Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans - Hardcover

Stoll, David

3

63 ratings by Goodreads

9780813335742: Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813335744 ISBN 13: 9780813335742

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

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Rigoberta Menchu is a living legend, a young woman who said that her odyssey from a Mayan Indian village to revolutionary exile was "the story of all poor Guatemalans." By turning herself into an everywoman, she became a powerful symbol for 500 years of indigenous resistance to colonialism. Her testimony, I, Rigoberta Menchu, denounced atrocities by the Guatemalan army and propelled her to the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. But her story was not the eyewitness account that she claimed. In this hotly debated book, key points of which have been corroborated by the New York Times, David Stoll compares a cult text with local testimony from Rigoberta Menchu's hometown. His reconstruction of her story goes to the heart of debates over political correctness and identity politics and provides a dramatic illustration of the rebirth of the sacred in the postmodern academy. This expanded edition includes a new foreword from Elizabeth Burgos, the editor of I, Rigoberta Menchu, as well as a new afterword from Stoll, who discusses Rigoberta Menchu's recent bid for the Guatemalan presidency and addresses the many controversies and debates that have arisen since the book was first published.

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Review:

"More than an expose or refutation, Stoll's account presents an increasingly complex -- and I think ultimately sympathetic -- portrait of an exceptional, eloquent individual caught up in personal and historical tragedies doing her best to maintain her integrity. The strength of this book lies not in its refutation of Rigoberta Mench�u's story but in its inquiry into what the instant worldwide appeal of her autobiography tells us about how we choose to understand recent Guatemalan history, Guatemalan society, and more generally, revolutionary struggle and authenticity in the voice of others." John Watanabe, Darmouth College

"The rule of all sociological studies should be a simple one: no icons. Not Karl Marx; not Max Weber (sigh); not Michel Foucault; not anyone. Rigoberta Mench� should not be an exception. This book is going to explode over Guatemalan and Latin American Studies." Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Georgetown University

Synopsis:

This book is about a living legend, an orphaned Guatemalan schoolgirl thrust into the role of spokeswoman for a defeated guerrilla movement. Her story about her life, family and village, published under the title I, Rigoberta Mench, aroused so much sympathy that she won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. Like the Ch Guevara legend, the imagery surrounding Rigoberta Mench served the ideological needs of the urban left. Her story also helped shape the assumptions of an era of human rights activism in Guatemala. But what old neighbors say about the violence that destroyed Rigobertas family and village is different from what appeared in her 1982 autobiography. By comparing her account with those of other violence survivors, this is a book that goes to the heart of contemporary debates over political violence/revolutionary movements, postmodernism and the ethics of scholarship. }This book is about a living legend, a young Guatemalan orphaned by government death squads who said that her odyssey from a Mayan Indian village to revolutionary exile was the story of all poor Guatemalans.

Published in the autobiographical I, Rigoberta Mench, her words brought the Guatemalan armys atrocities to world attention and propelled her to the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. Five years later, as her countrys civil war ended and truth commissions prepared their reports, the Nobel laureate seemed to repudiate the life story that made her famous. That is not my book, she said, accusing its editor, Elisabeth Burgos, of distorting her testimony.Why the disclaimer? One reason was the anthropologist interviewing other violence survivors in her home town. In Rigoberta Mench and The Story of All Poor Guatemalans, David Stoll uses their recollections and archival sources to establish a different portrait of the laureates village and the violence that destroyed it. Like the imagery surrounding Ch Guevara, Rigobertas 1982 story served the ideological needs of the urban left and kept alive the grand old vision of Latin American revolution. It shaped the assumptions of foreign human rights activists and the new multicultural orthodoxy in North American universities.

But it was not the eyewitness account it purported to be, and enshrining it as the voice of the voiceless caricatured the complex feelings of Guatemalan Indians toward the guerrillas who claimed to represent them. At a time when Rigobertas people were desperate to stop the fighting, her story became a way to mobilize foreign support for a defeated insurgency.By comparing a cult text with local testimony, Stoll raises troubling questions about the rebirth of the sacred in postmodern academe. Far from being innocent or moral, he argues, organizing scholarship around simplistic images of victimhood can be used to rationalize the creation of more victims. In challenging the accuracy of a widely-hailed account of Third World oppression, this book goes to the heart of contemporary debates over political correctness and identity politics. }

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