Did Rigoberta Menchu Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

Senorita Menchu is a Guatemalan activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her stories about the indignities and oppression suffered by Guatemalan natives, including her own family. More than stories, of course, she was active in bringing to the attention of the world the miseries of her people. Rather than leave in order to avoid repercussions for her outspokenness, she decided to stay and help educate the younger generation and mobilize them in a way that they would never have to suffer what she and her family had to go through.

But, before discussing her books in this essay, it is necessary to point out that there are now critics and others who claim that much of what she wrote and described was fiction. Critics often quote Anthropologist David Stoll's recent book questioning sections of Rigoberta Menchu's memoir. He alleges that some incidents described by Menchu were exaggerated or were outright misstatements. Menchu insists that where her recollections differed from those of others in her community, she was not lying, but merely relating stories which had been told to her by her family.

Whatever the rationale, Menchu's passion and the problems and violence perpetrated on her and her family and others in her community and nearby villages is obviously fact. Her voice deserves to be heard and heeded. That voice depicts the woes of those not fortunate enough to own their own land, and therefore forced to work for others. "I worked from the time I was very small, but I didn't earn anything. I was really helping my mother...But my work wasn't paid. I was merely helping my mother" (Menchu 33).

It was the land on which so many Guatemalans based their hope. But, they were usually deceived by the government and the landowners. "We were very happy and went on working until the land owners arrived with their engineers again....What I can't forgive, and this is something which has contributed to my hate of those people, is they said they came to help us....The government says the land belongs to the nation. It owns the land and gives it to us to cultivate. But when we've cleared and cultivated the land, the landowners appear." (Menchu 104-5)

In the poorer nations of the world, like Guatemala, it is land that makes all the difference in status and in respect. The poor natives were not merely persecuted by landowners and the government, they suffered from a far more physical abuse: hunger and deprivation of even the most simple of human rights. "Most families lived in terror, fearing that any moment the soldiers would come...There is nothing worse than living under the constant threat of persecution...'Find somewhere to go,' my mother said. 'You can't hide here'." (Menchu 70-1)

The government would send soldiers not merely to frighten the natives but to make sure they would be under control, and would never threaten to upset the status quo- the rich landowners who had the influence and connection with the government that turned the lands over to them, and made the natives literally slaves, at slave labor wages, if they got paid at all. Rigoberta';s village was under constant threat, it seemed. And, after one uprising, the government sent soldiers. "Ninety soldiers arrived and stayed in the community house...After dark, the soldiers would go into the fields and cut down corn and beans and dug up potatoes, and ate whatever they liked. This action showed deep and deliberate disrespect..." (Menchu 51)

Land- the right to work it, cultivate plant and reap crops, live on it- that was felt to be the right of every native Guatemalan. Of course, as the story that Rigoberta menchu relates, this was not the way the government or the wealthy saw it. "Doing things legally, through petitions and land claims, did not work. In the history of Guatemala, the right of indigenous people to their land was often ignored in favor of the claims of big businesses and wealthy families" (Silverstone 47) And yet, as many who have praised Senora Menchu have stated, it is the human rights issue that binds caring people to try to understand and do something about the disasters and disappointments facing Menchu's own family and her native people. The facts about Guatemala, even today, are frightening. As Michael Silverstone (1999) points out, 75% of Guatemalans are illiterate, and in the altoplano only one in ten knows how to read and write. One reason, as is explained, is that Guatemalan schools teach in Spanish, a language not all of the natives speak. "For all these reasons, many children in the altoplano do not attend school at all, and nearly 75% of those who do drop out before the end of their sixth year." (Silverstone 37)

There is no way that any caring person reading the books by, and about Menchu could possibly feel anger toward the Guatemalan government and the rich landowners. But, there is more to this land situation. "Rigoberta's 1982 testimony weaves together many threads of the indigenous experience in Guatemala, but one that is missing is the land conflict between peasants. In view of how common such disputes are, even more so than with plantation owners, this is a serious omission" (Stoll 31).

While Mr. Stoll points out a few flaws in Menchu's story- that is, she may not have experienced herself all that she writes about, the fact remains that the gist of her battle with the government and the ladino landowners is real. The threat of being dispossessed from the land on which the natives live, from which they obtain their food, and which has sustained (even if somewhat poorly) their families, was great when Rigoberta first began to write, and the threat still remains. Whether that threat comes from other peasants, from the government or from rich absentee landlords doesn't really matter. Menchu's "truth" is a flashlight's beam on a dark part of the world which has never seen light before.

One result of Rigoberta's writing, and her Nobel award was that "The United Nations designated the year 1993 as the International Year of Indigenous Populations." (Lazo 60)

And yet, one has to look beyond Menchu's writing and her concern (and the UN's and the world's) about the plight of the natives in Guatemala. David Stoll (1999) points out that one reason for the militarist coups in Guatemala had nothing to do with the peasants, but more to do with the CIA's intervention and its help in overthrowing the elected Guatemalan government ion 1954. The army officers who appeared to take charge were "Guatemalan patriots indignant over their country's subordination to the United States. During a 1960 military coup, rebel soldiers were mobbed by ladino peasants asking for guns so they could fight, too" (Stoll 47).

What makes this part of the Guatemalan saga so sad is that, once again, the United States is being blamed- and perhaps rightly so- for interfering with local politics. "Our" men in power are better than "their" men- is a philosophy that extends from Guatemala to Allende's Chile to Castro's Cuba. But, this is not a review of interference by the U.S., but rather what a woman, born of peasants, learning how to rebel alongside her father, Vicente, has achieved a powerful voice that now cannot be silenced. And that voice continues to point out that solutions in Guatemala have not yet solved many of the problems. She continues to point out that "most of the wealth in the country is controlled by just a few individuals...(and that) the way to start fixing the problems was for the government to give public lands to the poor people xo they could have a place to live, grow crops, and feed themselves." (Silverstone 92)

There are two other concerns that need to be understood, no matter how well Menchu publicizes the problems in her native country. One is the division among the various indigenous natives- that is, tribal feuds and distrust which have caused the arguments over land and its possession far longer than any current government has been able to control those lands. Can public lands now stop this infighting and mistrust?

The second problem is one of language. There is no single language in Guatemala, even though, as was mentioned earlier, most schools now teach in Spanish. There needs to be an education to teach children not only in their own native language and dialects, but also to tech them Spanish so that they can become more than just peasants, if they so desire. Without a proper education, and motivation to get an education, nothing much will change: the few wealthy will still be in charge.

Rigoberta also makes a very important point that should not be overlooked: "The solution to our problems of poverty is not just more money. It lies in more equal distribution. It may also mean eradicating fundamental inequalities, abolishing privileges and purging the development agencies" (Menchu 175). She points out the vast difference between even well-meaning government officials who have money to spend and poor peasants who have nothing and are considered what Menchu calls "developable objects". She blames the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a lot of the world's poverty problems' not being solved. Somehow, if one is to understand her quarrel it is, to put it in our own colloquial terms, these monetary people just "don't get it". They lack proper planning and follow-up, and seem to dictate from the top without real regard to what the poor indigenous people really need. At the same time, Menchu explains that the natives can, and must, begin their own cooperative projects.

One such project includes a nationwide voter registration campaign in Guatemala. As she explains "In the old days nobody cared if indigenous people voted in Guatemala. The political parties certainly didn't care.....They just wanted to fill town halls with their friends, their compadres." (Menchu 206) She relates the fact that there are more than 11 million people in Guatemala, there are about 3.7 million registered voters, yet barely one and a half million vote. No wonder political power was maintained by just a few people.

What is also important to note in Menchu's beliefs and her writings is that she is not satisfied with being, or portraying, her native people as victims. "We have little sense of our self worth. We find it hard to have confidence in ourselves." (Menchu 206)

Receiving the Nobel Peace prize for her efforts certainly helped in providing and promoting self-worth. Now the people of Guatemala had a voice that was world-famous. David Stoll himself, critical though he is of some of Rigoberta's stories, nevertheless ends his own book with: "Even if the life told is not particularly her own, even if it is a heavily fictionalized heroic life, she achieved what she intended in a way that one person's actual life never could." (Stoll 283) Her first book, I, Roberta Menchu is now considered a national epic, according to Stoll (1999). It is an effort to provide a bridge between cultures- between wealth and poverty, between language barriers between the landed and the landless. In a sense, it is a two-fold cry for attention: a cry to the world to do something, and to her own people not to permit themselves to remain victims any longer.

CITATIONS:

Lazo, Caroline: Rigoberta Menchu Toronto: Dillon Press (1994)

Menchu, Rigoberta: I, Rigoberta Menchu London UK: Verso (1984)

Menchu, Rigoberta: Crossing Borders London UK: Verso (1998)

Silverstone, Michael: Rigoberta Menchu- Defending Human Rights in Guatemala New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York (1999)

Stoll, David: Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans Boulder CO: The Westview Press (1999)