I, Rigoberta Menchú: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

After 40 days, the child can accompany his or her family to work in the fincas. Rigoberta explains that Indians are taken to work in enclosed lorries, full of people and animals. The trip takes over 36 hours and, since people vomit and urinate on the way, the atmosphere in the lorry is terrible. By the time workers exit the lorry, they are all in shock, physically and emotionally stunned. Due to these trips in an enclosed vehicle, Rigoberta never saw the beautiful countryside of her homeland until she went to the capital with her father.

On the fincas, recruiting caporales (agents) behave like the landowners that employ them. They speak Spanish and can thus function as intermediaries. Despite often coming from the same villages as the Indian works, the caporales treat the peasants with disgust and contempt, insulting the workers and constantly putting pressure on them to increase their productivity. Workers are fed tortillas and beans that are often rotten. Any additional ingredient served, such as an egg, is deducted from workers’ pay. 

The cantina (a bar where groceries are also sold) on the finca serves sweets and alcohol, which often leads workers to accumulate debt. Sometimes, when Rigoberta’s father (whom Rigoberta calls a sensitive man) was under stress, he would drink too much and end up owing all of his wages to the cantina. Rigoberta’s family then had to work even harder to pay back these debts. Because of this, Rigoberta’s mother, worried about incurring even more debt, would tell her children not to touch anything in the cantina, so that they wouldn’t have to pay for it.

Overseers can kick workers out of the finca without paying them, as once happened to Rigoberta’s family. The overseers are usually ladinos but are also occasionally Indians from the Altiplano. These Indian behave in harmful ways toward their own community, stealing from them in order to accumulate wealth. The overseers’ cruelty and the intensity of the work on these farms made Rigoberta furious. She also noticed another injustice: during their trips back and forth, drivers would often stop to rest but would never let the people out of the lorry. As Rigoberta grew up, she found that her rage against these types of events lessened. She came to understand that her family had to accept these conditions out of necessity, and that this was a plight shared with the rest of the community.

When Rigoberta was 12, the landowner, accompanied by 15 soldiers, visited the workers’ barracks and began talking to them about elections. Rigoberta’s mother understood a little Spanish, but none of the workers considered that the ladino government was their own. However, under pressure from the landowner and the soldiers, all workers were forced to cast a vote on a piece of paper—otherwise, they would be thrown out of the finca and not paid. Rigoberta and all the children were terrified, believing that the soldiers were there to kill their parents. At the same time, Rigoberta was shocked to notice how fat and tall the landowner and his family were.

Later, after the elections, the landowner returned to congratulate the workers because the president they voted for won. The workers did not even know who they had voted for, and they laughed among themselves, aware that the president of the ladinos had never represented their interests.