The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy, Arturo Arias, Editor
Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
I learned of this book while helping produce a documentary on immigration problems in Guatemala, “Guatemala: Trouble in the Highlands,” when I announced that I was planning to recruit anthropologist David Stoll to work with us. I’d read his excellent studies, “Between Two Armies” and “Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans,” which he researched with extensive interviews in the Ixil Triangle region of Guatemala. But when I announced his involvement, a number of our advisors said they’d abandon the project if we included Stoll.
Evidently, Guatemalan indigenous rights activist, Rigoberta Menchu, first came to international prominence following the 1983 publication of her memoir, I, Rigoberta Menchu, which chronicled in compelling detail the violence and misery that she and her people suffered during her country’s brutal civil war. The book focused world attention on Guatemala and led to her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. In 1999, a book by David Stoll challenged the veracity of key details in Menchu’s account, generating a storm of controversy. Journalists and scholars squared off regarding whether Menchu had lied about her past and, if so, what that would mean about the larger truths revealed in her book.
Professor Marc Zimmerman from the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago encouraged Arias to compile the book, despite the editor’s preference to focus on “literary matters.” Zimmerman continued to push Arias as a Guatemalan intellectual familiar with the different sides of the issues and because he wasn’t a “gringo.”
Arturo Arias assembled a casebook that offers a balanced perspective on the debate. The first section of this volume collects the primary documents — newspaper articles, interviews, and official statements — in which the debate raged, many translated into English for the first time. In the second section, a distinguished group of international scholars assess the political, historical, and cultural contexts of the debate, and consider its implications for such issues as the “culture wars,” historical truth, and the politics of memory. Also included is a new essay by David Stoll, in which he responds to his critics. Out of this polemic emerges some of the underlying reasons why intellectuals, including Guatemalans, continue to debate the role and future of the Maya population without actually changing the power structure, which allows the injustices and humans rights abuses to continue until this day.
Arias sets the stage for the story with, “In one of history’s first holocausts, it is estimated that as many as two and a half million Mayas died in the fifty years following the Conquest. Since then, Mayas have been enslaved, oppressed, and discriminated against. During Spanish colonialism, they were virtual slaves. Independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century did not improve their lot. The criollos fundamentally ignored Mayas; however, Mayas were forced by Ladinos to work against their will in the coffee plantations after 1871, and they were treated as sub-humans, barely subsisting. After continued struggles and the devastation of the 1976 earthquake, which killed 20,000 people and destroyed innumerable dwellings in the highlands, an organization called the “Committee for Peasant Unity (CUC) was formed in 1973. It would be absorbed by the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), whose tactics changed with the successes of the “Sandinistas” in Nicaragua. However, they greatly miscalculated the Reagan regime’s response.
In an interesting interview with Arturo Taracena, who has a Ph.D in history, and was an advisor to Menchu, he points out that Rigoberta represents two of the great contradictions in Guatemala, the first of which is the confrontation between the indigenous and the Ladino (“Western” people of mixed indigenous and European origin), and the other a confrontation between the left and the right. “Rigoberta combines the indigenous with the ultra-left, the “Communities.” He goes on to criticize Stoll as a typical U.S. anthropologist who see the Mayas as being manipulated, always under the influence of a modernity foreign to them.
Uruguayan author and journalist, Eduardo Galeano, who wrote, “Open Veins of Latin America,” says that Rigoberto was criticized because, “She has stepped out of her place, and that offends people who think they’re white. That Rigoberta is a Mayan, and a woman, is her problem, a double disgrace for her to bear. But that this Maya woman turned out not to accept her lot, and then sinned by becoming a universal symbol of human dignity, oh, my God, powerful men in Guatemala and in the world hate that.”
One of the only Mayan anthropologists whose work is presented here, Victor Montejo,who had to leave Guatemala in the early 1980’s, has taught at Bucknell University and is now at the Department of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. I’ve read his book about an American Anthropologist studying a Maya village, “La Aventuras de Mister Puttison entre los Mayas.” He explains what was behind much of the controversy of Stoll’s book, “So when anthropologist David Stoll came out with a devastating deconstruction of the text, they were scandalized. For international solidarity organizations and academics, Stoll committed a sacrilege by questioning Menchu’s stories. They have forgotten that all writings are “suspicious” and that they represent the political or ideological conditioning or tendencies of the individual who produces them…”
He goes on to say,
“…It seems that those who promoted the guerrilla war internationally are now without much to do, and this is the opportunity to keep fighting and firing from their computers the Maya movement. They are not really interested in the problems the Maya are facing now in Guatemala. For the Maya, the ex-guerrillas and the government are seen as political tricksters who have been deceiving the people.”
“The Maya want to be in charge of their projects and now are struggling to make the Guatemalan government comply with the peace accords and the reparation recommendations of the CEH. The Menchu-Stoll controversy is only entertainment for academics and politicians who want to accuse each other or themselves of what they have failed to do, namely, to work with indigenous people.
To engage in this kind of debate is to distance ourselves from the reality that indigenous people are living. We know that they suffered the most, and that because of their ethnicity, they were targeted for destruction. And we are aware that no one is being prosecuted for these criminal actions. In fact, there is no reparation project in place to heal the wounds of the survivors of this armed conflict.”
He points out that “Rigoberta Menchu represented only one sector of the indigenous movement, the so-called popular movement. The Maya movement is very complex and now it has given rise to the Pan-Maya movement, which is focusing on culture and identity as major sources for its rival.
And goes on to reveal, “One thing is certain, though: in Guatemala most indigenous people are questioning Menchu’s role. By being part of the popular left movement, which gave her her position, the guerrillas have also damaged her image as she now tries to become her own voice. The indigenous people have doubts about her, mainly concerning her links with the guerrillas. Stoll is not the only person who says that the people in her village do not totally support her accounts…”
The book ends with David Stoll’s response to the criticism of his questioning Rigoberto, and he says, “Far from seeking to discredit I, Rigoberta Menchu, or testimonial literature, my book insists on interpreting it on the multiple levels that its significance requires.” He goes on to say, “Showing how Mayas used neutralist rhetoric to drop out of the conflict, long before the army and the guerrillas signed a peace agreement in 1996, hardly perpetuated the dualistic logic of the cold war (Ferman). Instead, I put the violence into more local contest than moral dualism can accommodate.”
Despite the ongoing polemic, Stoll correctly points out that, “Even popular support for the reforms envisioned by the peace process is less than might be hoped.” Evidently, the leftist party only generated 12% of the last election, while the conservatives obtained 30%, and the Right Wing received 48%, which was led by Rios Montt, the evangelical dictator who defeated the guerrilla movement in 1982/83. And he concludes with, “The left’s electoral weakness is part of the legacy of repression, and its support could grow quickly. But the vote for Rios is not just a function of intimidation. Even though Rigoberta has enough evidence to try him in a Spanish court, he is a surprisingly popular politician. For too many Guatemalans, including Catholics and Mayas, the man responsible for the people of army massacres stands for law and order.”
The polemic represented in this compilation of different perspectives of the controversary of David Stoll’s critique of Nobel Prize awardee Rigoberto Menchu reflects the deep divides that exist in Guatemala and the importance of listening to the stories of the Mayas on the local level, whose perspectives cannot always be pigeon-holed into one intellectual camp or another.
Product details
⦁ Paperback: 432 pages
⦁ Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1st edition (March 27, 2001)
⦁ Language: English
⦁ ISBN-10: 0816636265
⦁ ISBN-13: 978-0816636266
⦁ Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1.1 x 9 inches
⦁ Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (⦁ View shipping rates and policies)
⦁ Average Customer Review: ⦁ 2.5 out of 5 stars⦁ ⦁ 4 customer reviews
⦁ Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,590,299 in Books (⦁ See Top 100 in Books)
⦁ #286 in ⦁ Mayan History (Books)
⦁ #988 in ⦁ Latin American History (Books)
⦁ #101 in ⦁ Guatemala History
Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world. He came to Phoenix as a Senior Director for Food for the Hungry, worked with other groups like Make-A-Wish International and was the CEO of Hagar USA, a Christian-based organization that supports survivors of human trafficking.
His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association for Non-Fiction and, according to the Midwest Review, “…is more than just another travel memoir. It is an engaged and engaging story of one man’s physical and spiritual journey of self-discovery…”
Several of his articles have been published in Ragazine and WorldView Magazines, Literary Yard, Literary Travelers and Quail BELL, while another appeared in “Crossing Class: The Invisible Wall” anthology published by Wising Up Press. His reviews have been published by Revue Magazine, as well as Peace Corps Worldwide, and he has his own column in the “Arizona Authors Association” newsletter, “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading and Why.” His essay, “Hugs not Walls: Returning the Children,” was a winner in the Arizona Authors Association literary competition 20219and reissued in “Revue Magazine.”
His honors include the “Service Above Self” award from Rotary International, and he’s the membership chair for “Partnering for Peace.” His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com and follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/millionmilewalker/