I was highly excited about this week’s reading as I am half Guatemalan because my mom is from Guatemala. Aside from that, I recently was told by my mom when I mentioned that we were discussing Guatemala and Rigoberta Menchu in class and she said that my Grandfather had the pleasure of working and meeting Rigoberta Menchu on multiple occasions and showed me a picture published in a newspaper where they were interviewed together. This is because my Grandfather was very involved with the student movement that rose in Guatemala at the time and was advocating for it.
I have also been studying indigenous people from around the world in my anthropology class, and we just started looking into Latin America, including Guatemala and having that background gave the reading so much more context and insight. When you understand that almost half of the Guatemalan population are indigenous people, it makes the fact that out of the percentage of the people that lives in poverty, 75% of them are of Indigenous origin, WHich puts Indigenous people in Guatemala at an undue advantage in every aspect of their lives.
Moreover, moving to the text, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I liked how it is told in the first person, which is typical for memories, but it always makes me feel more connected to the reading. As if the author is telling your story and what happened, the task feels more intimate and personal.
I felt very connected with her story and how she detailed her activism at a young age, participating in protests and joining a revolutionary group called the Committee of Peasant Unity. She describes the harsh living conditions of Indigenous peoples in Guatemala, including the lack of access to education and healthcare and the discrimination they face from the government and wealthy landowners.
I felt moved by various of her experiences and felt the injustice she described very deeply, injustices such as how she was forced to do labour as a child and her struggles with poverty and discrimination, how she recounts her own experiences with sexual assault and the experiences of other women in her community. Menchú’s story is one of personal struggle, resilience, and perseverance in facing oppression and injustice.
She deserves her noble prize and is a person I have admired from a young age since my mom told me stories about my Grandfather and her home country, and I was thrilled and nostalgic after reading this.
My question for you this week is: What part of the text was the most shocking/eye-opening for you?
March 18, 2023
Blog Post Week 10 [Rigoberta Menchu]
6 Comments
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julia gomez-coronado dominguez
March 19, 2023 — 6:38 pm
Hello Montse, I enjoyed reading your post about Rigoberta and Guatemala’s indigenous population. Generally, everything that I learned about indigeneity and Mayan discrimination in Guatemala was shocking and unfamiliar to me. As I also explained in my post, I enjoyed learning about this and about the sense of cultural community that you get from her and her close environment. The value that Rigoberta and her family give to their heritage, customs, and beliefs was “eye-opening” for me in a way, since I could see how these values helped her fight adversity and overcome extremely difficult situations she went through.
Chiko Yamamoto
March 20, 2023 — 5:01 pm
Hello Montse ☺︎
There are many shocking scenes, such as whole families being tortured and killed, having to work from an early age, and no childhood for Rigoberta Menchú. On her 10th birthday, Rigoberta was told”… would have many ambitions but I wouldn’t have the opportunity to realize them. They said my wouldn’t change, it would go on the same — work, poverty and suffering” (125). I would say this was the most shocking part for me. This line showed me how upset and sad not only her family was, but all the Indian community members were struggling, and I wondered where the hope was ..
Daniel Orizaga Doguim
March 20, 2023 — 5:10 pm
Thanks for your post. The truth is that I would love to see those photographs that you mentioned! Also, it seems to me that for family history and academic reasons you can see aspects of this book that are still unknown to us. I am curious to know if in your anthropology classes a testimonio like this is discussed and in what way. Hopefully we can hear your ideas in class!
katherine
March 20, 2023 — 7:19 pm
The brutal treatment of Rigoberta’s family is the most viscerally shocking thing I read. I was also surprised to learn how a substantial portion of Guatemala does not speak Spanish. This nook really challenged my lack of knowledge of the area.
rebeca ponce
March 20, 2023 — 9:18 pm
Hi Montse,
it was really interesting learning about your family’s own experience with Rigoberta! What an honour that must be! To answer your question, I think the most shocking part about this book was the similarities I found with Mexico. I talked about this in my blog but when I was reading this book and realized the awful amount of similarities indigenous people in Mexico and Guatemala shared, that was the moment when I actually had to take a break from reading.
Mandy
March 22, 2023 — 2:13 pm
Hello! Thank you for your great post. I found it really interesting to hear about your family’s connection to Rigoberta Menchu as well as your additional background information on the Indigenous population in Guatemala (which is really horrible to learn the large percentage of the Indigenous population that live in poverty). To answer your question, while there were many shocking details provided in the story, one that stood out to me was the story of her younger brother’s death due to malnutrition. In my classes, I learn a lot about child development but have not really learned much about malnutrition other than that it is bad and can lead to death. However, reading Rigoberta’s first-hand experience and seeing its effects was really heartbreaking to me and taught me more in-depth about its severe effects. Thanks again for your post!