Tag Archives: power

Menchú

Week 10: Rigoberta’s Resistance

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.

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de la Parra

Week 2: Mama Blanca’s Memoirs and the Performance of Beauty

Mama Blanca’s Memoirs by Teresa de la Parra was truly a joy to read. Her description of social interactions and relationships, in particular, made profound of the otherwise mundane. It’s difficult not to quote the entire text for this purpose, but one passage in particular that I think illustrates this talent is about Mama Blanca’s sisters, “My five sisters and I formed a rising staircase stretching from seven months to seven years, and from our enthroned stairway we ruled over all of creation without ostentation.” This quote also highlights a major theme of the text, which is the fantasy of childhood. In both the foreword and the following text, de la Parra takes care to describe the sweet, innocent, tender adventures of youth – a time for both narrators of incredible abundance and magic and absent of any serious preoccupations or anxieties. It was lovely to read about Mama Blanca’s childhood adventures through her own eyes and then return to the foreword and understand that this joyful, mischievous spirit never quite left her.

Another theme I found myself returning to was that of classism and the severe power dynamics of wealth and status. This theme was especially played out through the story of Vicente Cochocho, a “hired hand” of Piedra Azul plantation. Vicente, literally called “louse,” is often described as ugly. It becomes clear throughout the passage that attractiveness and elegance are more than just exterior aesthetics in de la Parra’s world, they are tools for social upward mobility. In this sense, characters described as ugly, including Eleuteria and Aquilina, Vicente’s partners, lack power, not simply because they are poor, but importantly because they lack beauty. In a way, to the others, his ugliness justifies his position on the plantation and his subsequent treatment. Beauty is a major preoccupation of the characters in Mama Blanca’s Memoirs, especially Blanca Nieves’ mother. De la Parra writes, “Far more than in her own person, Mama’s vanity had its abode in our six heads.” Blanca Nieves’ performance of beauty is a significant theme of her early childhood. Over time, she comes to understand that her value lies in her beauty, specifically in her hair, saying, “My honor … had its seat in my hair and in no other part of my person.” In this case, despite the labor it requires, beauty grants Blanca Nieves status and power, in whatever modest sense.

Finally, a theme I found woven throughout every passage of the text was that of law and order, punishment, and justice. This is illustrated through the relationships and power dynamics between parents/caregivers and children, masters and subordinates, and older and younger siblings, to name a few. Blanca Nieves seems to have a keen sense of justice and we can see this especially in her descriptions of the “hired help” working at Piedra Azul: her contempt for caregivers like Evelyn, who are authoritative and harsh, and her admiration for Vicente, who is kind and selfless. Question for discussion: How do you see Blanca Nieves’ sense of justice playing out in the relationships and dynamics of her own family and community as an old woman?

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