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Chapter 21
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 provides some historical background concerning Guatemalan politics. General Kjell promised to launch an agrarian reform, but his promises soon proved empty: instead of giving land to the peasants, he divided the land into small plots that he gave them ownership over. Under these conditions, peasants would still have to pay the government for certain actions, such as cutting down trees. This partial land ownership was a cunning strategy to try to keep the Indians from rebelling. However, peasants soon protested against these land divisions, which kept them from living in a communal fashion. They realized that, whereas they had to pay to cut down trees, big businessmen could cut as many as they wanted.
Rigoberta does not focus very much on the specific developments taking place in the Guatemalan government. Instead, in line with her Maya-Quiché community’s emphasis on the historical struggle of their ancestors against the Spanish colonizers, her objective is to highlight the long-term oppression of poor Indians. From this perspective, changes in national leadership only modify the specific methods through which the rich ladino elite oppresses the poor—it doesn’t solve the root problem.
Themes
In May 1978, a massacre took place in a village where Indians organized against landowners. The entire group, including women and children, was viciously killed. Although news of the event made its way into newspapers, no one in the country seemed to pay attention to these poor peasants’ deaths. Now sufficiently organized, the CUC then came out into the open to defend peasants’ rights, fighting for fair wages and respect for the peasants’ customs and dignity. The CUC called for strikes and demonstrations. In the end, they obtained a reasonable minimum wage—but this didn’t translate into actual results, because landowners didn’t put this rule into practice.
Both politicians’ and the general public’s lack of interest in news of this massacre shows how violence against poor Indians is normalized—and perhaps tolerated—in Guatemala. The fact that the CUC’s success in raising workers’ salaries does not translate into actual change highlights the government’s unwillingness to enforce such rules and regulate landowners’ behaviors. As in the case of Petrona Chona’s death, the law seems more interested in placating angry peasants than enacting actual change.
Themes
In 1978, when Lucas García comes to power, full-blown repression reached El Quiché. He launched massacres in villages, and mass graves appeared on a daily basis: the soldiers created “clandestine cemeteries” after kidnapping, torturing, and raping villagers, dumping all the bodies into a pit.
Thus far, changes in the Guatemalan government haven’t had a meaningful impact as far as granting Indigenous peasants more rights or adequate representation. The historic election of Lucas García (which was fraudulent) is uniquely impactful, but in a negative way: it leads to even more violence and even genocide against the Maya-Quiché people.
Themes
In 1979, as part of the CUC, Rigoberta traveled to different areas of the Guatemalan countryside. She soon realized that an important barrier is language, since communities are divided into different languages and do not speak Spanish. Rigoberta decided to learn Spanish. Some nuns in a convent taught her to read and write, which further convinced her that not all religious officials were blind to the suffering of the poor.
Much of Rigoberta’s political education consists of understanding that while different institutions (such as the Guatemalan army and the Catholic Church) might be politically repressive, not all of their individual members are bad. Rigoberta’s decision to learn Spanish is tied to her awareness that one means to fight an unfair system is to attack it from within, by using some of its weapons. In this case, she’s using Spanish, which has historically been used to trick and oppress poor Indians who don’t speak the language.
Themes
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