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Felipe Menchú Tum
Like Felipe Menchú, Rigoberta’s friend María died of chemical poisoning on a finca (plantation) after the cotton fields were sprayed with pesticides. María had previously told Rigoberta that she did not want to get married, since most Indian women were condemned to seeing their children due to the high rates of malnutrition in the community. María’s death forced Rigoberta, then 14 years old, to reflect on these issues herself. Like her brother Nicolás’s death, this traumatic event led her to feel intense anger at the exploitative finca system. Ultimately, it led Rigoberta to take a bold action to try to give her life another course: she decided to leave the finca and work as a maid in the capital. This early train of thought shows Rigoberta’s struggle to conceive of an Indigenous way of life that could turn suffering into an opportunity for action and resistance.
María Quotes in I, Rigoberta Menchú
The I, Rigoberta Menchú quotes below are all either spoken by María or refer to María. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 13
Quotes
I said: ‘Why don’t we burn all this so that people can’t come and work here any more?’ I hated the people who sprayed the crops. I felt they were responsible. ‘Why did they spray poison when people were working there?’ I was very upset when I went back home that time. I was with my neighbours and my older sister because my father had stayed up in the Altiplano. When I got home I told my mother that my friend had died. My mother cried and I said: ‘Mother, I don’t want to live. Why didn’t die when I was little? How can we go on living?’ My mother scolded me and told me not to be silly. But to me it wasn’t silly. They were very serious ideas.
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Chapter 14
Quotes
When I saw the maid bring out the dog’s food – bits of meat, rice, things that the family ate—and they gave me a few beans and hard tortillas, that hurt me very much. The dog had a good meal and I didn’t deserve as good a meal as the dog. Anyway, I ate it, I was used to it. I didn’t mind not having the dog’s food because at home I only ate tortillas with chile or with salt or water. But I felt rejected. I was lower than the animals in the house.
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María Quotes in I, Rigoberta Menchú
The I, Rigoberta Menchú quotes below are all either spoken by María or refer to María. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 13
Quotes
I said: ‘Why don’t we burn all this so that people can’t come and work here any more?’ I hated the people who sprayed the crops. I felt they were responsible. ‘Why did they spray poison when people were working there?’ I was very upset when I went back home that time. I was with my neighbours and my older sister because my father had stayed up in the Altiplano. When I got home I told my mother that my friend had died. My mother cried and I said: ‘Mother, I don’t want to live. Why didn’t die when I was little? How can we go on living?’ My mother scolded me and told me not to be silly. But to me it wasn’t silly. They were very serious ideas.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14
Quotes
When I saw the maid bring out the dog’s food – bits of meat, rice, things that the family ate—and they gave me a few beans and hard tortillas, that hurt me very much. The dog had a good meal and I didn’t deserve as good a meal as the dog. Anyway, I ate it, I was used to it. I didn’t mind not having the dog’s food because at home I only ate tortillas with chile or with salt or water. But I felt rejected. I was lower than the animals in the house.
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Page Number and Citation:
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