Title; I, Rigoberta Menchu’: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, Author: Rigoberta Menchu’; Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, City: London, Publisher: Verso, Year: 2010, Edition: 2nd, Pages: 294.
I, Rigoberta Menchu (2010), is a personal narrative of Rogoberta’s life who is a young Guatemalan Indian woman. Her powerful voice is recording the predicament of the people of Guatemalan in the political terror period. The political terror encompasses a 36-year civil war which came to an end in 1996.The Menchu’ community members incorporate the variable skills that they possess in surviving from the harsh realities of the armed antagonists that have an aim of completely eradicating a culture that will resist them. The reality of Menchu’ is harsh, and life becomes a struggle where she has to survive. Menchu’ is creating a tale of connection in her community. She has an aim of maintaining a cohesive Mayan culture. She is recording the past things of her culture through detailing rituals, memory, traditions and customs. The book is presenting the Mayan culture with mystery and wonder. The rituals that it describes which are alien to the Western mind envy the reader, and they even evoke a feeling of reverence. Rigoberta came to learn Spanish and made a decision of beginning the catechistic work which is political revolt expression and also a religious commitment.
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I like the book, and it gave me a motivation of reading it to the end because I found many details which are unbelievable and appalling. I did not believe that the landowners were widely using exploitation in that community. It startled me seeing ruthless officers and soldiers treating the Indians just like animals and yet at one point they were once Indians. The point which made me glad is learning that even though there was the existence of numerous barriers preventing the Indians from overcoming the various obstacles that they were encountering they were willing to come together in unity and fight their enemies.
The book makes me admire Rigoberta and also to include all her family members since they had a lot of dedication towards their community throughout their entire life. They came up with a decision of leaving all their family issues behind and putting tremendous efforts in ameliorating the working and living conditions of their fellow community members. Another aspect I like about the book is the fact that the author presents her message just like she is directly communicating and telling me her story. Rigoberta is a brave and bright woman who has strong convictions. It is sad to learn from the book that the wealthy group who are running the country divide the community members.it is evident where she is quoting that she came to understand that the barriers between the Ladinos and the Indians results from the wealthy elite running the country(165).
Lastly, the book can make one learn a lot about the Guatemalan government and the Mayan culture it becomes interesting to get to understand the ideas of a person whose background and life are very different from your own. The book in a clear description presenting the author’s culture, her childhood, her political activists’ life, her family and generally what it means being an indigenous in the Guatemala community today. It presents a powerful voice which is coming from a person who has firsthand experience with the native culture suppression in Latin America. The author is vividly conveying her community’s traditional beliefs, and she is portraying her personal response to socialist and feminist ideas. The book is a compelling narrative which I can encourage everybody to read because it even made the author to be a winner of the Nobel peace prize in 1992.
Reference
Menchú, R., & Burgos-Debray, E. (2010). I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian woman in Guatemala. London: Verso.
