In this reading, Gareth Williams questions the position of Latin American models of representation and the North American intellectuals or the Latin Americanists in North America. He states that there is a relation of center – periphery between Latin American subjects/subalterns and North American intellectuals. He also talks about the dichotomy like I/Other, where the ‘I’ is the center (Latin Americanists in North America) and their theorization of the ‘other’ (theories that are based on Latin American subalterns). However, the theories of the ‘other’ also help to define oneself (i.e. the ‘I’) and to overcome aspects that are missing in their culture. Hence, factors like solidarity, resistance, leading a life close to nature, harmony become fantasies which they wanted to possess. Williams explains it as “Rigoberta Menchu and Maya – Quiche are viewed as an expression of value: that of carrying the load of a single social, global function; becoming the means by which the First World can reflect upon itself and define its own areas of struggle and political engagement. The Latin American subaltern becomes everything the United States lacks and craves in order for it to think itself” (Pg 244).

The anti-disciplinary or the anti hegemonic elements which define the testimonial genre have not altered. According to Williams it is actually functioning within the same center-periphery relation. He gives example of Rigoberta Menchu’s testimonio in which Elisabeth Burgos Debray says ““ella [Rigoberta] me permitio el descubrimiento de mi otro yo. Gracias a ella mi yo americano ya no es una ‘inquietante rareza’”” (Pg 230). Gareth Wiiliams further adds that “Rigoberta is positioned as the object of “centrist” desire by means of which the metropolitan restitutor embarks upon a transatlantic journey of self-restitution to “America”” (Pg 230).  This position is also enjoyed by the Latin Americanists. According to Williams, (as he mentions in his notes) that testimonio has become a new institution/ has been institutionalized for academic endeavor in the era of Late capitalism. Or it can also be said that hegemonic exploitation and “a negatively signed colonial history of subaltern loss” “is transformed into a “positive” reminder to the hegemonic of their own possible myth of origins” (Pg 245).

Is testimonio a creation based on fantasy? Do testimonios in any manner challenge the hegemony or the institution of literature? Does testimonial genre exist or is it just a myth?