The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy

The Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ" Controversy

I, Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ" at first seems like an autobiography, but that is not what it is meant to be. MenchÐ"Ñ" wrote the book as a testimony of her people's lives to be a voice for her people and show the world what is going on. There was a lot of controversy about whether Rigoberta deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, and if this book should be taught to students. There are allegations that she fabricated a lot of the story. People say that the book is not an accurate portrayal of her life. Considering that MenchÐ"Ñ" said, "I'd like to stress that it's not only my life, it's also the testimony of my people", the reader should know that this book was not meant to be an autobiography. MenchÐ"Ñ" powerfully explains the conflicts between Ladinos and Indians, landowners and peasants, the government and the resistance, men and women, and change and tradition. Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ" was born on January 9, 1959 to a poor Indian peasant family and raised in the Quiche branch of the Mayan culture. In her early years she helped with the family farm work, either in the northern highlands where her family lived, or on the Pacific coast, where both adults and children went to pick coffee on the big plantations. Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ" soon became involved in social reform activities through the Catholic Church, and became prominent in the women's rights movement when still only a teenager. Such reform work aroused considerable opposition in influential circles, especially after a guerilla organization established itself in the area. The MenchÐ"Ñ" family was accused of taking part in guerrilla activities and Rigoberta's father, Vicente, was imprisoned and tortured for allegedly having participated in the execution of a local plantation owner. After his release, he joined the recently founded Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In 1983, she told her life story to Elisabeth Burgos Debray. The book is called, I, Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ", it is an interesting document which attracted a lot of attention. In 1999 David Stoll claimed that Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ", winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, had inaccurate facts about herself in her 1983 testimony, the story that first brought her to world attention. Stoll also argued that liberal university professors who supported the Guatemalan resistance movement had embraced MenchÐ"Ñ"'s story without question. When Stoll's book was published The New York Times ran a front page article questioning MenchÐ"Ñ"'s reliability and the controversy entered the popular press. Although many editorial writers picked up the tone of Stoll's criticism, a collection of essays, by established experts on Guatemala and MenchÐ"Ñ"'s testimony, titled Properties of Words: Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ", David Stoll, and Identity Politics in Central America, was published before the year was over and seriously challenged Stoll's data, inferences, and conclusions. In considering the public controversy it is important to carefully examine the charges David Stoll has actually made. A careful reading of Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ" and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans makes it clear that the initial press reports on Stoll's research were exaggerated. While The New York Times claimed that Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ" "fabricated," "seriously exaggerated," and told "one lie after another" in her testimonial, the surprising fact is that Stoll's research, on the contrary, actually serves to confirm the truth of MenchÐ"Ñ"'s story in all of its major points, certainly those points that are most relevant to the vast majority of American teachers and students who have worked with MenchÐ"Ñ"'s testimonial. David Stoll is an anthropologist who, over the course of ten years, interviewed Guatemalans and undertook archival research focused on identifying errors, exaggerations, shortcomings, and bias in MenchÐ"Ñ"'s testimony. In contrast, MenchÐ"Ñ" gave her testimony without notes in twenty-four hours of taped conversation over an eight-day period when she was twenty-three years old, not long after the murder of her father, mother, and brother and her escape to Mexico. Her testimony was recorded, transcribed, restructured, and published by Elizabeth Burgos Debray, another anthropologist, who is the book's author. In the course of his research Stoll never interviewed MenchÐ"Ñ" herself. Stoll begins the preface of his book by asserting that there is "no doubt about the most important points" MenchÐ"Ñ" makes (viii). Moreover, despite press reports about requests to the Nobel Prize Committee to rescind the Peace Prize after the Times article, in his book Stoll states that he believes awarding the Nobel Prize to Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ" was a "good idea" and that "she has been the first to acknowledge that she received it, not for her own accomplishments but because she stands for a wider group of people who deserve international support." (ix) The prize was awarded to MenchÐ"Ñ" not for her testimony but for her later political work and peace organizing. Specifically, Stoll's research leads him to confirm the following information in MenchÐ"Ñ"'s testimony. In her testimony Rigoberta states that her father was burned alive when the army attacked the Spanish Embassy he was occupying to protest human rights abuses, an occurrence that is widely known in Guatemala. Stoll believes MenchÐ"Ñ"'s account of the events at the embassy is more balanced than most others. Rigoberta also stated that her mother was detained, raped, tortured, killed, and her body was mutilated by the Guatemalan army. Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ"'s horrific description of what happened to her mother is confirmed by independent sources. Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ"'s 16 year-old brother Petrocino was seized, tortured, and shot by the army and his mutilated body was left in the street of the town of Chajul. MenchÐ"Ñ" reports that her brother was burned alive; Stoll argues he may have been burned after he was killed, but that it "was not rare" for the army to humiliate, torture, and burn people alive in front of their families. Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ"'s village, Chimel, was attacked by the army, and the villagers used self-defense strategies to protect themselves, much as MenchÐ"Ñ" describes. Rigoberta MenchÐ"Ñ"'s two younger sisters did join the guerrillas after the murder of their mother.