. The Menchu activism eventually leads to the horrific deaths of her younger brother, father, and mother – all recounted in gory detail. Eventually Rigoberta feels so threatened by the government and military that she flees the country, finding sanctuary in Mexico for a time. Once the conflict cooled, she returned to lead an organization that bears her father’s name and continues his cause.
In addition to the biographical account, Menchu details many of the customs and beliefs of the Guatemalan Indians. These forays into cultural anthropology include discussions of: growing and harvesting food, tending and herding animals, rites of passage – in particular moving into adulthood and marriage, death ceremonies, and communal bonding. There is no real rhyme or reason as to when the cultural descriptions are presented, but they do sometimes tie back into the story.
Review:
Unfortunately, Menchu’s account was later found to have been embellished, exaggerated, and/or made up whole cloth. A clear treatise on the lies and controversies surrounding this biography can be found on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigoberta_Menchu . Apparently some of the stories and accounts related in the book piqued the attention of actual anthropologists who then made a variety of attempts to verify the stories and accounts. In their efforts to verify the stories, these researchers found that the actual story is much less dramatic and far less compelling – Menchu didn’t grow up as poor as she claims and there were no fiery immolations, though she did lose members of her family during the revolution.
Knowing ahead of time that the book was controversial, I read it from that perspective and found a variety of indicators that most likely pass muster unless you know what to look for. For instance, on page 187 she mentions that, in the case of her father’s death, she “…can’t invent my own personal version from my imagination.” But in the case of her brother’s death, that is exactly what she did. Reading the book with an awareness that it was not true highlighted comments like this as they seem to be internal justifications that are designed to prevent people from questioning Menchu’s account. She claims she can’t make stuff up, but she does. I’m just guessing here, but I think the reason she forgoes giving many details of her father’s death is because there were a lot of people involved who could easily refute anything that was untrue. That was clearly not the case for her brother’s and mother’s deaths.
Menchu uses a slightly different approach in talking about her mother’s death, “And I want to say in advance that I have in my hands details of every step of the rape and torture suffered by my mother. I don’t want to reveal too many things because it will implicate some companeros who are still doing their work very well” (p. 198). This statement is also intriguing in light of the information that Menchu embellished her story. Menchu mentions that she has all sorts of information about her mother’s torturous rape and death, but that she doesn’t want to reveal it all. However, when you read the account, it is pretty clear that it is not only fictitious but unknowable as much of the time her mother was either alone or guarded by a single individual. Unless the individual guard(s) came directly to Menchu and recounted every gory detail and unless someone actually went back to where her mother died and followed the decomposition process over a lengthy period of time, it would be impossible for Menchu to have the information she does. Her mother’s death may have been horrific, but embellishing it with fiction is really no way to honor that death.
Another characteristic of the book that might lead someone to question it is the none-too-subtle Marxist and feminist undertones that periodically surface in the biography. For instance, near the end Menchu says, “The Bible taught me that. I tried to explain this to a Marxist companera, who asked me how could I pretend to fight for revolution being a Christian. I told her that the whole truth is not found in the Bible, but neither is the whole truth in Marxism, and that she had to accept that. We have to defend ourselves against our enemy but, as Christians, we must also defend our faith within the revolutionary process” (p. 246). Here, Menchu is painted as defending Marxism while maintaining a very liberal Christian perspective. Additionally, while Menchu seems manifestly okay with the machismo and patriarchy that is rampant in traditional Latin America, she also disavows marriage and having kids and argues that men and women are equal and should be on equal footing at all times, especially in social movements. Ironically, I don’t disagree with a lot of these sentiments, but I still find their inclusion in this book to be something other than coincidental.
In short, the book is vague enough that it can get away with the lies, but it also gives some specifics to seem legitimate. It would be a very compelling – if occasionally wandering – story, if it were only true. As it stands, a careful reading of the text highlights many of the indicators that the book should not be taken as a forthright account of Rigoberta Menchu’s life. I wish I had known what I know now when I originally was required to read this in my women’s studies class at the University of Utah; that would have made for a very interesting discussion… Oh well.