Rigoberta Menchu gives voice to an otherwise invisible culture. Prior to the publication of her biography, very few people understood the difficulties that the Indian and poor population of Guatemala had suffered under. Guatemala had a history of taking advantage of the Indians. For example after the 1871 revolution, the government of Justo Rufino Barrios created laws to force the Indigenous people to work for nearly nothing in coffee plantations (Martínez Peláez). These plantations were owned by European settlers who treated the Indians poorly. This exploitation continued when Lucas Garcia became the president in 1979.

Throughout the 1970s the exploitation that the Indians faced escalated to violence. Therefore, Rigoberta Menchu and her family actively advocated against the oppressive regime. She was a member of the CUC (Peasant Unity Committee), which “defends all peasants, Indians, and ladinos” (Menchu, 160).  Although she grew up poor and uneducated, Menchu became a key figure in the Indigenous and women’s rights movements in Guatemala. “In recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples”, Rigoberta Menchu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 (The Nobel Foundation).

On top of her active participation, the publication of her book also raised awareness for the struggle in Guatemala. Her biography, which was filled with emotional first hand accounts of tortures on the indigenous people by the government, raised a lot of sympathy for the guerrilla groups. However, in 1999 David Stoll published “Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans”, where he claimed that Menchu was not fully honest in her biography. She later admitted that she was not truthful in all of the memories which she wrote. If we keep in mind that the Mayan culture has a different story telling culture than that of the West Menchu’s lack of truthfulness can be better understood. For Menchu she was writing not only to represent her family and herself, she was also representing her people (David Stoll).

This gap between the truth that we expect when reading an autobiography and the edited truth which Menchu shares raises some questions. For example, does one individual have the right or ability to write for the collective group? And if so does the author of a life narrative have the ability to alter the truth? These questions may have different answers depending on what culture you are looking from and what the information is being used for. However, I believe that if the autobiography is a tool used to raise attention to the unknown suffering of a collective community than the individual should be allowed to veer from the truth in some regard.

Sources:

Martínez Peláez, Severo (1990). La patria del criollo: ensayo de interpretación de la realidad colonial guatemalteca (in Spanish). México: Ediciones En Marcha.

“The Nobel Peace Prize 1992”. Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 19 Sep 2016. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1992/>

Latin American Perspectives, Vol 26, No.6, If Truth Be Told: A Forum on David Stoll’s “Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans” (Nov., 1999).

Berg, Ragnhild Solvi (2010). When Truth is at stake: The Rigoberat Menchu controversy. Web. < https://siu.no/eng/Global-knowledge/Issues/2010/When-Truth-is-at-stake-The-Rigoberta-Menchu-controversy>

Menchú, Rigoberta, and Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. London: Verso, 1984. Print.

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on I, Rigoberta Menchu.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2006. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.