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Chapter 31
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
In February 1980, 80,000 peasants took part in a strike. The army soon moved in—but peasants in the mountains built barricades and fought the soldiers back with machetes, stones, and sticks. Despite their simple weapons, they succeeded in maintaining the strike for 15 days. Rigoberta joined the strikers in the Altiplano, many of whom were not organized collectively, to tell them about the CUC. In the meantime, as she taught them how to organize, the army began a heavy campaign of repression. This included bombing people’s houses and throwing napalm grenades.
The unequal resources of the army and the peasants highlight the courage and solidarity of these 80,000 peasants, who are willing to risk their lives in the name of their community’s well-being. The army’s response, by contrast, underscores its destructive intentions: to harm poor Indians in every possible way. This includes destroying entire villages and killing innocent citizens, regardless of their actual affiliation with guerillas.
Themes
After such severe repression, the different armed organizations in charge of defending peasants decided to unite, becoming the 31st of January Popular Front, whose name honored the events at the Spanish embassy. Their main actions, beyond self-defense strategies, were to raise consciousness and visibility concerning peasants’ plight and army violence. On May 1st, 1981, they took part in a series of flash demonstrations in the capital, which were completed rapidly in order to avoid violent repression from the authorities. For an entire week, they also called factories with fake bomb threats, which forced the factories to close. These actions proved to the government that the people were getting increasingly organized and capable of making their voice heard.
The fact that poor, largely unarmed peasants are able to cause such confusion demonstrates the power of collective organizing. These events highlight the broad expansion of the movement that Rigoberta joined: from a small village organization, it has now spread to the entire country and has the power to disrupt the nation’s economic and political system. The emphasis on visibility also falls in line with Rigoberta’s personal project: to share her story through her autobiography, so that these issues might gain even greater, international weight.
Themes
Rigoberta emphasizes the role women played in this struggle, some carrying their children with them while taking part in political actions. She hopes that, after the victory, women will be able to tell their stories.
After the event at the Spanish embassy, an organization called “Vicente Menchú Revolutionary Christians” was formed, to honor Rigoberta’s father’s political and religious commitment. This Christian political commitment upset the Church hierarchy, which preferred to side with the repressive authorities. Rigoberta explains that the nuns and priests who opposed the repressive regime had to go into hiding. She mentions the cruel example of a priest who betrayed his own family, handing over his niece—whose mother was a union leader—to the military. At the age of 16, the girl was raped by so many soldiers that she could no longer talk or move, even after she had left the country.
Rigoberta’s discussion of the role of the Catholic Church in this conflict shows that cruel—or, on the other hand, courageous—people exist in any group. However, her comments emphasize the hypocrisy of this religious institution: although the Catholic Church condemns violence as a sin, its leaders voluntarily take part in horrific deeds in order to protect their political interests. This shows how deeply corrupt many Guatemalan institutions are, as they to side with the violent army instead of the peaceful, democratic Indian peasants.
Themes
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