Customer Reviews

Rigoberta Menchu And The Story Of All Poor Guatemalans

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3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

David Stoll's book is an impressive work of investigation, and he has a genuine concern for the oppressed (despite what you've heard in the triumphalist right-wing media and the furious left-wing media)...but the book does have two problems. One of them really is Stoll's fault, but the other just "comes with the territory":

1) Even though Stoll spends (literally) the whole book parsing Rigoberta's story and explaining why he thinks it's vital to do so, the reader is never quite clear on why the whole exercise is important. If it's to reveal that a narrator's truth, even in the testimony genre, is a fudgy thing, then why the often reproachful tone? If it's to show that testimony is deployed for instrumentalist purposes (i.e. means to an end), the argument is essentially trivial, because we all know that. (Moreover, Rigoberta's purposes are clear to any reader of her book--that was surely her own measure of the narrative's success. She explicitly didn't want the book read for "anthropological insight," but rather for political action.) If it's to show a collective and selective blindless on the left, well, let's leave that one for the next section--

2) Stoll accepts that the Guatemalan army and its local operatives were every bit as nasty as Rigoberta alleges: he faults her for personalizing details (i.e. alleging that what happened to others actually happened to her and hers), but he never downplays or denies the army's murderous abuses. But the cumulative result is a weird and inevitable imbalance: more time and critical gaze are spent on the murderousness of the left--responsible for only a small percentage of total casualties, according to the Truth Commission--than on that of the right, apparently because it's just so obvious what the right was about. It's sort of like (to skip to the hackneyed parallel) doing a book on the Warsaw Ghetto that critiques the Jewish response...it's perhaps worth doing, but it puts an enormous burden on the reader to recall the context, i.e. that the errors (or even crimes) of one side are trivial compared to the crimes (calculated, rather than errors) of the other. The imbalance is the same on the "symapthizer" side: the book deals critically with the reception of the book by the foreign left, which is appropriate given the book's subject, but that foreign left's failings are trivial compared to those of the foreign (read US) right, which sought to expunge any record of military atrocities, and still does. The fact that some Amazon reader-reviewers could take Stoll's book as vindication of the army policies of the 1980s shows the pitfalls of Stoll's engaged-yet-detached (in the sense of "let the chips fall where they may") approach.

Lastly, Stoll could do a little better with his counterfactuals. He faults Rigoberta's book for quite possibly prolonging the conflict and postponing the peace accords, perhaps by as much as 12 years. This is a bit myopic: what kind of peace would the army have accepted in the mid-1980s? Stoll himself says that the army was in no mood to compromise for many years, which flies in the face of his criticism of the book. More broadly, he faults the armed left for creating a situation in which the army could carry out its murderous sweeps; this myopia is partially addressed in my point (2), above, but it also assumes that purely peaceful protest would have been received nonviolently by the state/army. Raise your hand if you believe that!

Don't get me wrong: this is a very impressive book, and I'm very glad that Stoll wrote it. (The core of the book, in the research sense, is very strong: his description of Vicente Menchu's decidedly non-stereotypical career as man-on-the-make.) There's a lot to learn here, for everyone...it's just that some it is in the form of a cautionary tale about the intersection of anthropology and presentist politics!

David Stoll's book makes important points. To what extent can the testimony of a single person represent the situation faced by a larger community? What happens when a single figure comes to embody a movement, and that figure has conveyed misrepresentations of the truth?
Stoll does not claim that many poor Guatemalans did not face unbearable oppression, or that they were not massacred by para-military death squads. However, he does note that, like 1980s and early 1990s Peru, the indigenous sometimes felt trapped. He suggests that both the military and leftist guerrillas would use murder as a means to coerce the indigenous into subordination.
Although Stoll pats himself on the back for having waited until Guatemala's lengthy civil war ended, one must question whether his timing was appropriate. His book provided ammunition for the military government to negate claims of torture and disappearances at a time when United Nations Truth Commissions were investigating military abuses.
The issues brought up by Stoll are important, but could be addressed in a less slanderous manner. As Victor Montejo points out, the picture of Rigoberta Menchu on the cover is inappropriate. If Stoll is in fact claiming not to be an iconoclast, why is the photograph on the cover? Why is Rigoberta's name in the title?
Let there be no doubt that Rigoberta did have a political agenda. However, if there are several exaggerations, the story should not be discredited. Consider the genre: testimony. Rigoberta was interviewed for hours a day, for about a week (I believe). Rigoberta did not edit the text. Also, we do not know what questions were asked, and how they influenced Rigoberta's responses. We do know that Burgos-Debray has marxist connections. An interviewer can have a profound effect upon the interviewee, in this case a young twenty-three year-old.

To start from the proverbial beginning, Rigoberta Menchu, the Mayan Guatemalan who graced the world with her autobiographical account of the terror of the countryside of that land during its lengthy civil war, lied. The author was curious how one person could have done all that Menchu claimed to have done. It turned out she hadn't. She wasn't the eyewitness at her brother's murder; her father wasn't the organizer of various rebel groups. Indeed, witnesses who knew him claimed to have known a very different personality from the one described by Rigoberta. Further, while Rigoberta was allegedly forming various political organizations in her home village--wherein she claimed she was illiterate and monolingual--she was really the scholarship student at a girls' school and quite fluent in Spanish as well as in her native, Mayan tongue.

The consequences of that myth? romanticism? are among the analyses of Stoll's work. And I must commend him on the depth of his analysis. But...

The Guatemalans have gone through a devestating civil war in which hundreds of thousands of civilians, most of them poor, have "been disappeared"--for which that new use of those verbs was created. It means, simply, that they don't exist any more (and that they're buried in one of those body dumps in which most were thrown and are now the subject of exhumations by forensic anthropologists). Stoll agrees that the Guatemalan army, civil patrols, and vigilantes have an inexcusable history. He doesn't seem to evade that. But...

Contemporary American and European leftists have made that war a battle between the victimized Mayan indigenas, and the nasty, unscrupulous, and, of course, wealthier ladinos (known elsewhere in Central America as Mestizos). Stoll points out that Rigoberta's father's major conflict was not with ladinos--with many of whom he got along just fine, thank you--but with his in- laws who were, like him, Mayan. But...

A number of guerilla groups infiltrated the countryside. Stoll examines that the bulk of Mayan and other poor were not supporters of the guerillas. Rather, they saw the guerillas as just another faction with arms. But...

I had some struggles with the book. I, like the author, am critical of white middle and upper middle class analyses of armed struggles--as if those doing the analyzing could tell the difference between a trigger and a plate of Brie cheese. At the same time, as one who is fairly well-versed in the history of the war there and is familiar with many who've suffered as a result of it--and who has been there and stopped by the army for no reason--I find it difficult to so easily exonerate the army. Sure the guerillas were not saints, despite what some of their supporters would have us believe. But desperation leads to armed conflict when there is no hope but to fight. That strikes me as common sense, and has provided the basis for any "revolution" including the American, French, Russian, etc. It's not necessarily "right" let alone "good," but simply fact.

In short, Stoll acknowledges that the Guatemalan army has, in a relative way, rivaled the Nazis (my comparison rather than his). But he clearly--and repeatedly--implies that the army's brutality was instigated by the actions of the guerillas. For instance, a couple of ladinos were killed by guerillas therefore the army became vioent and wiped out villages. Doubtless there was some guerilla activity that stimulated a violent response. But the extent of the army's violence--the formal, objective report issued less than two years ago says that of the violence, the army was responsible for 97 percent leaving little to blame on the guerillas--so overshadowed that of the rebels that the latter's is negligible, barely exists in a statistical sense.

Further, I was turned off by Stoll's overuse of the word "Marxist." Whether Stoll is a right wing activist, I don't know. (As he claims to be a scholar, I hope not.) But the words "the right" came up seldom while nearly everyone, from Allende in Chile to most of the guerilla groups came up as "Marxist." And that's all too often a devil term used to classify as "enemy" rather than to examine one's political or economic policies.

Still, I recommend the book's analyses. I agree with Stoll that even the human rights movement is compelled to draw a good vs. evil distinction rather than examining the complexities of an issue; the academy these days has too much influence of the post-modernists who love to designate others as victims (thereby often freeing those who've done the designating from amending their own comfortable lifestyles to do anything about it).

Indeed, to his credit, Stoll, in at least four places in the text, tries to examine why Rigoberta would have manufactured her story. He asks others too why they think she would do so. He niether frees her from the fallacy nor indicts her for perjury but examines. That attempt to understand her is particularly well-taken.

I must confess too that, despite my appreciation for his analyses, I can give him at best three stars due to guilt by association. That right wing demagog David Horowitz in one of his tracts uses Rigoberta's fabrication as an excuse to refute human rights causes in general. Perhaps--again, ideally--Stoll did not intend that with his examination. But I can't help thinking of Horowitz's reference which I read before reading this work. And that doesn't help Stoll's credibility.

If nothing else, if you read this volume, learn from the technique that the author uses to investigate a story, who he talks with and how he reaches a conclusion. If you come to different conclusions, as I have, more power to you.

This book was heavily criticized within the Guatemalan media due to its contraversial subject matter. Rigoberta Menchu is very well respected within the international community and this book reviews the accuracy of the 1982 book, I Rigoberta Menchu. I really enjoyed Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. It is obvious that an immense amount of research was invested into the topic and it is very thorough. More importantly, contrary to the media coverage it received, the book is neither attempting to slander Rigoberta Menchu nor is it a racist attack on indigenous peoples. David Stoll presents the Guatemalan civil war and the relationship between some indigenous communities and the guerrillas with refreshing clarity. He reveals the problems with one person, in this case Rigoberta Menchu, in speaking for an entire community-especially one as diverse as the "Mayans" of Guatemala. I would recommend the book for anyone interested in Guatemala.

It's about time the truth was revealed about Rigoberta. A lot of us (Guatemalan nationals) always felt she totally played the international press and amateur armchair "Central American specialists" the tune they wanted to hear, not necessarily the facts or the truth. She is still an unpopular person back home. She's unpopular because she can't seem to let go of her personal issues and resentments, find a way to really mediate between the diverse ideologies and cultures back home, and to prove herself as an intellectual.

Guatemalans have known for a year and a half now that she has called her first book "not my story" and is trying to separate from it, but not one major international newspaper reported on this public announcement. Why? I still hold in my hands a letter I was going to send to the NY Times, complete with backup newspaper clippings to prove my point. I was going to exhort the NY Times to really look at this whole situation with journalistic objectivity, not bandwagon political correctness. I'm pleased to see David Stoll has finally done the objective work that needed to be done regarding Rigoberta's story.

I was a teenager in Guatemala during the 80's and the political situation touched all, rich and poor alike. Both sides (the government/miliatry and the guerillas)were at fault and did their share of crimes against human dignity and rights. Now, we need to move foward and find the way to put these issues where they belong (in the past) and focus on acquiring the skills and captial that we, as a country, need to compete in the global economy.

The complexity and uniqueness of Guatemala requires the same kind of approach when learning more about it. A good example is that the indian groups were at war with each other way before the Spanairds ever set foot in Guatemala. Why has no one considered this when looking at the roots of Guatemala's underlying psyche?

We are not a cut and dry society and a little more effort on understanding us and what the real issues are goes a long way before supporting "figures" emerging from our country. These "figures" may not be telling the entire, objective story and who continue to perpetuate certain stereotypes that uninformed outsiders believe wholeheartedly and to greater chagrin, incorporate into academic curriculum in institutions of higher learning.

Ana Luisa Aldana

Im doin studies on the Guatemalan Genocide and of course this text has come up. At first i was a little reluctant to read it due to the fact he was openly opposing Menchu, someone whose piece i enjoyed and respected.

But i must say that it offers the field something which will last infinitely. Some support Stoll, some hate him and others sit on the fence. My position is somewhere in the middle. I dislike him for being critical of Menchu, in my understanding it is like swearing at your grandmother, a little taboo.

I thought his thorough research was maybe a little overdone, but probably necessary for the type of counter claims he was presenting.
This book will ensure uncertainty over this topic for decades to come but it is useful in the overall studies of the Guatemalan Genocide.

This work is currently fueling major controversies in both anthropology & Latin American Studies. Stoll, an experienced anthropologist who has researched extensively in Guatemala, has discovered important data which actually contextualizes Menchu's book more than it undermines it. The implications are many, not least for democracy & human rights movements throughout the Third World. In one sense it is yet another example of a discipline in perpetual crisis, especially over the question of whether & how scholars can accurately (sic) depict The Other. In the media the controversy is presented as anthropology vs. indigenes, but in fact, Stoll is trying to balance Menchu's account AND concerns with the evidence and perspectives of other Guatemalan Indians. His own agenda, which incidentally is that of a scholar with (formerly) solid progressive credentials, is important, namely to counter the myths & hagiography of revolutionary struggle that actually obstruct or retard positive social change. (E.g. the myth of the Cuban revolution as solely a rural guerilla victory, when applied elsewhere in Latin America, led to Che Guevara's demise in Bolivia, the unnecessary deaths of thousands in other countries, & the delay of crucial reforms.) Unfortunately, Stoll seems overly concerned with the narrow question of empirical accuracy, & needed to pay more attention to the literary tradition of personal testimony that Menchu's book exemplifies, a genre where advocacy of truth is more important than strict factual reliability. The facts do matter, but determining what is & is not a "fact" is not as simple as we'd like to believe. I still feel that it is possible to reconcile the accounts, and the concerns, of both Stoll and Menchu--but not if their partisans conduct the dialogue in the kind of sterile "she said, he said" format that mainstream media seem determined to inflict on us over & over again. Careful consideration of issues raised by Stoll should enhance appreciation & understanding of Menchu, her cause & her times. On a minor note, it is depressing to see Oliver Kamm's offensive attacks on anything progressive crop up here too. Perhaps returning a Nobel Prize might be an issue IF it was for Literature, but it was the Peace Prize, & she indisputably advanced the cause of peace in Guatemala. Shame on this kind of ignorant, heartless rancor. Read the book DESPITE his endorsement!

Having read I Rigoberta Menchu and Crossing Borders, I find Rigoberta's writing/speaking styles infinitely more readable than Stoll's. The controversy surrounding Rigoberta's credibility, particularly in I Rigoberta, is the central focus of Stoll's book. Incredibly, though, he fails to fully examine primary sources---substantiating his conclusions, instead, on secondary heresay much of the time. For instance, he travels to Europe to meet the author, yet for some bizarre reason fails to listen to the complete set of tapes of Rigoberta's initial interview (the source of her controversial first book). In fact, he hardly listens to a fraction of them, feigning some flimsy excuse for having to leave early. Could he not have returned?? It almost seems as though he only pursued leads that supported a foregone conclusion on his part.... ...namely that she had invented much of her life account. Perhaps she did, but his own research may have been more compelling had he been more thorough.

After 10 years of research, Stoll has shown that Menchu's book is an imperfect biography. How shocking! She went to sixth grade! She didn't witness her mother being tortured and murdered (although it did happen)!! There is no record of one of her brothers dying of malnutrition!!! For a time she participated in the unarmed political wing of the Guerrillas!!!!

As one who has spent several years living and working among Guatemalans who (barely) survived army massacres, tortures and disappearances, and who was in Guatemala when Stoll's book came out, I find these revelations to hardly be capital crimes.

Rigoberta's book was an attempt to bring international attention to the Guatemalan army's genocide campaign against the indigenous population. To that effect it was successful, although not nearly successful enough.

Is Menchu's book a perfect account of her life? Apparently not. Is it an accurate portrayal of what happened to millions of other indigenous Guatemalans? The UN-sponsored Truth Commission, and the Catholic Church's REMHI report have definatively answered in the affirmative.

In the end, you could say that Rigoberta's book is more accurately the story of "all poor Guatemalans" than it is her own. What Stoll sees as a fault is really one of the book's main virtues.

There are many stories that urgently need to be told about Guatemala. That Stoll would choose to spend his professional career attacking someone who has tirelessly fought for the human and cultural rights of Guatemala's indigenous people is the real mystery here. Instead of focusing on Rigoberta Menchu, a marginal, if noble, figure in Guatemala's sad history, why not undo the country's more dangerous mythic figure, Efrain Rios Montt (killed tens of thousands during his 16 month reign of terror, and now currently runs Guatemala's Congress and ruling party).

How many as-told-to autobiographies would stand up to 10 years of background checking? Personally, I'm waiting for Stoll's account of his own life story...

You'd think that after the Margaret Mead debacle, the field of anthropology would start trying to get its act together. Not by a long shot. It's apparently a field that cannot know the meaning of embarrassment. I love to read the specious logic of those academics and their defenders who still embrace lies, deliberate distortions, etc., to hold on to a cherished truth or to keep a tabooed thought at bay. And now we have the story of Rigoberta Menchu. The author, one of the few anthropologists who displays the courage to honestly tackle dishonest academic "truths," does a great job of describing this tawdry story with evidence and first-hand testimony. That the underlying fabrication would still carry weight among serious academics is surely one of the most laughable intellectual movements of our day. Just look at what one of the other reviewers on this page says about Menchu's fraudulent story (apparently seriously): "[Her] book exemplifies a genre where advocacy of truth is more important than strict factual reliability." So I guess according to this mindset, "strict factual reliability" is to be regarded as an option, or an interesting oddity -- or something for the birds. Author Stoll apart, when will the folks in this field grow up and start acting like responsible adults?