Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans

by David Stoll

Book Overview

Rigoberta Mench is a living legend, a young woman who said that her odyssey from a Mayan Indian village to revolutionary exile was "the story of all poor Guatemalans." By turning herself into an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813335744
• ISBN13: 9780813335742
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The Myth of Menchu

My wife is Guatemalan, so I have a special interest in the case of R. Menchu.Long before this book appeared I found it odd that I couldn't find a single Guatemalan who believed the popularized story of Menchu. I had doubts myself since the historic highway of leftism is paved with the remains of frauds and tyrants.This book lays my doubts to rest. Menchu is a fraud. She has been used by the Left to bash the U.S., and she used them and a gullible international media to become a star. Menchu is to the misty eyed utopian dreamers what Fabio is to lonely, yearning readers of romance novels, or what Miss February is to adolescent men. Rigoberta is the socialist pin-up girl.But the fantasy of the left always turns violent and ugly. In the Guatemalan case the author also demonstrates that the indians were used as pawns to further the objectives of the Left and their guerilla surrogates. The Left pushed the mostly uninterested indians into the face of the repressive right-wing government while shouting, "they say you are fascists murderers." Wedged between the bloodthirsty Left and Right, the indians got slaughtered.Menchu, like Lenin, Castro, Foucault, and so many before her, is a symbol of the moral corruption of the Left. People drawn to utopian reformism are also ideal candidates for the cult of personality. Menchu became (and still is) a useful invention of those who build castles in sand saturated with the blood of innocents.One thing is certain, this book will cause no general reassessment by the Left. Few leftists will ask themselves, "How did I get taken in by the myth of Menchu?" The Left merely steps over the bodies and havoc it precipitates, moving on to the next big religious crusade. After all, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, can you? The thousands of innocent Guatemalan eggs cracked in the leftist guerilla war merely join the millions of others around the world. Yet very few leftists have found that mass murders associated with their beliefs are reason to rethink. Even one prior reviewer of this book reduces his rating because one of the rare leftists who rethought his views has given support to the conclusions of David Stoll.Several thousand people were sadly murdered during the Pinochet regime in Chile, and the Left pursues this relentlessly. Millions were killed in the name of socialism in the USSR and China, and the countries they subjugated, yet the Left demands no trials, no accountability. Why? Have you ever heard one leftist suggest that Castro should be tried for torturing, murdering, and filling his prisons with dissidents, homosexuals, etc.? Castro is merely making socialist omelets, thus he remains a hero.The reaction to this book by the Left has mostly been to repudiate it as rightist disinformation (despite the fact that the author is on the Left), or to ignore it. Menchu remains a useful myth for those who detest the U.S. and still harbor utopian dreams that require more broken eggs.If your teacher mak

Surprise! an honest anthropologist tackles dishonest 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?

A must read for anyone who studies or works in Guatemala

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.

Finally, what most Guatemalans knew about Rigoberta

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