Guatemalan indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchú first came to international prominence following the 1983 publication of her memoir, I, Rigoberta Menchú, which chronicled in compelling detail the violence and misery that she and her people suffered during her country's brutal civil war. The book focused world attention on Guatemala and led to her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. In 1999, a new book by David Stoll challenged the veracity of key details in Menchú's account, generating a storm of controversy. Journalists and scholars squared off regarding whether Menchú had lied about her past and, if so, what that would mean about the larger truths revealed in the book.
In The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, Arturo Arias has assembled a casebook that offers a balanced perspective on the debate. The first section of this volume collects the primary documents-newspaper articles, interviews, and official statements-in which the debate raged, many translated into English for the first time. In the second section, a distinguished group of international scholars assess the political, historical, and cultural contexts of the debate, and consider its implications for such issues as the "culture wars," historical truth, and the politics of memory. Also included is a new essay by David Stoll in which he responds to his critics.
Contributors: Luis Aceituno; Juan Jesús Aznárez; John Beverley, U of Pittsburgh; Allen Carey-Webb, Western Michigan U; Margarita Carrera; Duncan Earle, U of Texas, El Paso; Claudia Escobar Sarti; Claudia Ferman, U of Richmond; Dina Fernández García; Eduardo Galeano; Dante Liano, U of Milan; W. George Lovell, Queen's U, Canada; Christopher H. Lutz; Octavio Martí; Victor D. Montejo, UC Davis; Rosa Montero; Mario Roberto Morales, U of Northern Iowa; Jorge Palmieri; Daphne Patai, U of Massachusetts, Amherst; Mary Louise Pratt, Stanford U; Danilo Rodríguez; Ileana Rodríguez, Ohio State U; Larry Rohter; Carolina Escobar Sarti; Jorge Skinner-Kleé; Elzbieta Sklodowska, Washington U; Carol A. Smith, UC, Davis; Doris Sommer, Harvard U; David Stoll, Middlebury College; Manuel Vásquez Montalbán; and Kay B. Warren, Harvard U.
Arturo Arias is director of Latin American Studies at the University of Redlands.
| Acknowledgments | ||
| Abbreviations | ||
| I | Background | |
| Rigoberta Menchu's History within the Guatemalan Context | 3 | |
| I, Rigoberta Menchu and the "Culture Wars" | 29 | |
| II | Documents: The Public Speaks | |
| Tarnished Laureate | 58 | |
| Stoll: "I Don't Seek to Destroy Menchu" | 66 | |
| About Rigoberta's Lies | 70 | |
| Lies by the Nobel Prize Winner | 73 | |
| Her | 76 | |
| The Pitiful Lies of Rigoberta Menchu | 78 | |
| Arturo Taracena Breaks His Silence | 82 | |
| Rigoberta | 95 | |
| About David Stoll's Book Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans | 97 | |
| Let's Shoot Rigoberta | 99 | |
| Rigoberta Menchu Tum: The Truth That Challenges the Future | 103 | |
| Against Gerardi and Against Rigoberta, Attacks Are Continually Made to Make Them Lose Some of Their Luster | 107 | |
| Rigoberta Menchu: Those Who Attack Me Humiliate the Victims | 109 | |
| David Stoll Breaks the Silence | 118 | |
| The Anthropologist with the Old Hat | 121 | |
| The National Council of Mayan Eduction and Its Twenty-two Member Organizations Publicly Declare | 125 | |
| A Hamburger in Rigoberta's Black Beans | 127 | |
| III | Responses and Implications | |
| Why Write an Expose of Rigoberta Menchu? | 141 | |
| Textual Truth, Historical Truth, and Media Truth: Everybody Speaks about the Menchus | 156 | |
| The Primacy of Larger Truths: Rigoberta Menchu and the Tradition of Native Testimony in Guatemala | 171 | |
| Telling Truths: Taking David Stoll and the Rigoberta Menchu Expose Seriously | 198 | |
| What Happens When the Subaltern Speaks: Rigoberta Menchu, Multiculturalism, and the Presumption of Equal Worth | 219 | |
| Las Casas's Lies and Other Language Games | 237 | |
| The Poetics of Remembering, the Politics of Forgetting: Rereading I, Rigoberta Menchu | 251 | |
| Whose Truth? Iconicity and Accuracy in the World of Testimonial Literature | 270 | |
| Menchu Tales and Maya Social Landscapes: The Silencing of Words and Worlds | 288 | |
| Teaching, Testimony, and Truth: Rigoberta Menchu's Credibility in the North American Classroom | 309 | |
| Between Silence and Lies: Rigoberta Va | 332 | |
| Menchu after Stoll and the Truth Commission | 351 | |
| Truth, Human Rights, and Representation: The Case of Rigoberta Menchu | 372 | |
| The Battle of Rigoberta | 392 | |
| Contributors | 411 | |
| Permissions | 417 |
Overview
Guatemalan indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchú first came to international prominence following the 1983 publication of her memoir, I, Rigoberta Menchú, which chronicled in compelling detail the violence and misery that she and her people suffered during her country's brutal civil war. The book focused world attention on Guatemala and led to her being ...