More than an autobiography, the book I, Rigoberta Menchú is a meticulously detailed document about the real life of Guatemala’s indigenous population. It provides a look into the political system that reigned there in the 1960s, told by a then-23-year-old indigenous woman from El Quiche, a province in western Guatemala.
The author narrates the book in Spanish, a language she learned as an adult so she could
give her people a voice in a country in which
the majority of its inhabitants come from 22 indigenous ethnic groups. Despite their majority, the country’s power resides with a non-indigenous population.
In a very personal style, the author recounts intimate details about life in secluded mountains, the abject poverty of her people, their inhumane work conditions, and the mistreatment they suffer daily by the authorities.
Menchú’s simple, entertaining and yet respectful manner educates the reader about her people’s reverence for Mother Earth, Father Sun, and the companionship of Sister Moon. She describes their unquestionable allegiance to their rituals, customs and rites of passage. In a unique mixture of innocence, sacredness and honesty, her people commit to a life of reverence to the teachings of their ancestors, an ultimate respect for human and animal life and deference to everyone, including their unapologetic, self-entitled and cruel overlords.
Chronologically, the book takes the reader through rituals such as conception, birth, rites of passage, courtship, marriage, community support and death. It does so in a joyful, unadulterated manner while offering disagreements with the excessive suffering, alcohol abuse and an absence of schools. She conveys a need for her country to see, treat and relate to indigenous people as human beings.
The book has a graphic part that tells how the Spaniards, during the colonization period, deceived indigenous people by taking their artifacts, their land and their rights. She then explains how Ladinos are perpetuating these practices today. The book defines Ladinos as “… any Guatemalan — whatever their economic position — who rejects, either individually or through his cultural heritage, Indian values of Mayan origin. It also implies mixed blood, Spanish and Indian.”
Ladinos systematically use Indians for cheap labor in a manner that resembles their colonizers. They bribe judges, the military and politicians to curtail any attempts by Indians to claim land, to earn a decent living, to grow their own food and to have access to medical services, education or justice promised them by Guatemala’s constitution.
To this day, indigenous children work next to adults, often in inclement weather, without sanitary facilities. They often suffer insults and violence and have their pay denied because they cannot meet unreasonable quotas. Most indigenous people work on large farms, where they live in inhumane conditions, undernourished and without hope for a better life.
A victim of deliberate discrimination and hatred since she was a little girl, the author witnessed military raids, mass shootings of people in her village, home invasions by government militia, kidnapping, rapes and public acts of torture that villagers were forced to watch. Menchú witnessed gruesome dismemberments of Indians, including scalping, removing of nails, allowing wounds to get infected and attacks by worms that eat human flesh alive. All these
