I, Rigoberta Menchu

Chris Kitahara
Alias “Sushi”
Soc 105
5/5/07

My Name is Rigoberta Menchu. I am 23 years old. This is my testimony. I didn’t learn it from a book and I didn’t learn it alone. I’d like to stress that it’s not only my life, it’s also the testimony of my people. . . . My story is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.

-Rigoberta Menchu

These carefully chosen passages open I, Rigoberta Menchu, and are the first we hear from Rigoberta as she begins to retell her life story. In these few phrases, Rigoberta manages to make it clear that she is a not speaking out only for herself, but is simply a representative of her community. Born and raised in Guatemala, Rigoberta and her family split their time between the highlands of Guatemala, known as the Altiplano, and low country plantations, or fincas. Fincas were horrible places for the Indians to be living and working, the owners, “ladinos” were people of Spanish descendent and made up the dominant class in Guatemala, vastly controlling society, business, and the government. Malnutrition was rampant and the workers were routinely sprayed with toxic chemical pesticides as punishment for not completing tasks. After the death of her brother from starvation at the finca a flames of anger and frustration were ignited inside young Rigoberta and she began to yearn for change.
After accepting a job as maid in a mansion in Guatemala City she is further empowered to fight for the rights of her people after meeting rebellious spirit and friend Candelaria. Returning to her small town she learns that her father has been jailed because he refused to work with the landowners . Alongside her brothers and sisters, she fights to free him. Shortly after the same landowners begin to claim her small hometown of Altiplano, and it is at this point that the Indians, using makeshift weapons first begin to defend themselves. Led by her newly freed father, they form a Committee called the Peasant Union Committee, and begin to stake their claim in the politics of the powerful ladino government and business owners.
After the creation of this working group, Rigoberta and her comrades find themselves much more at risk, and consequentially, both her mother and brother are tortured and murdered. Her father was killed later on a protest to Guatemala City while storming the Spanish Embassy. After the death of her parents and brother, her younger sister decides to continue the fight, joining a guerilla army, however Rigoberta chose the diplomatic route, believing that activism is her calling. She renounced motherhood and marriage and embraced her work as a revolutionary in Guatemala and abroad. She retells her story in hopes that it will bring worldwide attention to the plight of her people, the wretchedness of their abusive militaristic dictatorship.