Open Forum: Rigoberta's Testimonio
Lancaster, Roger N.
Two recent news items on Guatemala have made headlines in North American papers. One is the publication of the report of the UN Commission for Historical Clarification, which found the...
...Narrative devices like these-the use of composite personas, shadings of events-would have scarcely raised an eyebrow in a properly qualified ethnographic work or in an historical novel...
...With a middle-school education, Menchd was undoubtedly better educated than her story lets on...
...But individual life history seldom dovetails so clearly with the larger course of social history, much less with the demands of an audience craving clear-cut tales of unmediated authenticity...
...Any left incapable of working through the facts in all their complexity will be by definition inadequate to the task it poses...
...The testimony is convincing, not because it offers a studied, exhausbecause, in the circulation of meanings on a global scale, it better reflected the tastes and interests of its intended audience in the United States and Western Europe...
...But poking holes in Menchd's autobiography does not demonstrate his by-now familiar refrain that violence only begets more violence...
...But they undercut the authority of a text that purports to tell us the unvarnished truth-indeed, that reports to embody the truth, in a singular persona-without proviso or caveats...
...In consequence, they sometimes took land from poor peasants to give to other poor peasants...
...The emotional work performed by icons is good for rallying the faithful, but proves incompatible with effective struggle...
...Details matter...
...Narrative devices like these-the use of composite personas, shadings of events-would have scarcely raised an eyebrow in a properly qualified ethnographic work or in an historical novel...
...This is no small point...
...Preaching the gospel of redistributive justice and class empowerment, inexperienced cadre took an oversimplified approach to the crazy-quilt patchwork of alliances they encountered in the countryside...
...But individual life history seldom dovetails so clearly with the larger course of social history, much less with the demands of an audience craving clear-cut tales of unmediated authenticity...
...Preaching the gospel of redistributive justice and class empowerment, inexperienced cadre took an oversimplified approach to the crazy-quilt patchwork of alliances they encountered in the countryside...
...Accuracy about the shape of local struggles is of critical importance, as Alejandro Bendafia's study of demobilized Contras, Una Tragedia Campesina: Testimonies de la Resistencia, illustrates...
...With a middle-school education, Menchd was undoubtedly better educated than her story lets on...
...These conflicts acquired horrific scale and brutality owing to the racist legacies of colonialism and the entrenchment of landed elites in authoritarian governments and abusive militaries...
...She has suggested that such unflattering reportage is part of a conspiracy designed to cast doubt on the findings of the Guatemalan truth commission...
...Are you saying Indians are all liars...
...Such a statement evades the obvious...
...It is not just for academic reasons that editorial airbrushing and oversimplification are bad practices...
...The other comes from reports questioning the veracity of the biography of the best-known spokesperson for Guatemala's indigenous peoples, Rigoberta Menchii...
...Such mistakes, repeated wherever the FSLN had shallow roots or failed to understand local conflicts, embittered a section of the rural poor and created the Contra base that was so effectively mobilized by Washington...
...For a time, she stood as an object lesson on the truth of identity and the power of authentic voices...
...The present controversies surrounding I, Rigoberta Menchta also require an understanding of how its literary-polemical form, the testimonio, or testimony, emerged in the 1970s and 1980s...
...Her family indeed met gruesome deaths at the hands of the state...
...The central land struggle in Menchfi's autobiography undeniably happened in the context of a highly stratified social system in which Spanishspeaking Ladinos wield power and wealth, but this particular conflict occurred not between poor Indians and rich Ladinos but, as is so often the case, between related indigenous families, neither of whom could be described as wealthy or powerful...
...The Guatemala Scholars Network insists that Menchti was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize not because she watched her brother being burned alive or because she was eye-witness to horrific violence, but because of her role as a public spokesperson for the indigenous rights movement...
...Menchd, for her part, has responded by questioning the timing of Stoll's book and The New York Times reporting it stimulated...
...On this count, the left, in effect, fell prey to its own worst impulses-a tendency to romanticize noble natives and to oversimplify the nature of social struggles in stratified societies...
...Individuals cannot really exemplify the singular experiences or uniform interests of larger groups...
...Who is telling that story in a plausible, methodical manner today...
...Perhaps most disappointing have been the responses coming from the North American academic left...
...And so on...
...Complexity matters...
...Perhaps most disappointing have been the responses coming from the North American academic left...
...Details matter...
...Menchd, for her part, has responded by questioning the timing of Stoll's book and The New York Times reporting it stimulated...
...It cannot be said that anyone has come out very well in the ensuing brouhaha...
...Menchd's struggles are those of Everywoman, her story is the story of all poor Guatemalans...
...vey salient sociological facts to a Northern audience through an exemplary life history, and to thereby solicit moral, political and economic support for local struggles...
...tive analysis of social structures or historical developments, but because it weaves a narrative of discovery as an autobiographical tale: The author comes to the Truth simply by knowing his or her own experiences, by claiming his or her own voice, by possessing his or her self...
...Others insist that Menchdi's account is, in effect, still true, even if it is not...
...Menchtl was awarded the Prize precisely because she wove a convincing narrative about the deaths of her family members into a story about ethnic, class and political conflicts...
...She was appropriated as the most accessible of the postcolonials, and an image of Mencht was shaped that compounded the bases of identity politics-poor, Indian, peasant, woman...
...But they undercut the authority of a text that purports to tell us the unvarnished truth-indeed, that reports to embody the truth, in a singular persona-without proviso or caveats...
...After casting himself as the Matt Drudge of anthropology, David Stoll has insisted that he never intended to attack or discredit Menchd...
...On this count, the left, in effect, fell prey to its own worst impulses-a tendency to romanticize noble natives and to oversimplify the nature of social struggles in stratified societies...
...One is the publication of the report of the UN Commission for Historical Clarification, which found the Guatemalan army overwhelmingly responsible for the political massacres that left some 200,000 Mayans dead or missing in the course of that country's 36-year civil war...
...Are you saying Indians are all liars...
...It is not just for academic reasons that editorial airbrushing and oversimplification are bad practices...
...The Guatemala Scholars Network insists that Menchti was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize not because she watched her brother being burned alive or because she was eye-witness to horrific violence, but because of her role as a public spokesperson for the indigenous rights movement...
...If one's goal were a balanced assessment, it would be far more logical to suggest that whatever semblance of formal democracy that now exists in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua owes its existence to the very revolutionary movements Stoll now disparages...
...Poor Indian peasant women invariably turn out to have varied experiences, opinions and interests...
...She was appropriated as the most accessible of the postcolonials, and an image of Mencht was shaped that compounded the bases of identity politics-poor, Indian, peasant, woman...
...After casting himself as the Matt Drudge of anthropology, David Stoll has insisted that he never intended to attack or discredit Menchd...
...But mistakes in practice and interpretation notwithstanding, some basic facts remain: Large numbers of people in Central America joined revolutionary struggles in the 1970s and 1980s not because they were deceived by clever storytellers who wielded details in a slippery manner, but because gross inequalities and political repression led them to the conclusion that only revolutionary movements could implement the desired changes...
...As with didactic Hollywood movies, nothing complicates the picture, where poor Indians struggle against rich Ladinos...
...What was long whispered in solidarity circles and suspected by academics who used I, Rigoberta Menchd now appears to have been empirically documented: Some of the narrator's details do not quite square with the facts, at least the facts as recalled by other eye-witnesses...
...Communicating complex historical lessons like these has always been difficult, but it proved well-nigh impossible to convey the salient facts against a Reagan propaganda offensive demonizing Communist aggression in "our backyard...
...If one's goal were a balanced assessment, it would be far more logical to suggest that whatever semblance of formal democracy that now exists in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua owes its existence to the very revolutionary movements Stoll now disparages...
...Iconization is a bad practice for the left because it offers a fake resolution for the real complexities and dilemmas of history...
...She has suggested that such unflattering reportage is part of a conspiracy designed to cast doubt on the findings of the Guatemalan truth commission...
...But poking holes in Menchd's autobiography does not demonstrate his by-now familiar refrain that violence only begets more violence...
...We have to understand the present zeitgeist to understand why such stories now show up on the front pages of The New York Times...
...The testimony offered an end-run around these obstacles...
...I don't care whether it's true or not," huffs one scholar in The Chronicle of Higher Education...
...Although Menchi's testimony has never much affected the course of indigenous rights or political mobilization inside Guatemala, her impact on solidarity politics, higher education and multiculturalism in the United States and other Northern countries has been more profound...
...Individuals cannot really exemplify the singular experiences or uniform interests of larger groups...
...The goal of the testimony was to didactically conRoger N. Lancaster is director of cultural studies at George Mason University and is author of Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (University of California Press, 1992) and co-editor (with Micaela di Leonardo) of The Gender/Sexuality Reader (Routledge, 1997...
...In NACLA, the Times, and other vehicles, Menchfi falls back on two standard defenses: Are you saying my brother isn't dead...
...The emotional work performed by icons is good for rallying the faithful, but proves incompatible with effective struggle...
...Iconization is a bad practice for the left because it offers a fake resolution for the real complexities and dilemmas of history...
...But mistakes in practice and interpretation notwithstanding, some basic facts remain: Large numbers of people in Central America joined revolutionary struggles in the 1970s and 1980s not because they were deceived by clever storytellers who wielded details in a slippery manner, but because gross inequalities and political repression led them to the conclusion that only revolutionary movements could implement the desired changes...
...Any left incapable of working through the facts in all their complexity will be by definition inadequate to the task it poses...
...Who is telling that story in a plausible, methodical manner today...
...The facts matter...
...Menchtl was awarded the Prize precisely because she wove a convincing narrative about the deaths of her family members into a story about ethnic, class and political conflicts...
...It cannot be said that anyone has come out very well in the ensuing brouhaha...
...And so on...
...For a time, she stood as an object lesson on the truth of identity and the power of authentic voices...
...Therein lay the polemical strength but also the analytical weakness of the form...
...Accuracy about the shape of local struggles is of critical importance, as Alejandro Bendafia's study of demobilized Contras, Una Tragedia Campesina: Testimonies de la Resistencia, illustrates...
...This is no small point...
...Stoll suggests in an interview in the March/April 1999 issue of NACLA that his real aim is to contribute to a critical reassessment of the guerrilla struggles of the 1970s and 1980s...
...What was long whispered in solidarity circles and suspected by academics who used I, Rigoberta Menchd now appears to have been empirically documented: Some of the narrator's details do not quite square with the facts, at least the facts as recalled by other eye-witnesses...
...Halos illuminate nothing...
...Page by page, Menchdi's life appears as a straightforward morality play about the coming-to-consciousness of a poor Indian peasant woman...
...In NACLA, the Times, and other vehicles, Menchfi falls back on two standard defenses: Are you saying my brother isn't dead...
...The testimony grew out of the unique relationship between popular movements in Latin America--especially Central America-and solidarity movements in the United States and Western Europe...
...Menchd's struggles are those of Everywoman, her story is the story of all poor Guatemalans...
...Clearly, the present airings of doubt about Rigoberta Menchti's life story is emblematic of the political skepticism of the 1990s--a decade that witnessed the collapse of really-existing socialism, the failure of Sandinismo in Nicaragua and the retreat of progressives everywhere from any semblance of a radical engagement or a global vision...
...Revolutionary upheavals in Central America were in no small part struggles over basic material resources...
...Her testimony was touted as a new model of writing, one that superseded the traditional canon, standards of argumentation, and demands for ethnographic verification...
...In short, Mench6 appears to have told her story in a manner that force-fits her and her family's experiences into the social analysis she wished to dramatize...
...I don't care whether it's true or not," huffs one scholar in The Chronicle of Higher Education...
...Such mistakes, repeated wherever the FSLN had shallow roots or failed to understand local conflicts, embittered a section of the rural poor and created the Contra base that was so effectively mobilized by Washington...
...In consequence, they sometimes took land from poor peasants to give to other poor peasants...
...Her testimony was touted as a new model of writing, one that superseded the traditional canon, standards of argumentation, and demands for ethnographic verification...
...Once again, Menchdt conflates her own persona with the people and with the movement...
...Stoll suggests in an interview in the March/April 1999 issue of NACLA that his real aim is to contribute to a critical reassessment of the guerrilla struggles of the 1970s and 1980s...
...Such a statement evades the obvious...
...The narrator thus becomes Exemplary Rigoberta, the very personification of Maya struggles, edited and airbrushed into an icon who stands outside the course of real-life events (which are always complex) to embody a simplified lesson, a clear purpose, a Pure Idea...
...Although Menchi's testimony has never much affected the course of indigenous rights or political mobilization inside Guatemala, her impact on solidarity politics, higher education and multiculturalism in the United States and other Northern countries has been more profound...
...But would her tale have had the same force, would it have received the same accolades, had it begun in the reallife complexity of land conflicts between related indigenous families...
...Rigoberta Menchsi's life story was more successful than myriad other testimonies of the period because, in the circulation of meanings on a global scale, it better reflected the tastes and interests of its intended audience in the United States and Western Europe...
...In short, Mench6 appears to have told her story in a manner that force-fits her and her family's experiences into the social analysis she wished to dramatize...
...As with didactic Hollywood movies, nothing complicates the picture, where poor Indians struggle against rich Ladinos...
...This is not very convincing...
...Complexity matters...
...Her family indeed met gruesome deaths at the hands of the state...
...It attempted to convey an analysis of indisputable facts of scale-inequality, racism, repression and struggle-through the details of an individual life...
...Others insist that Menchdi's account is, in effect, still true, even if it is not...
...Page by page, Menchdi's life appears as a straightforward morality play about the coming-to-consciousness of a poor Indian peasant woman...
...This is not very convincing...
...The narrator thus becomes Exemplary Rigoberta, the very personification of Maya struggles, edited and airbrushed into an icon who stands outside the course of real-life events (which are always complex) to embody a simplified lesson, a clear purpose, a Pure Idea...
...Three of Menchl's siblings died, apparently under circumstances bearing some resemblance to but not quite identical with events she describes...
...Three of Menchl's siblings died, apparently under circumstances bearing some resemblance to but not quite identical with events she describes...
...When the triumphant Sandinistas brought the revolution into remote areas of Nicaragua after their 1979 victory, they were drawn into pre-existing land feuds between contending campesino kin groups and political factions-disputes much like those to which Menchti's relatives were party...
...When the triumphant Sandinistas brought the revolution into remote areas of Nicaragua after their 1979 victory, they were drawn into pre-existing land feuds between contending campesino kin groups and political factions-disputes much like those to which Menchti's relatives were party...
...But would her tale have had the same force, would it have received the same accolades, had it begun in the reallife complexity of land conflicts between related indigenous families...
...Halos illuminate nothing...
...Once again, Menchdt conflates her own persona with the people and with the movement...
...Like its antecedent-the ethnobiographies collected by Oscar Lewis-the testimony condensed a life history into a single argument about a big picture...
...The appeal of the story is thus based on the authoritative voice of the speaker, who stands as a representative of larger social groups...
...The facts matter...
...The central land struggle in Menchfi's autobiography undeniably happened in the context of a highly stratified social system in which Spanishspeaking Ladinos wield power and wealth, but this particular conflict occurred not between poor Indians and rich Ladinos but, as is so often the case, between related indigenous families, neither of whom could be described as wealthy or powerful...
...Poor Indian peasant women invariably turn out to have varied experiences, opinions and interests...
Vol. 32 • May 1999 • No. 6
