Rigoberta organized the women, getting them to build encampments and learn how to defend themselves. The villagers fled to the mountains, without blankets or clothes. The army occupied and even bombed Indian villages, believing that people who were fighting for their land were lending support to the rebels. The government’s response to peasant organization was tremendous repression. “A child is only given food when he demands it.” “Analyze your position as a woman and demand a share,” she told her.

Wanting to take an equal part alongside her brothers in the struggle for justice, Rigoberta often faced male ridicule. The best land, which used to belong to Indians she says, was owned by big landowners who neither accepted Indians nor their ways. Observing the lives of the Indians, she came to the conclusion that their problems stemmed from the ownership of the land. In her village, Rigoberta joined a revolutionary anti-government Christian movement. Misused and criticized for her Indian ways, she experienced the deep divide that exists between the Indians and the rest of Guatemalan society. To better herself, Rigoberta worked as a servant in an urban middle-class household. In spite of the family’s money problems, she was kept by the nuns in their convent for a year, and attended school up through the first year of junior high. Malnutrition and handling the fungicides used on the plantations frequently caused the workers to grow ill.Īlthough Rigoberta’s parents could not read or write, Rigoberta was lucky enough to receive education when some Belgian nuns found her to be bright and promising. The intense heat of the coast frequently made the highland Indians sick. Many Indians, like Rigoberta’s family, had to spend half the year working on coastal plantations that typically exported coffee and cotton.

Her father organized a peasant group, the United Peasant Committee (CUC), and worked to hold on to his land. Her mother and father were both leaders in her community. Rigoberta was born into a large peasant family. But her story can still be read as a description of the common experiences of many Indians who led lives of exploitation, deep discrimination and fear of Guatemala’s brutal military dictatorships. Some of the facts that Rigoberta shares about her life have been questioned. Rigoberta Menchú’s powerful autobiography begins with these simple words: “This is my testimony. I’d like to stress that it’s not only my life, it’s also the testimony of my people. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.”

I rigoberta