I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman In Guatemala

And that's when my consciousness was born"
By sally tarbox on 22 December 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
The autobiography of a young Guatemalan peasant woman who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Menchu was an uneducated Indian girl, brought up between the family home, subsistence farming in the Altiplano, and the fincas (plantations), where the family would spend some months earning a little money in almost slave-like conditions.
Menchu's story took place from the 1960s to 80s; she tells of the very traditional Mayan lifestyle - its happiness and security but also the way Indians were dismissed by the Ladino (Spanish) population as almost a sub-species. Malnutrition, defrauding of the workers, and horrific accounts of peasants killed on show more the fincas by the indiscriminate use of pesticides, make for grim reading.
As government-backed landowners muscled in, trying to seize the Indians' lands, Menchu and her family got caught up in the peasant struggle for rights in a corrupt regime. Murders and violence became commonplace as the authorities tried to silence them...

Menchu has a powerful story to tell. Illiterate till adulthood, she narrates her account in interviews with an anthropologist. The result is an interesting autobiography, but one that would have been much more readable if given a literary touch. show less

Rigoberta nació en San Miguel Uspantán, Departamento El Quiché, en Guatemala. Hace 23 años nació, y el castellano lo aprendió hace tres, sin libros, maestros ni escuela. Lo aprendió con su voluntad feroz por romper el silencio en el que viven los indios de América Latina. Se apropió el lenguaje del colonizador, no para integrarse a una historia que nunca la incluyó, sino para hacer valer, mediante la palabra, una cultura que es parte de esa historia. "Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú", dice llanamente, y en esa frase escueta se escucha la voz de todo un pueblo indígena que ha decidido liberarse. Sus palabras no son meramente de denuncia y de protesta. Son ante todo una enérgica afirmación de una manera de ser, de un show more derecho a ser lo que se es: una cultura específica, una comprensión del universo, una interacción con la naturaleza. La historia de Rigoberta hace eco a la historia de todas las comunidades indígenas de América Latina que han decidido arrebatarle la palabra al opresor. Cover show less

Here's the remarkable autobiography of Rigoberta Menchú, an activist those fight became a whole symbol when it comes to human rights (she received the Nobel Prize for Peace back in 1992).

In 1982, while in exile from her native country (Guatemala) she was welcomed by the ethnologist Elisabeth Burgos in her home in Paris, who wanted to interview her. This book is the result of such meetings, and where Rigoberta Menchú tells her story, a story which make for a powerful read, painful at times, yet always full of hope and strength, echoing that of Indian people all across the South American continent.

She describes their way of life, their traditions, their rites and customs. However, this is not about anthropology. This is, indeed and show more above all, political dynamite, exploding at the face of those ignoring the problems faced by indigenous people across Latin America.

Countries ethnically divided and still impacted by colonial mentalities, we discover the horrors of discriminations, the scorn Indians are victims of, exploited, forced into long working hours in 'fincas' and for a meagre salary. Children work as hard as adults, get sick easily (she lost a brother to malnutrition) and, poorly educated if at all, have no escape but working as prostitute or maids for wealthy, racist, families.

There is hope, though. Illiterate, not even speaking Spanish, many dared then to fight back and campaign. She talks about their struggles, from organising protests to guerrilla warfare, and those actions would spread across the country, leading to a brutal repression, and, even, massacres (her parents and a bother were executed), a repression which ultimately saw her fleeing into exile.

This is a powerful book, enraging, at times very difficult to read because of the horrors described, but which constitute an invaluable testimony about the fate of Indian people, as told by a very courageous woman indeed. show less

It's too bad that it was discovered that much of what she said about herself turned out to be untrue. BUT as she said, it's the story of her people, whether it was her or another Indian Woman the context is real and largely ignored. Everyone should be required to read. It's the global learning and understanding that we need.

The most influential reading of my adult life, by far. I cried and vomited as I read this book in college (that's how much of a reaction I had), and it may have contributed most to my ideals and interest in global activism. Unfortunately, I haven't followed through with most of my intentions to save the world, as I've given in to the allure of the typical American family life. :(

“I’m still keeping secret what I think no-one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can found out all our secrets.” Indian society in Guatemala is filled with secrets. How many and what they are *about*, much less *are* is merely alluded to by Rigaberta as she recounts her life story and struggles. The narrative reads quite literally as if Rigaberta were telling her story directly to the reader. In so doing, she really tells us three stories: 1) Indian community life cycles, 2) Rigaberta’s life and work and 3) the history of the Guatemalan peasant revolution in the 60s-80s.

At the time of the telling, Rigaberta had only been speaking Spanish for three years, and deliberately show more learned it to better unite separate Indian communities with distinct languages and dialects against her and their common enemies: the Guatemalan government and rich finca landlords, who readily practiced discrimination, hostility, rape, land takeovers, massacres, and torture. She was never trained to read or write.

I expect that this (effective) primary source will be excellent fodder for many secondary sources that may make it more digestible. I recognize the need for Rigaberta’s voice to come through, but perhaps it could help broaden her audience by having a professional writer or biographer assist with smoothing the organization and clarity and such.

The raw power and emotion evident by what Rigoberta has to say makes this an important resource in bringing these issues to the international community. Though many secrets are still kept, this book is rich for curiosity seekers, social scientists, folks interested in labor and peasant movements, Latin American Indians, etc. show less

I bought Me Llamo Rioberta Menchú y así me nació la Conciencia at a used bookstore over the summer and decided to read it a few weeks ago. I don't read much non-fiction, but occasionally I read biographies and autobiographies when they are connected to other areas that I'm interested in. I've been buying and reading a lot of "indigenista" novels, and wanted to connect the fiction that I'm reading to a real-life account of indigenous life in Central America. Her story is filled with the poverty, despair and death that were her family's lot in a Guatemala where the indigenous population was marginalized to a greater degree than I thought possible in the contemporary world. Interspersed with her personal story are chapters explaining show more different traditions and beliefs of her people, members of the Quiché indigenous group. She explained why her people strive to conserve their traditions, and how much prejudice and oppression the indigenous majority experiences at the hands of the ladino (mestizo and hispanicized) population of Guatemala. I found the explanations of her peoples´ belief system and its incorporation with the Catholic beliefs that were brought to Guatemala to be some of the most interesting parts of the book, because she explains with such clarity how the indigenous people of Guatemala were able to accept the Catholic conception of God into their own religious beliefs, and also how they were able to maintain so much of their indigenous heritage and religion even as they did accept the church into their communities.

As far as her personal narrative, it tells of her childhood in the countryside and of her family´s life, spent between the plantations of the coast and their home in the rural wilderness of Guatemala. As she grows older, she begins to follow her father´s footsteps into politics, and travels around her country, organizing people and especially women against the increasingly violent tactics of the government and the military. She sees some of her family members die some horrific deaths, and the atrocities that she describes are shocking. It´s sad to remember how recent events like this were to the present, and to think that, surely, groups of people in power are continuing to treat poor people in horrible ways throughout the world. Reading this, you hope that nobody would have to live through what Rigoberta Menchú experienced. It´s amazing that she was able to tell her story, and I appreciated reading it.

After I was done, I read some articles online about Rigoberta Menchú. She may have altered the truth in terms of a lot of the specifics of her book, and also painted her family as being poorer and more marginalized than they really were. Nonetheless, nobody discounts the suffering that she experienced, and her loss of many family members to an oppressive and unjust regime. I was a little disappointed to read that she, like many other autobiographers, felt the need to embellish the truth, but I still felt that her book was worth reading, especially for the ethnographic information that she conveys with such passion and depth. show less