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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in I, Rigoberta Menchú, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Tolerance vs. Resistance
Class, Race, and Inequality
Ancestors, Tradition, and Community
Gender and Sexuality
Language, Education, and Power
Spirituality, Nature, and the Sacredness of Life
Summary
Analysis
Rigoberta remembers an event that she forgot to recount. In 1975, one of her friends, Petrona Chona, worked with her husband and two children on a finca owned by the García family. The landowner’s son, Carlos García, began trying to convince Petrona to become his mistress. One day, he appeared at her house, where she was temporarily alone. They argued for a long time, but Petrona did not change her mind. As retribution, Carlos decided to send his bodyguard to kill her with a machete.
Petrona Chona’s story underlines the danger of challenging authority on one’s own: despite her bold defense of her own dignity, she is crushed by a system in which poor Indians are treated as disposable. The young woman’s violent death suggests that the economic system of the finca is comparable to slavery: a woman is treated as a sexual object and can even be murdered for refusing to have sex with her boss.
Themes
Petrona’s was the first dead body Rigoberta ever saw. The bodyguard cut the young woman’s body into pieces and severed one of her baby’s fingers, because she carried him on her back. Rigoberta recalls with grief that Petrona had told her, that morning, that her family was going to leave the finca. As she was being murdered, none of the workers nearby interfered when they heard the woman’s screams, because they knew they would probably be killed for defending her.
This horrific event highlights the level of fear and helplessness on the fincas, where poor Indians are afraid to defend one another’s lives for fear of being killed themselves. This scene thus sheds life on a difficult moral situation: wanting to help someone else while knowing that this might be futile and would probably lead to one’s own death.
Themes
Many workers came to see the body afterwards, but no one knew what to do with it. Upon seeing the body, Rigoberta’s father cried, recalling how good and innocent Petrona was. After a few days, he took charge of the situation, saying that the young woman should be moved and buried because the body had begun to smell. The workers gathered her body parts in baskets and buried her nearby.
Petrona’s death shows that the violence against poor Indians predates any particular political event. Innocent people such as this young woman are at risk of violence or death under the abusive finca system, regardless of any external events. In this light, the Guatemalan army’s brutality can be seen as the radicalization and extension of the system that’s already in place.
Themes
Three days after the crime, the mayor arrived. However, all he did was chat and laugh with the landowner. No one asked the workers to give their version of the events. The bodyguard was sentenced to two weeks in prison, simply to calm the workers down. Upon reflecting on these events, Rigoberta recalls the feeling of picking up her friend’s body. For the next six years, she dreamt about Petrona every single night.
This event highlights the workers’ lack of access to legal representation. Allied with authorities such as the mayor, rich landowners can get away with anything, even senseless, brutal crimes like Petrona’s murder. This is one of the few moments when Rigoberta reveals the long-term emotional effects of such violence. Although she behaves courageously in the face of death and violence, events such as these take a heavy and perhaps irreparable toll on the human psyche.
Themes
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