I feel so grateful to carry Rigoberta Menchú’s story of resistance with me. Although the events of her life are deeply painful and tragic, it feels cheap to classify her life’s story as just that, a tragedy. Rigoberta’s story is one of incredible and unyielding resistance, in every form, from the seemingly mundane to the most compelling. This is evident immediately from the introduction by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. She talks about Rigoberta’s cultural resistance practiced intentionally and thoughtfully even while making tortillas. “By resisting ladina culture, she is simply asserting her desire for ethnic individuality and cultural autonomy… Rigoberta’s refusal to use a mill to grind her maize is one example… a way of preserving the practices connected with preparing tortillas and therefore a way to prevent a whole social structure from collapsing” (xviii). Throughout Rigoberta’s testimonio, we see that resistance is an active practice, taken on by necessity. Her own survival becomes an act of resistance in itself as the profile of her community rises and her family is steadily taken from her.
Rigoberta’s many references to secrets also carry this practice of resistance. For Rigoberta’s community, secrets provide security of more than one kind: physical security from enemies, social and emotional security from violence, and cultural security from colonization. It is so simple yet so powerful in its defiance, as if saying, you may think you’ve conquered all of us, but you’ll never have this; this being Quiché traditions, customs, ceremonies, practices, or wisdom we can hardly imagine. Rigoberta’s final words in the text are monuments to this kind of resistance. As if she’s speaking directly to Burgos-Debray and her readers, it’s a chilling and unequivocal reminder that through everything, she retains her autonomy and narrative agency. “Nevertheless, I’m still keeping my Indian identity a secret. I’m still keeping secret what I think no one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets” (289).
I’m especially grateful to carry Rigoberta’s story, because, upon graduating this May, my friends and I will travel to Guatemala for two weeks. We have been planning this trip for over a year, committed to doing months of research to make ourselves aware of the cultural context we’ll be guests of. In this, I’ve learned an incredible amount about the Indigenous communities of Guatemala, which represent more of the population than non-Indigenous Guatemalans. As travelers, it’s paramount to make ourselves sensitive to the cultures we are passing through and resist treating local customs as circus spectacles when we encounter them. I’m glad I will be able to carry Rigoberta’s voice with me as I enter her home and remind myself of my responsibility to her memory and survival. Decolonization and resistance is a daily practice we must all undertake no matter where we find ourselves.
Question for discussion: Do you think Rigoberta Menchú and Elisabeth Burgos-Debray were as close as the introduction would lead us to believe? Rigoberta’s final words make us question what we’ve just read and how much we’ve been trusted to hear; it reveals that Rigoberta is much more aware and intentional about her narrative agency than Burgos-Debray may have implied.
“As travelers, it’s paramount to make ourselves sensitive to the cultures we are passing through and resist treating local customs as circus spectacles when we encounter them.”
I agree with this. (And it’s great you’re going to Guatemala, not least in this spirit!) But it can be difficult, don’t you agree? In some ways, the story of Menchú’s testimony–and this is I think what I was trying to say in my lecture–is that solidarity is difficult, and full of potential traps.
Hi Marisa! I love how you started off your blog this week with being grateful to carry Rigoberta’s story with you, and I have to agree that I also feel grateful. I feel like I learned so much from this weeks reading and it really resonated with me differently than any of the other books so far. I also really liked how you talked about her resistance instead of this story just being seen as a tragedy. Although she went through insane hardships, social inequalities, and overall just one bad thing after the other, the book ends on a rather uplifting note. I think Rigoberta wrote this book for more than just people to read about her story but also to inspire others with her story of resilience.
I like how you framed Rigoberta Menchu’s actions to maintain her culture and autonomy. Rather than comparing it to contrasted beliefs between a person and their government, you reminded me that Menchu argued more for resistance against an unjust oppressor rather than a fight against another political party. But I do think that her awareness of this fact is what causes her dishonesty in how close she was with Burgos-Debray. She may have seen this as an opportunity to spread her belief than to tell her story.
Hi Marisa,
Thank you for your post- it was a pleasure to read. Your point about the power of secrets as a means of resistance was particularly insightful, as it shows how even the seemingly mundane act of keeping secrets can be a form of resistance against forces that seek to erase Indigenous cultures and knowledge.
In response to your question, I think it’s possible that Rigoberta and Burgos-Debray were not as close as the introduction may have led us to believe. Rigoberta’s final words about keeping her Indian identity a secret and not revealing everything to anthropologists or intellectuals suggest that she may have been cautious about how much she shared with Burgos-Debray and other outsiders. However, I do think that Burgos-Debray’s introduction and her role as a collaborator in shaping Rigoberta’s testimony were important in bringing Rigoberta’s story to a wider audience and giving her a platform to share her experiences of resistance and resilience.