Tag Archives: Community

Source: Confía en Mí

Posted on by under I, Rigoberta Menchú, Uncategorized

While reading the second half of I, Rigoberta Menchú was just as interesting as the first (and I’m not Andrew, so I mean that sincerely), what I am more interested in is how it pertains to wider conversations of the book’s commentary on Menchú’s agency in her testimonial. In class, we talked about whether or not Burgos’ introduction properly articulates the dynamic between herself and Menchú, and the possibility of Menchú’s playing up her Indigeneity for Burgos. Obviously, one way she does this is through her clothing, and it can be argued that it’s furthered in her keeping of certain secrets.

However, after watching the two lecture videos and learning more about Stoll’s criticism of I, Rigoberta Menchú, lots of more questions pop up. The first of which assumes sincerity on Menchú’s behalf. If truly, this was her story, and she kept out certain conversations for the peace of her community, that means that she held up her half of representing her community while not opening themselves to further hurt from colonial communities. If so, she must have expected the doubt that then followed (from scholars like Stoll), and may have been prepared to use Burgos as a patsy to place the blame on.

Conversely, if Stoll’s criticisms are perfectly valid, it is possible that Menchú was not entirely telling the truth, and that her agency was understated in the original brief look of the book. It opens up further questions: how much might she have fabricated that Stoll didn’t catch? What was the purpose of these fabrications?

When talking about secrets, she impresses that it is an effect of the community traditions and practices as well as experiences with colonial acts of theft. Not included in this is the conversation of trickster behaviour, which can be commonly found in many international Indigenous communities.
By keeping secrets, she may have found it more entertaining or amusing to then tell tall tales, unbeknownst to Burgos (who had very little knowledge of Guatemala). A question remains: how does this affect the general reader? The average reader is probably in a similar position to Burgos, and as Menchú was able to fool Burgos, it follows that it would then be assumed to be truthful testimonio.

There’s another nuance: where did Menchú draw the line between testimonio as truth and pseudo-testimonio (as John Beverly calls it)? These questions will probably forever go unanswered, but examining them helps us as an audience read more critically into the lines of Menchú/Burgos’ conversation.

Also apologies if the title is not actually grammatically correct, I took one term of SPAN 101 and did 200 days on Duolingo, so my credentials aren’t exactly buffed.

Menchú’s Guide to Representation

Posted on by under Indigenous Voice, Rigoberta Menchú

In the book, I, Rigoberta Menchú, Menchú describes her life and experiences as a Quiché woman in an Indian community in Guatemala. Her co-author, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, describes in the introduction how she aimed to listen and document all that Menchú talked about in order to help reflect the Indian experience in Latin America. She recounts that as Menchú told stories from her personal life, she became “self-assured and contented” (p. xvi), and that Menchú found relief in becoming a voice that had gone so long unheard. The beginning of the book immediately confirms this, Menchú stating that her testimony is “not only [her] life, it’s also the testimony of [her] people” (p. 1). This idea made me wonder: Where do we draw the line between experiencing something as an individual vs. as a community? What makes this line different for colonial peoples compared to Indigenous peoples?

“My personal experience is the reality of a whole people” (p. 1).

Menchú forms a collective Indigenous voice through only her own narration, as her experience comes from being so deep within her community and living life as an undeniably Quiché woman. This is interesting in comparison to authors like Guaman Poma, who in his mestizo status has to justify himself in describing the Indian experience. Menchú’s experience is different, she has learned from a lifetime as an Indigenous woman, and importantly, she “didn’t learn it alone” (p. 1). Many parts of the book are dedicated to her personal experiences, but they are entangled with her community.

I believe that a lot of the reason her story is so personal when it is meant to represent a community is because of how rightfully distrusting the Indigenous peoples are of the people outside of their community, being “very careful not to disclose any details of their communities” (p. 9). The colonizers have already taken so much that traditional knowledge and information must be held onto tightly, so Menchú works around this by telling her story in personal anecdotes.

There are portions within the novel—like that of the birth ceremonies chapter, the nahual, and the marriage ceremonies—that are kept objective, where Menchú acts as a narrator. In the nahual chapter, Menchú maintains her narration while reminding the reader of how personal these traditions are:

“We often find it hard to talk about ourselves because we know we must hide so much in order to preserve our Indian culture and prevent it from being taken away from us. So I can only tell you very general things about the nahual. I can;t tell you what my nahual is because that is one of our secrets.” (p. 22)

I believe Menchú finds a healthy balance in her objectivity and personal experience, but it does open further questions towards how Burgos-Debray contextualizes her own involvement and where she personally finds the line in being the pen for a community she is not a part of.

Popol Vuh 2 Electric Boogaloo

Posted on by under Popol Vuh

The reader’s guide states explicitly, “The epic is not the story of a hero, but hero twins” (p. 246). The Popol Vuh is a story of pluralities at any given moment: the twins, their father and uncle, One Death and Seven Death, the Framer and the Shaper, and so on. I found this most interesting as there is not a single first man, or a single first woman, but instead they come in quartets; clearly, a group of people is more powerful than a single being by K’iche’ standards. The cosmic force of the universe is made up of a conversation between multiple persons, the Earth coming into existence from the statement, “Earth”. This, to me, reflects the Popol Vuh’s statements on not only community, but power as well.

It speaks volumes that the power that the two twins seem to possess come from their understanding of their own world and deities, working to praise them and help them out and, in the case of the Lords of Death, learn their names. The Lords of Death are able to be defeated because each of them work as separate barriers, rather than working together to form one force, like the Framer and the Shaper do. The inherent motif to take away from these stories is that the respect, worship, and maintaining of relationships will provide power in both daily life (like the maize farm) and in eccentric circumstances (like Xibalba). It is, in this way, also a conversation about community.

Community is woven into almost every storyline, from the animals swallowing each other as a form of transportation (and an origin to the food chain) to the twins grandmother truly coming to care and worry for them. What I find most interesting about the community motifs is how they divide themselves from animals most of the time: monkeys are seen as hilarious creatures, and animals are told to give up their flesh as a sacrifice for not being able to worship. A sharp line is drawn down the middle between animal and human, and one has much more power than the other. Still, the animals serve as functional to the people beyond being meat; animals help the twins discover the gaming things, and ants help them gather flowers for One and Seven Death. It begs asking where animals fit in the Maya K’iche’ idea of personhood and community.

It’s not unfamiliar for Indigeneity to hold community so near and dear, and I think that the fact that this theme is present is a good connection internationally to other Indigenous communities, something Western concepts don’t always have. Instead, Western ideals present the singular hero archetype, or the one almighty being. Looking to Indigenous legends and traditions provides us with a new peek into what a community-drive power source can look like in myth. Still, I ask, how do conversation and community include or reject animals in a creation myth about humanity?

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