wfn.org | Rigoberta Menchu in New York

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Contact: Wendy McDowell, NCC, 212-870-2227
Email: news@ncccusa.org: Web: www.ncccusa.org

NCC2/19/99

NCC, UMC BRING NOBEL LAUREATE TO NEW YORK TO ANSWER HER 
CRITICS
Sees Debate as Struggle Over Who Writes History

By Wendy McDowell

 NEW YORK, Feb. 19 ---- Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Mench£ 
clarified details of her personal history and continued to 
lift up the harrowing story of her people during a three-day 
visit to New York sponsored by the National Council of 
Churches (NCC) and the United Methodist Office for the 
United Nations.

 Ms. Mench£, the Mayan Indian from Guatemala whose work 
for indigenous peoples' rights in her own land and worldwide 
earned her the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, met with church 
leaders, media and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan during 
her Feb. 9-11 visit.  In each meeting, she stressed the 
significance of the report from the Truth Commission in 
Guatemala, due out at the end of this month, and expressed 
concern about the fate of the peace process in Guatemala.

 "The report, and what is done with it, is very 
important," Ms. Mench£ said, particularly since it comes at 
a time when there is a "great deal of uncertainty regarding 
the fate of the peace process."  Because the peace accords, 
out of which the Truth Commission was set up, are "political 
agreements and not legal agreements," they need continued 
vigilance to keep the momentum going, she said.  Meanwhile, 
she added, the fruits of the peace process, like the 
Commission's report, need to be disseminated to all the 
people including the victims of violence. 

 Keeping the Guatemalan peace process and the upcoming 
report in the eyes of the world and supporting its most 
prominent symbol were precisely the reasons the NCC and UMC 
invited Ms. Mench£ to visit New York at this time.

 "Issuing this document has already cost the 
Commission's president, Bishop Gerardi, his life," said the 
Rev. Dr. Rodney Page, Deputy General Secretary for the NCC, 
who introduced Ms. Mench£ at a Feb. 10 luncheon.  "Beyond 
the accusations, we want to affirm that Rigoberta Mench£ is 
an indigenous woman who is the symbol of a long and painful 
struggle for her people.  Through Rigoberta we honor the 
more than 150,000 dead, 50,000 'disappeared,' 200,000 
orphans and 40,000 widows, as well as the larger indigenous 
majority in Guatemala."

 "We supported Rigoberta Mench£'s nomination for the 
1992 Nobel Peace Prize, and we support her continued work 
for peace not only in Guatemala but around the world," said 
the Rev. Oscar Bolioli, Director of the NCC's Latin America 
and the Caribbean Office.  "This should be a time to be 
highlighting the Truth Commission's upcoming report."

Guatemalan Commission Hears Much Testimony from Indigenous 
People

 Like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South 
Africa, the Historical Clarification Commission in Guatemala 
has heard horrific accounts of violence from thousands of 
victims.  "The thousands of testimonies represent the 
collective memory of the victims, and 80 percent of those 
accounts come from Mayan, indigenous people of Guatemala," 
Ms. Mench£ said.  Thousands of Mayan Indians were massacred, 
"disappeared" and tortured by the ruling military regime 
during the 1970s and 80s, including many members of Ms. 
Mench£'s family.

 "Some of the victims have kept a piece of bone of their 
family member who was killed to say, 'Here is my pain' and 
to ensure that it will never happen again ," Ms. Mench£ 
said, adding, "In 1982 I was one, lonely voice, but now the 
voices of over five thousand people are raised."

  It is in the light of this collective history, which 
is not being disputed by any of her detractors, that Ms. 
Mench£ defended herself against recent criticisms.  
Anthropologist Dr. David Stoll has published a book entitled 
Rigoberta Mench£ and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans 
alleging that there are inconsistencies in the book I, 
Rigoberta Menchu.  An article about Stoll's book appeared on 
the front page of the New York Times in December, turning 
what was primarily an academic debate into a media-driven 
controversy.

 Ms. Mench£ was clear that she considered the reporting 
of the critique, both in its timing and its character, to be 
a personal and a collective attack.  "I have had a special 
meeting with Mayan organizers and leaders (in Guatemala) who 
feel that we are collectively under attack," she said.  "We 
feel this is a dangerous precedent, because if the most 
'civilized' Indian who won the Nobel Peace Prize is called a 
liar, then the other leaders can be said to be liars, too."

 Ms. Mench£ said she was willing to answer the points of 
contention during this visit to clarify some facts but said 
that her pride and her continuing work on the peace process 
will propel her to leave the debate behind and to stop 
answering questions about it in the future.  "I don't want 
to lose myself in this debate," she declared.  "And that is 
what happens - I get lost."

Explains Book was Not an Autobiography, Clarifies Details

 Ms. Mench£ said that her 1982 testimony, based on taped 
oral interviews by another anthropologist, Elizabeth Burgos, 
came at a key and sensitive time in her country.  The book 
based on that testimony was published in 1983.  The explicit 
purpose of the published account was to "convince the world 
to look into the atrocities."  To protect others and to 
convey a collective history, Ms. Mench£ readily acknowledged 
that she included accounts of violence she did not 
personally witness.

 Such a method of storytelling is considered not only 
appropriate but admirable in her culture, she explained.  
"For common people such as myself, there is no difference 
between testimony, biography and autobiography.  We tell 
what we have lived (collectively), not just alone."

 "The book was not an autobiography as you understand 
autobiographies," she stressed.  "Someday, I will write an 
autobiography and will recount all of my personal memories 
then."

 In the meantime, Ms. Mench£ elected to answer what she 
considered the unfair claims made against the oral testimony 
she gave in 1982. 

 Ms. Mench£ was particularly vehement about the issue of 
whether or not she had attended several "elite" schools.  
Dr. Stoll claimed that Ms. Mench£ attended two private 
boarding schools on scholarship, going against her claims of 
being "self-taught."  Explaining that she had worked as a 
maid at a school run by Belgian nuns, she said she received 
some literacy classes which were held two days a week for 
two-hour sessions in a separate room.  "As far as I know, no 
school grants a degree for being a maid," she joked, and 
also stressed that the Catholic-run schools in the area 
cannot be called "elite."  "The elite in Guatemala send 
their children to schools like Harvard," she said.  "The 
convent schools were very important in the peasant 
communities but 99 percent of the girls who went there were 
poor."

 Dr. Stoll and the New York Times said a land dispute 
between peasants and wealthy landowners actually was a 
family dispute between Ms. Mench£'s father and his in-laws. 
Ms. Mench£ explained that there are in fact seven parties in 
the ongoing dispute including local communities, landowners 
and a part of her family.  As in other land disputes 
involving indigenous people and their political rights, 
resolving them is an enormously complex process.  "We hope 
that the peace accords will lead to some of these cases 
being resolved," she said.

 The accusation that a brother she said was dead was 
actually alive is cleared up by the understanding that there 
were two brothers named Nicolas in her family, one of whom 
died of malnutrition as a baby.

 Most of the omissions cited by her critics were 
intentionally omitted out of a desire to protect others who 
had protected and helped her, she said.  "If I could do it 
over again, I would still leave those people out," she said, 
because "I could never live with myself if someone had been 
hurt or killed because of my words."

Larger Issues About Doing and Telling of History Are At 
Stake

 It is this concern for others as well as her emphasis 
on the collective history and memory of indigenous people 
that earned Rigoberta Mench£ the Nobel Peace Prize and 
continues to be the basis of her work for peace.

 She wryly commented that maybe her detractors got the 
Nobel Prize for Literature mixed up with the Nobel Peace 
Prize, but she wanted to assure them that "the Nobel Peace 
Prize is not given for writing a book."  This is essentially 
the line of argument the Nobel Committee has taken to reply 
to the challenge that Ms. Mench£'s prize should be revoked 
over the controversy.

 The larger issue behind the controversy, Ms. Mench£ 
believes, has to do with who gets to write history and not 
the details of the account given in I, Rigoberta Mench£.  
"Throughout history, the victimizers and conquerors have 
been the ones to write history.  This is the first time we 
are getting to write our own history and we are going to 
defend it.  Some people are not going to like that."

 The debate also concerns where history should be done, 
whether in the "Ivory Tower" or among the people.  Moving 
not only the writing but the telling of history from the 
halls of academia to the grassroots level is one of Ms. 
Mench£'s passions.  Throughout her visit, she repeatedly 
stressed the need for the Truth Commission's report to be 
"owned by people, not only in Guatemala but throughout the 
world."

 "The report should not be shelved in a library, but 
really be a study guide for the entire human rights 
community," Ms. Mench£ said.

 Meanwhile, politically her country is going through the 
growing pains of a peace process wherein "groups who used to 
have a common denominator in whom they were fighting against 
now need to come together around reconstruction and 
development.  This is never easy.  If war is complicated, 
then a peace process is even more complicated!"

 With elections coming up this year in November, the 
country is at another crucial moment.  "Whether greater 
gains will be obtained in the peace accords depends on the 
party who comes into power," Ms. Mench£ explained.

 "Members of the armed forces rejoice over crises and 
controversies," she said, because they divide those who 
would work together to keep the peace accords alive.

 Her steadfast commitment to the peace process and to 
making sure that her community has a voice in that process 
and in the political system continues to earn Ms. Mench£ 
support locally and internationally, in spite of the 
criticisms.

 "Without even being a candidate, she already has 4 
percent in the opinion polls of Guatemala," Rev. Bolioli 
said.  "Her work in Guatemala earns her respect and support 
the world over. As an indigenous woman from the United 
States said at the luncheon, 'Rigoberta Mench£ has made it 
possible for all indigenous women to hold their heads 
higher.'"

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