Rigoberta Menchu Tum

Rigoberta Menchu Tum. I, Rigoberta Menchu. (1984). -

I, Rigoberta Menchu is a testimonial piece, a format of writing to which I am slowly growing accustomed. I have also read Reyita, but that work seems freer…less contrived. You can hear the echo of an old woman’s pride breaking through the barriers of machismo and civil unrest. Reading Menchu’s text, as told to Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, and translated through French, Spanish, and finally English (by Ann Wright), I am left wondering how much of the text truly belongs to the orator. The text, first of all, supposedly “allows the defeated to speak” (Burgos-Debray xi). This claim, along with Burgos-Debray’s claim that “her life story is an account of contemporary history rather than of Guatemala itself. It is in that sense that it is exemplary: she speaks for all the Indians of the American continent,” is troubling. Granted, the whole Spivak and her infamous subaltern have been played out more in more reruns than The Loveboat, but as I’ve learned from classroom and seminar experience, one cannot claim to speak for anyone else but one’s-self.  Indeed, for whom is Menchu allegedly speaking?

She creates a cultural context for her actions—the loss of 200,000 Indians in the civil war which began in 1961 and did not end until more than a decade after the publication of Menchu’s text. She contradicts herself as she draws on her El Quiché customs, claiming resistance to change but readily willing to adopt the missionary’s biblical text to create paradigms for resistance (is this to gain sympathy with the “Westerners”? Such that the eradication of simply “polytheistic” tribes, villages, etc. can be validated, as it was during the colonization of most African countries and most of the Caribbean and South Pacific? Does the adoption of Catholic method (which she in turn also criticizes fundamentally) reflect assimilation? At the same time is Menchu a feminist, let alone a freedom struggle writer? She is an orator, yes. But can testimony be considered “writing”? I plan to read John Beverley’s Testimonio very soon, and he may answer some questions I’ve been stoking. Menchu condones the gender roles perpetuated by Mayan custom—women must be made aware of reproductive responsibility at ten years of age. By twelve they are fully inducted into society. They must marry (even though Menchu manages to avoid this for some time). Perhaps this argument stems from my seat in Western privilege; perhaps in order for such a culture to survive these roles must be put into place. Perhaps we may argue that Menchu is a feminist because she breaks from this role (but yet still praises it) by not marrying in her youth, by branching out to aid other villages, by exiling herself, by orating her cultural biography.

What is interesting is when Menchu was attacked by David Stoll in his manuscript Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans, Stoll claimed that Menchu rejected the text and the editor (Burgos-Debray). She allegedly “attacked the editor of I, Rigoberta Menchú, the anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos. ‘It is a book by Elisabeth Burgos. It is not my work; it is a work that does not belong to me morally, politically, or economically.’ She accused Elisabeth of excluding her from the editorial process, depriving her of the royalties, and despoiling her of her testimony” (xi). If Menchu rejects her own testimonial, for which she received the Nobel Peace Prize and a $1.2 million grant…then what? My questions are not so much literary as they are reflective of my own dismantled assumptions of a text. I will read more.

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Another natural choice. My focus in Postcolonial embraces the Caribbean and Latin America. I know very little about Guatemala, but my current readings for Caribbean women writers have centered on Indian emigrants into Trinidad, such as Shani Mootoo and Ramabai Espinet. Her work is curious to me (or compelling, rather) because of the critical works urrounding her act of "testimony." My work in trauma studies has guided me through many theories on communal witnessing and testifying (including texts written by Leigh Gilmore), and how one can experience the trauma of another and be compelled to share that traumatic experience. A whole issue of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education from 2003 focuses on the controversy of "telling" and its "truth-making" (this is also interesting, considering the sudden growth of "false memory" and transference issues in the re-telling of trauma). Rigoberta's revelation of her witnessing, of her mother, father, and brother's disgrace and deaths at the hands of the Guatemalan army compelled her to become a member of the peace-seeking CUC. It was also useful to me to look into some historical works of the time, since this is clearly a case of witnessing and re-telling historical injustices. Also of interest are the anthropological texts which claim that she misrepresented her familial tragedies in order to expose the wrongs of the army:

[David] Stoll’s critical examination of Rigoberta’s autobiography, based on local interviews and documentary sources, shows that parts of her own and her family
history are not correct, even when she speaks as an eyewitness of events described. Stoll approves of her Nobel prize and has no question about the picture
of army atrocities which she presents. He says that her purpose in telling her story the way she did “enabled her to focus international condemnation on an institution
that deserved it, the Guatemalan army”. As an anthropologist who has studied the Mayan peasants, however, he feels that by inaccurately portraying the events in her
own village as representative of what happened in all such indigenous villages in Guatemala, she gives a misleading interpretation of the relationship of the Mayan
peasants to the revolutionary movement. Asked about Stoll’s allegations, Professor Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, declared that
the decision to award the prize to Menchú 'was not based exclusively or primarily on the autobiography', and he dismissed any suggestion that the Committee should consider revoking the prize. (Nobelprize.org)

My research into critical reflections on Rigoberta Menchu, the nobel laureate, have taken me mainly to academic journal articles. Evidently, her case plays a major role in a multitude of fields outside of feminism, including historical, trauma, and educational fields. I also looked into some of the websites available, including Nobelprize.org, which contains a brief biography but a number of useful links to outside works. Again, I have found an interview (transcribed this time), but dated (1993).

Sources

Gilmore, Leigh. "Jurisdictions: I, Rigoberta Menchu, The Kiss, and Scandalous Self-Representation in the Age of Memoir and Trauma."  Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 28:2 (Winter 2003): 695-718. EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Accessed January 16, 2005.  http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&an=8923808 [1].

Hooks, Margaret, ed. Guatemalan Women Speak. Introduction by Rigoberta Menchu Tum. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1991. 

Meiners, Erica R. "Exhibiting Authentic Ethnicities?: The Complexities of Identity, Experience, and Audience in (Educational) Qualitative Research." Race, Ethnicity & Education 4:3 (September 2001): 205-223. Accessed January 16, 2005. EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Purdue University, Lafayette, IN. http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&an=5122782 [2]. 

Menchu Tum, Rigoberta. Crossing Borders: An Autobiography. New York: Verso, 1998.

---. I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. London: Verso, 1987.

---. "Interviews with Leading Speakers: Nobel Pease Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum, A Plea for Global Education." Trans. Michael O'Callaghan. Global Vision: Communicating Sustainability. Global Vision Corporation. 1993. Accessed January 16, 2005. http://www.global-vision.org/interview/menchu.html [3].

Perera, Victor. Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy. Berkeley: California UP, 1993.

Peskin, Harvey. "Memory and Media: 'Cases' of Rigoberta Menchu and Binjamin Wilkomirski." Society 38:1 (November/December 2000): 39-46. EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Accessed January 16, 2005.  http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&an=3716483 [4]

"Rigoberta Menchu Tum." Nobelprize.org. Accessed January 16, 2005. http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1992/tum-bio.html [5].

Roman, Leslie G. "Conditions, Contexts, and Controversies of Truth-making: Rigoberta Menchu and the Perils of Everyday Witnessing and Testimonial Work." International Journal of Qualitiative Studies in Education (QSE) 16:3 (May 2003): 275-86. EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Accessed January 16, 2005.  http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&an=10837552 [6]

Smith, Dorothy E. "Rigoberta Menchu and David Stoll: Contending Stories." Journal of Qualitiative Studies in Education (QSE) 16:3 (May 2003): 287-305. EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Accessed January 16, 2005.  http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&an=10837552 [7].

Stoll, David. Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999.

Tierney, William G. "Beyond Translation: Truth and Rigoberta Menchu." International Journal of Qualitiative Studies in Education (QSE) 16:3 (May 2003): 103-13. EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Accessed January 16, 2005.   http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&an=3049194 [8]