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Summary
Summary
Rigoberta Menchú is a living legend, a young woman who said that her odyssey from a Mayan Indian village to revolutionary exile was "the story of all poor Guatemalans." By turning herself into an everywoman, she became a powerful symbol for 500 years of indigenous resistance to colonialism. Her testimony, I, Rigoberta Menchú , denounced atrocities by the Guatemalan army and propelled her to the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. But her story was not the eyewitness account that she claimed. In this hotly debated book, key points of which have been corroborated by the New York Times, David Stoll compares a cult text with local testimony from Rigoberta Menchú's hometown. His reconstruction of her story goes to the heart of debates over political correctness and identity politics and provides a dramatic illustration of the rebirth of the sacred in the postmodern academy.
This expanded edition includes a new foreword from Elizabeth Burgos, the editor of I, Rigoberta Menchú , as well as a new afterword from Stoll, who discusses Rigoberta Menchú's recent bid for the Guatemalan presidency and addresses the many controversies and debates that have arisen since the book was first published.
Author Notes
David Stollteaches anthropology at Middlebury College. His other books include Is Latin America Turning Protestant? and Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala .
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Stoll (Is Latin American Turning Protestant?) has written a revisionist biography of a Guatemalan woman canonized and, according to Stoll, ultimately misunderstood by the academic and political left. He tries to replace what he believes to be the prevailing romantic image of Guatemalan rebellion with something that comes much closer to the murky, morally shaded truth. In 1982, I, Rigoberta Menchú, the autobiography of a Mayan peasant woman, catapulted its author onto the international stage. In 1992, on the symbolically loaded 500th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World, Rigoberta Menchú won the Nobel Peace Prize. Stoll challenges major and minor aspects of Menchú's book, using interviews, conducted over a nine-year period, with soldiers, guerrillas and survivors of violence from Menchú's hometown and surrounding region. Painstakingly delineating the complex cultural and political landscape of Guatemala, Stoll refutes Menchú's "simplified" account of land-poor Mayans taking up arms against wealthy landowners, painting instead a picture of peasantsboth indígenas and ladinoswho wish only to be left alone but are caught between guerrilla and government armies. Arguing that Menchú's book mythologizes the experience of poor Guatemalans, Stoll explores the implications of such a sentimental view for academia, solidarity activists and Guatemalans themselves. His generally supportive attitude toward the peasants' cause and his denunciation of the army's terror makes his book all the more convincing. This is provocative reading that's sure to shake up assumptionsand rile tempersacross the political spectrum. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An anthropologist's (Middlebury Coll.) critical reexamination of the phenomenon of Rigoberta Menchú, the Guatemalan peasant awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. I, Rigoberta Menchú, her 1983 memoir, achieved international acclaim; it helped focus worldwide attention on the oppressive actions of the right-wing Guatemalan government and on the plight of the peasants, who were forced to join guerrilla movements to protect their lives and property. Both the book and Rigoberta became powerful symbols of the struggle of indigenous peoples against repressive anti-leftist regimes. While remaining sympathetic to Rigoberta's general message and to the plight of the Guatemalan peasants, Stoll's book attempts to unveil the manner in which the elevation of Menchú's book to the status of myth does violence to the complexities of historical reality. Using tesitmony of local residents and archival sources, in seeking to discover what has been filtered out of Rigoberta's heavily ideological account of recent Guatemalan history, Stoll focuses on what he reads as a discrepancy between the revolutionary fervor of the guerrillas and the voices of ordinary Guatemalan peasants. He characterizes the average peasant response to events as feeling ``caught between two armies'''a far cry from the awakening into revolutionary consciousness described by Rigoberta in her book. Stoll employs possible inaccuracies within Rigoberta's text to destabilize the unity of her version of events. In particular, he questions her account on two historical points: 'Was the guerrilla movement defeated in the early 1980s a popular struggle expressing the deepest aspirations of Rigoberta's people? Was it an inevitable reaction to grinding oppression by people who felt they had no other choice?' Stoll's book is not an attempt to debunk Rigoberta's story, but to serve as a warning that elevating one version of history to cult status inevitably silences a multitude of others.
Booklist Review
Some people have been considered "living saints." Rigoberta Menchu, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, has become such a person. Ever since she dictated her story to a French journalist with leftist leanings over the course of a week in Paris, she has been celebrated as the author of I, Rigoberta Menchu. Her tragic story of a Guatemalan peasant subjected to the horrors of persecution at the hands of the Guatemalan state made her a symbol of all that has gone wrong, economically, ethnically, environmentally, and politically, in this hemisphere. Stoll seems to have done an honest and sincere job of researching Menchu's story, and what he has uncovered may make her followers uneasy. Stoll has not sought to debunk Menchu's importance or stature, but what he does is bring her mythical status down to earth and thus make her more human. This is an invaluable addition to understanding the complex issues that still exist in the Americas. --Raul Nino
Library Journal Review
Rigoberta Mench£'s autobiography, I, Rigoberta Mench£ (LJ 11/1/84), told the story of a Guatemalan Indian family who suffered horrific oppression from the Guatemalan military and elite. That book and Mench£'s subsequent activities propelled her into international prominence in the fight for the rights of the poor and oppressed. Mench£ became a symbol for the Left throughout the world and subsequently received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. Based on ten years of research by Stoll, a somewhat controversial scholar and professor of anthropology at Middlebury College, this book questions the veracity of Mench£'s autobiography, specifically aspects of her family background, her childhood, land questions, and violent acts against her family. This volume will be important for Stoll's analysis of how the academic and political Left functions and uses symbols to idealize victims of oppression. A landmark publication that most academic and large public libraries should acquire.ÄMark L. Grover, Brigham Young Univ. Lib., Provo, UT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. viii |
| Acknowledgments | p. xvi |
| Chronology | p. xviii |
| 1 The Story of All Poor Guatemalans | p. 1 |
| Part 1 Vicente Menchú And His Village | p. 14 |
| 2 Uspantún as An Agricultural Frontier | p. 15 |
| 3 The Struggle for Chimel | p. 29 |
| Part 2 Popular Revolutionary War | p. 41 |
| 4 Revolutionary Justice Comes to Uspantán | p. 43 |
| 5 The Death of Petrocinio | p. 63 |
| 6 The Massacre At The Spanish Embassy | p. 71 |
| 7 Vicente Menchú and The Committee for Campesino Unity | p. 89 |
| 8 Vicente Menchú and The Guerrilla Army of the Poor | p. 107 |
| 9 The Death of Juana Tum And The Destruction of Chimel | p. 125 |
| 10 The Death Squads in Uspantán | p. 141 |
| Part 3 Vicente's Daughter And the Reinvention Of Chimel | p. 157 |
| 11 Where Was Rigoberta? | p. 159 |
| 12 Rigoberta Joins The Revolutionary Movement | p. 167 |
| 13 The Construction Of I, Rigoberta Menchú | p. 177 |
| 14 Rigoberta's Secret | p. 189 |
| Part 4 The Laureate Goes Home | p. 201 |
| 15 The Campaign for the Nobel | p. 203 |
| 16 The Lonely Life Of A Nobel Laureate | p. 219 |
| 17 Rigoberta and Redemption | p. 231 |
| 18 The New Chimel | p. 249 |
| 19 Rigoberta Leaves The Guerrilla Movement | p. 265 |
| 20 Epitaph for An Eyewitness Account | p. 273 |
| Notes | p. 285 |
| Bibliography | p. 311 |
| Index | p. 323 |
