redefining democracy: cuba and chiapas || close encounters of the third world kind: rigoberta menchu...

Close Encounters of the Third World Kind: Rigoberta Menchu and Elisabeth Burgos's Me llamoRigoberta MenchuAuthor(s): Alice A. BrittinSource: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 22, No. 4, Redefining Democracy: Cuba and Chiapas(Autumn, 1995), pp. 100-114Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2634184 .Accessed: 18/06/2014 03:17

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Close Encounters of the Third World Kind Rigoberta Menchui and Elisabeth Burgos's

Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu by

Alice A. Brittin

Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu y asi me nacio la conciencia is generally regarded as a paradigmatic example of Central American testimonio. In this first-person narrative of novel length, Rigoberta Menchui, a semiliterate Maya Quiche from the Guatemalan highlands, tells her life story to Elisabeth Burgos, a professionally trained ethnographer who, rendering Rigoberta's oral history in written form, acts as both mediator to the reading public and conduit to the publishing industry. Though the significant cultural differences between the two women in ethnic origin, native tongue, nationality, and socioeconomic status suggest that Rigoberta's voice was subject to distortion, I will argue that she speaks not only for herself but also, by metonymic function,' for the communities to which she belongs-the indigenous population of Guatemala and the Comite de Unidad Campesina (Peasant Unity Committee-CUC) of which she has been an active representative since 1979.2

MEDIATION AND AUTHENTICITY

Questions of mediation and authenticity are central to critical debates about testimonio. Scholars who herald this narrative genre as a vehicle for expressing the voices of peoples traditionally silenced by their oppressors are routinely contradicted by those who see in testimonio a reenactment of the exploitative relationship of master and slave or colonizer and colonized. In view of such contradictory understandings of the power-laden dynamics of the collaborative and dialogical process by means of which testimonios are

Alice A. Brittin is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic language and literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, "The Politics of Poetics in Central American Testimnonio," explores the relationship between international political activism and the extensive use in Central America during the 1980s and early 1990s of the testimonial narrative genre.

*LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 87, Vol. 22 No. 4, Fall 1995 100-114 C) 1995 Latin American Perspectives

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Brittin / MENCHUi AND BURGOS 101

produced, we must ask two important questions: "Who speaks for whom?" and "Who authors these texts?"

In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Gayatri Spivak (1988) asserts that First World intellectuals (inside the circuit of the international division of labor and thus unable to grasp the consciousness of the subject of exploitation who remains outside this circuit) continually construct the Third World subaltern subject. According to Spivak, the First World intellectual's attempts to "represent" and "re-present" the Third World subaltern subject are consis- tently inauthentic. Since the inauthentic subaltern subject cannot speak for the truly subaltern and the truly subaltern have no means by which to speak, Spivak (1988: 287) concludes that, "in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak." Though the deconstructionist analysis of "Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation between Michel Fou- cault and Gilles Deleuze" that leads her to this conclusion seems somewhat tautological, her observations are by no means unfounded. In attempts to tame the "savage," ethnocentric intellectuals have indeed constructed literary representations of the Other that have little if anything in common with the flesh-and-blood human beings they claim to portray. In reference to Spanish American literature, John Beverley (1993: 88) labels the indigenous transla- tors for the conquistadores (La Malinche and others), the "good slave" of the Cuban antislavery novel, the peasant of Costumbrismo, and the literary representation of women in general as examples of Spivak's intellectually constructed subaltern subject. One could add to this list the indio of the novela indigenista, the gaucho of the novela gauchesca, and, in some cases, the narrator of testimonio.3

Although Spivak (1988: 292) is not speaking of testimonio per se, one might assume that her conclusion about the representation of the subaltern subject is equally applicable to this narrative genre, for she warns of the danger of the "First World intellectual masquerading as the absent nonrepre- senter who lets the oppressed speak for themselves." Furthermore, she observes (1988: 295),

Reporting on, or better still, participating in antisexist work among women of color or women in class oppression in the First World or the Third World is undeniably on the agenda. We should also welcome all the information retrieval in these silenced areas that is taking place in anthropology, political science, history and sociology. Yet the assumption and construction of a consciousness or subject sustains such work and will, in the long run, cohere with the work of imperialist subject-construction, mingling epistemic violence with the ad- vancement of learning and civilization. And the subaltern woman will be as mute as ever.



102 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Similar to Spivak in her mistrust of First World intellectuals "masquerading as absent nonrepresenters," Stephen Tyler (1986: 128) questions the authenticity of ethnographic writing that purports to let native informants speak for themselves: "Some ethnographers have tamed the savage, not with the pen, but with the tape recorder, reducing him to a 'straight man,' as in the script of some obscure comic routine, for even as they think to have returned to 'oral performance' or 'dialogue,' in order that the native have a place in the text, they exercise total control over her discourse and steal the only thing she has left-her voice." This may very well be true in situations where ethnographers seek out native informants whose stories they wish to tell. In this sense, the ethnographer assumes an active role in the selection of the informant, the questions asked, and the overall shaping of the ethnographic text while the role of the native informant is relatively passive. (Perhaps this is why Tyler genders the native informant as female.) Can the same be said, however, when these roles are reversed? If, for example, a native informant whose very survival depended on the telling of a story were to seek out a sympathetic ethnographer, journalist, or otherwise professional writer, would Spivak's observations regarding the inevitability of imperialist subject- construction or Tyler's "taming of the savage" theory hold true? Perhaps the case of Rigoberta Menchu and Elisabeth Burgos will shed some light on the subject.

In 1981, when she was only 23 years old, Rigoberta Menchui was forced into exile for having participated in the antiestablishment activities of the CUC and the Frente Popular 31 de Enero (January 31 Popular Front). Upon leaving Guatemala, Rigoberta, who had been speaking Spanish for only three years and whose knowledge of the world beyond the borders of her homeland was minimal, traveled to Mexico, where she spoke at a gathering of Catholic bishops, thus bearing witness to the atrocities that she and her people had experienced and continued to experience at the hands of the Guatemalan military. At the invitation of several organizations involved in the Solidarity Movement, she then traveled to Paris, and there she was introduced to Elisabeth Burgos, originally of Venezuela, whose collaboration in the writing of her testimony had been solicited by friends sympathetic to the plight of the Guatemalan indigenous population. Acutely aware of the politically complex and emotionally sensitive nature of the ethnographer/native informant relationship, Elisabeth Burgos was at first reluctant to interview Rigoberta.4 Eventually, however, she agreed to do so-a decision that would forever change the course of both their lives. Henceforth, Rigoberta would be recognized as the "voice" of the poor and disenfranchised peoples of Latin America, while Elisabeth Burgos would be applauded by some and derided by others as the person who gave the world this voice.



Brittin / MENCHUJ AND BURGOS 103

In the prologue to Me llamo Rigoberta Mencha, Elisabeth Burgos provides very little information as to how she became involved in the writing of Rigoberta's testimony. She states that Rigoberta traveled to Europe in 1982 as a representative of the Frente Popular 31 de Enero and that the idea of the book originated with a Canadian friend who had met Rigoberta in Mexico, but she gives no indication as to the circumstances surrounding her decision to collaborate in this literary project. Perhaps she avoids the issue to protect the parties involved; perhaps she does not consider it important or interesting. Her reticence is, however, intriguing, and leads us to ask how Elizabeth Burgos became involved with Rigoberta Menchu, who was relatively unknown beyond the borders of Guatemala in 1982. Considering the fact that she was not particularly interested in Maya Quiche culture and had never done fieldwork in Guatemala,5 and given the openly propagandistic nature of Me llamo Rigoberta Mencha, it seems likely that her involvement in the writing of Rigoberta's testimony was orchestrated by an individual or a group of individuals desirous of promoting a specific political agenda. Though Elisabeth Burgos is obviously sympathetic to this agenda, it is not evident in either the introduction to Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu or in the body of the text that she embraces it as her own.

Generally speaking, the narrators of Central American testimonio (leaders of popular movements, guerrilla fighters, politically compromised intellectuals, and refugees from war-torn countries) have their own political agendas to promote, and they tend to be well aware of the potential power of their accounts of incarceration, torture, and persecution at the hands of right-wing military governments.6 The case of Rigoberta Menchui is no exception. In a conversation with me and my colleague Kenya Dworkin,7 Rigoberta spoke of how the Guatemalan activist Arturo Taracena (head of Solidarity opera- tions in Paris when she arrived there) and members of the CUC persuaded her of the need to collaborate with Elisabeth Burgos (Brittin and Dworkin, 1993: 217):

It was difficult, but thanks especially to Arturo, who pushed me a little, he told me that it needed to be done. And since he was a fellow Guatemalan, he could have some influence. And Arturo, well, he pushed hard for doing the book. And later my comrades in the CUC always said that having given this testimony-having told it in other circles, especially at the bishops' conference in Mexico, before writing the book-was very important and that it had to be done. So, if it had not been for the CUC and various comrades and friends, it would have been very difficult.

That Rigoberta had to be persuaded to collaborate with Elisabeth Burgos is not surprising considering the fact that bearing witness is not simply a linguistic act involving the recounting of past events but an existential




"stance" tied up with survival that necessitates reliving traumatic experiences (Felman and Laub, 1992: 117). As Rigoberta herself observes, "The record- ing was the most difficult part for me, because it meant that I had to identify with my life, my experience, even though many things are not in the book" (Brittin and Dworkin, 1993: 217). Notwithstanding the emotional pain of telling her life story, Rigoberta and her colleagues in the CUC recognized the potential power of this testimony and were determined to use it as a weapon in their struggle for freedom and justice in Guatemala.

Not only was the CUC instrumental in Rigoberta's decision to bear witness to Elisabeth Burgos but, as Rigoberta indicates, she and her "com- pafieros" also had a hand in the editing of the final transcription of her testimony: "And from Mexico we reviewed the transcript. And my reading ability was limited at that time, so I had to work with other people, who read me practically the whole book. I took out some things, and I also censored many parts. In the first part, for example, only because there were things that I shouldn't have said, and it was necessary to take them out."

Elisabeth Burgos gives her version of the compilation of Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu in the text's prologue, where she admits to having ar- ranged the narrative in chapters according to themes (family, ceremonial rituals, childhood, etc.). She also says that she omitted excessive repetition and improved upon Rigoberta's faulty grammar. However, she makes no mention of either Rigoberta's or the CUC's participation in the editing process. Consequently, the reader assumes that Elisabeth Burgos exercised total control over Rigoberta's discourse and, as Stephen Tyler would have it, stole her voice. In view of Rigoberta's statements, however, we must con- clude that Rigoberta and the CUC maintained control of what was said in the finished product if not how it was said. Consequently, though Rigoberta's discourse was definitely mediated by Elisabeth Burgos, it would be misleading to say that it was either manipulated, exploited, or controlled by her.

The fact that Arturo Taracena was instrumental in persuading Rigoberta to collaborate with Elisabeth Burgos is admittedly problematic, for it suggests the possibility of Spivak's intellectually constructed subaltern subject. Theo- retically, one could argue, as does Dinesh D'Souza (1991:72), that Rigoberta is simply "a mouthpiece for a sophisticated left-wing critique of Western society, all the more devastating because it issues not from a French scholar- activist but from a seemingly authentic Third World source." In other words, Rigoberta, apparently speaking for herself while really speaking at the direction of international political activists, is nothing more than a ventrilo- quist's dummy of sorts. All the more devastating because it issues from a Third World source (D' Souza was born in India of Indian parents but received




his education in the United States), this argument smacks of racism, sexism, and imperialism as well, for D'Souza denies Rigoberta not only the authorship of her own words and actions but also the ability to construct herself as an intellectual and politically astute subaltern subject.8 Does D'Souza intend to suggest that in order to maintain her authenticity as a Third World source of information concerning the subaltern, Rigoberta must remain forever subordinate to the powers that be and ignorant of the world and the international political machines that run it? Or, because she is indigenous and female, is it simply unthinkable that Rigoberta, herself the victim of severe racial and class discrimination, recognized the urgency of the situation in Guatemala and made a conscious decision to do something about it? Questions such as these merit discussion beyond the limited scope of this essay. For the moment, however, suffice it to say that even though she was admittedly pressured into bearing witness, Rigoberta at no time gives the impression that she was forced to do so. To the contrary, she observes (Brittin and Dworkin, 1993: 217),

It was very hard for me to make the decision, and that's what determined the way in which the book was done. It's that it was going to make me enormously sad if that life ended up like any other pamphlet from Latin America, the way the lives of children, mothers, and old folks in Latin America have ended up. No one paid any attention to them. For me, it was very important to give this as a memory, and this idea was what most compelled me to do it, and I threw myself into the project with a lot of strong emotion. It was a moving experience, and, yes, there was consciousness because it was a difficult undertaking.

The intervention of Solidarity organizations, Arturo Taracena, and the CUC in the compilation of Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu confirms the obvious political bias of this testimonio and partly explains the politically charged discourse prevalent throughout the text. Rigoberta had, of course, embraced the life of a political activist before she met Elisabeth Burgos. However, as Rigoberta admits, what most inspired her to make public her story was the opportunity to share the "memory" of her life in the hope that it would not be forgotten like so many others.

The notion of memory is fundamental to a clear understanding of the dynamics of testimonio. Not only does testimonio preserve for future generations the memory of events lived or witnessed by a specific individual, the narrator, but also it makes possible through metonymic function the trans- mission and preservation of the collective memory of the larger community of which the narrator sees himself or herself as spokesperson. As Rigoberta states in the opening lines of Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu (1984: 1; 1983: 21):

My name is Rigoberta Menchui. I am twenty-three years old. This is my testimony. I didn't learn it from a book and I didn't learn it alone. I'd like to




stress that it's not only my life, it's also the testimony of my people. It's hard for me to remember everything that's happened to me in my life since there have been many very bad times but, yes, moments ofjoy as well. The important thing is that what has happened to me has happened to many other people too: My story is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.

Similarly, Rigoberta's use of the deictic "that" ("that life") in the preceding citation refers not only to her own personal life and experience but also, in a more general sense, to the way of life of her people-their customs and practices and, more important, their daily struggle to survive, physically and culturally, in an oppressive society.9 In this sense, Rigoberta spoke in 1982 and continues to speak today for a large part of the indigenous population of Guatemala. However, it would be misleading to say that Rigoberta's political beliefs, as expressed in Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu, were ever wholly representative of "all poor Guatemalans." Indeed, as Marc Zimmerman (1992: 238, my translation) reveals in his "El otro de Rigoberta: Los testimonios de Ignacio Bizarro Ujpain y la resistencia indigena en Guatemala," the political consciousness of the acculturated Indian who has renounced multiple ties to the indigenous community is likely to differ radically from that of someone like Rigoberta, who strives for political and economic change coupled with cultural survival: "Rigoberta may represent the 'potential consciousness of the Guatemalan indigenes, but Ignacio may represent their 'real consciousness.' " Nevertheless, it would be equally misleading to say that Rigoberta speaks for no one but herself, for she obviously voices the concerns of the CUC, which, in turn, voices the concerns of many poor Guatemalans, both indigenous and ladino.

Notwithstanding the possible differences between Rigoberta's politics and those of other Guatemalan Indians, I will maintain that Rigoberta speaks in Me liamo Rigoberta Menchut for a large part of the indigenous population of Guatemala in terms of the 500 years of institutionalized violence and oppression that this community has suffered at the hands of a powerful ruling class. This is to say that Rigoberta's disturbing stories of dire poverty, racial discrimination, inhuman working conditions, death due to malnutrition, rape, torture, etc., are indicative of a collective way of life that she knows only too well. Thus, having had the importance of bearing witness impressed upon her by activist friends and members of the CUC, Rigoberta assumed in 1982 the painful responsibility of making the truth of this way of life known in an international context and, with the help of Elisabeth Burgos, preserved it for future generations. The fact that Rigoberta shared this truth through collaborative means does not change the fact that it was her memory and her people's collective memory from and of which she.spoke.




Considering that the claim to fact rather than fiction is of ultimate importance to the reader's reception of testimonio, the notion of narrative truth is also fundamental to a clear understanding of the dynamics of this literary genre. As Felman and Laub (1992: 204) explain, the act of bearing witness is a linguistic gesture or speech act by means of which the witness takes responsibility for truth:

To testify is always, metaphorically, to take the witness stand, or to take the position of the witness insofar as the narrative account of the witness is at once engaged in an appeal and bound by an oath. To testify is thus not merely to narrate but to commit oneself, and to commit the narrative, to others: to take responsibility-in speech-for history or for the truth of an occurrence, for something which, by definition, goes beyond the personal, in having general (nonpersonal) validity and consequences.

Though an appeal is made to readers of testimonio to accept the witness's narrative account as truthful historical documentation, whether they do so depends on the degree to which they identify with the narrator on symbolic and ideological levels. Obviously, if they share the narrator's political/ ideological orientation, they will more readily accept the testimonio as truthful documentation than readers with an opposing political/ideological orientation. Likewise, their degree of familiarity with the events remembered and recorded is instrumental in a final assessment of the testimonio as truthful or not. However, it may be the case that readers know nothing whatsoever about the life or politics of a given narrator. In this case, the aim of testimonio is to convey experience in addition to an attitude toward that experience. Consequently, identification of readers with the narrator is not an end in itself but a stratagem by means of which testimonio, like any other literary work, stimulates attitudes in readers.

According to reception theorist Hans Robert Jauss (cited in Holub, 1984: 78-81), such attitudes or "interactional patterns of aesthetic identification with the hero" include (1) associative identification, which entails "assuming a role in the closed, imaginary world of a play action"; (2) admiring identification, which involves "a perfect hero whose actions are exemplary for a community or a segment of the community"; (3) sympathetic identification, by means of which "the audience places itself in the position of the hero and thus expresses a kind of solidarity with a usually suffering figure"; (4) cathartic identification, which is characterized by its "emancipatory function for the spectator"; (5) and, finally, ironic identification, which entails "disappointing, breaking, or denying an expected identification." In reference to the reactions that the narrators and editors of testimonio hope to stimulate in readers, identification modalities 2 (admiring) and 3 (sympathetic) seem most appropriate to the testimonial project. However, in accordance with




modality 5 (ironic), readers may very well reject the narrator's story on experiential or purely ideological grounds, thus precluding any possibility of positive identification.

Proceeding with the legal metaphor offered by Felman, in addition to being viewed as witness to a given crime or injustice, the narrator might also be seen as an "expert witness" whose firsthand knowledge of and experience with the situation in question lends credibility to the testimony. Acting as the witness's lawyer, the editor of testimonio employs this expert's testimony as the evidence or discovery used by the prosecution or defense in attempts to persuade the reader/judge to accept the narrator's claims to truth. This observation concerning the editor's function as lawyer once again raises the red flag, signaling possible distortion of the witness's voice, for, as we all know, some lawyers are not above manipulating the "facts" to their client's benefit. However, witnesses are also known to manipulate the facts or commit perjury.

Anthropologist David Stoll (1990: 6) has suggested that Rigoberta's retelling of her younger brother Petrocinio's death at the hands of the Guatemalan military is "a literary invention." As Rigoberta describes it, Petrocinio was captured by the army on September 9, 1979, tortured for 16 days, and then burned alive in the plaza of Chajul while the whole town was forced to watch (Menchu, 1984: 172-182; 1983: 198-207). Part of Rigoberta's account of his capture and subsequent death is based on the reports of eyewitnesses, but she also indicates that she was physically present when her brother and 20 other political prisoners were burned alive. Accord- ing to Stoll (1990: 7), who in 1988-1989 interviewed the residents of Chajul, "No one was burned alive; there weren't twenty victims; and the families weren't there to see it, least of all Rigoberta." Stoll (1990: 6) bases this statement on the fact that "no one in Chajul recalls what she describes" and "what people in Chajul do recall about Rigoberta's brother is what appeared in human rights reports soon after he died." Apparently, the majority of human rights reports concerning Petrocinio's death concur that 7 captives were shot down on the edge of Chajul. Their bodies were then dragged into town, where one was burned in the main square. Stoll does mention, however, that Rigoberta's account can be found in the Comite Guatemalteco de Unidad Patri6ica (Guatemalan Committee of Patriotic Unity) collection of testimonies and in a December 1982 Guatemalan Church in Exile account, although, according to this account, Petrocinio's death takes place later and in a different place.

The question of narrative truth in reference to this episode is perhaps irresolvable, for, as is generally accepted by most objective thinkers, truth is relative to the experience, perception, imagination, and underlying motives




of the person or persons claiming it. Stoll's view that Rigoberta's account of Petrocinio's death is essentially a figment of her imagination is based on other testimonies, which, after almost ten years, could themselves be faulty. Also, considering the fact that public acknowledgment of atrocities attributed to the Guatemalan military could cost Stoll's respondents their lives, it is certainly understandable that no one in Chajul seems to recall what Rigoberta describes. In fact, Stoll's assumption that the indigenous inhabitants of Guatemala's western highlands (who continue to suffer the ill effects of government-sponsored violence) would willingly speak of past atrocities to such an obvious outsider-a white North American academic (as opposed to a missionary or human rights advocate) who does not speak their language, who (from their point of view) has nothing better to do than observe their culture, and whom they have no real reason to trust-clearly demonstrates a lack of cross-cultural understanding on the part of the anthropologist. Indeed, does Stoll mean to suggest that if the subaltern subject does not speak to him, he or she must have nothing to say?

Whatever the "truth" concerning the circumstances surrounding Petrocinio Menchu's death, to this day Rigoberta speaks of her little brother as "quemado vivo" (burned alive). What, then, are readers of Me liamo Rigoberta Menchu to make of this? As is suggested in my previous discussion of testimonio and the notion of truth, readers' ultimate acceptance or rejection of a given testimonio's claim to narrative truth is a highly personal matter involving their predisposition to believe what is written and the narrator's ability to persuade them to accept what is written as fact. Of course, readers' responses will be as varied as the readers themselves and will necessarily reflect predetermined value judgments and prejudices. However, as in a court of law, what ultimately sways the judge's or jury's final decision is not so much the "facts" but how they are presented. As one lawyer currently advertising his services on national television claims, "It's not the case you have but the case you put on that gets the best results."

Returning to the question of Petrocinio Menchu's death, I personally do not see the possibility of fabrication or exaggeration on Rigoberta's part as compromising either her or her testimonio's overall credibility. I must admit that my previous knowledge of the unthinkable atrocities committed against the indigenous peoples of Guatemala in the late 1970s and early 1980s predisposes me to believe Rigoberta's side of the story. Anyone knowledge- able of human rights abuses in Guatemala will admit the possibility of such an occurrence. Furthermore, even if she did not witness her brother's death and he was killed in a more "humane" fashion, the fact remains that he was tortured and murdered by the army. More important, like the judge who seriously questions a specific portion of a plaintiff's testimony but ultimately




rules in the plaintiff's favor, I disregard the possibility of fabrication or exaggeration on Rigoberta's part as relatively unimportant because she and those collaborating with her put on such a convincing case. In other words, the important point for readers of Me liamo Rigoberta Menchut is not whether Petrocinio was burned alive or died by other means but that Rigoberta deemed it necessary to describe in such vivid detail what she claims to have seen with her own two eyes (1984: 179; 1983: 204):

Anyway, they lined up the tortured and poured petrol on them; and then the soldiers set fire to each one of them. Many of them begged for mercy. They looked half dead when they were lined up there, but when the bodies began to burn they began to plead for mercy. Some of them screamed, many of them leapt but uttered no sound-of course, that was because their breathing was cut off.

If indeed the intent of her testimonio is to stimulate attitudes in her interlocutors/readers such as admiring or sympathetic identification, then her account of Petrocinio's death does just that, and, like the author of any other text-factual or fictional-Rigoberta manipulates her readers to elicit sym- pathy and solidarity with her cause. Consequently, I see her emphasis on the horrible details of Petrocinio's death as a sort of poetic license by which her case is strengthened.

AUTHORSHIP

The preceding observations as to Rigoberta's active role in the compilation and political/ideological biasing of her testimonio bring us to the question of the authorship of Me liamo Rigoberta Menchut. In an interesting contrast, while the Spanish version of Rigoberta's testimonio designates Elisabeth Burgos as author of the text ("por Elisabeth Burgos"), the English version, I, Rigoberta Menchut: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (1984), makes no mention of an author. Though in this version Elisabeth Burgos is designated as editor of the text and author of the introduction, except in the title Rigoberta's name is nowhere to be found on the book's title page. Since Me liamo Rigoberta Menchu is essentially a transcription of her memories, it seems hardly fair to deny her a place on the title page simply because her contribution to the literary project was oral rather than written. The unfairness of this situation has certainly not eluded Rigoberta (Brittin and Dworkin, 1993: 218):

What is effectively a gap in the book is the question of royalties, right? Because the authorship of the book really should be more precise, shared, right? To say




such-and-such and no author of the book... ? But, in fact, this is now a mutual problem. It's also the result of not knowing how to do a book. An author was needed, and she's an author. It wasn't even considered, because the truth is that, at the time, it was my first trip out of Guatemala. I wasn't familiar with the international world, much less with how to do a book, and that's even mentioned. It's also part of the testimonio, no?

In an essay entitled "Authors and Writers," Roland Barthes (1982: 190) makes the following distinction between authors and writers with reference to their use of language: "The author participates in the priest's role, the writer in the clerk's, the author's language is an intransitive act (hence, in a sense, a gesture), the writer's an activity." A similar distinction between the linguistic activity of Rigoberta and that of Elisabeth Burgos is certainly appropriate in determining the true author of Me liamo Rigoberta Menchut. Like a priestess, Rigoberta uses language as a gesture, engaging her interlocutors/readers in a dialogue between consciousness and history; like a scribe, Elisabeth Burgos faithfully transcribes this "Gospel according to Rigoberta."'1 In addition, considering Elisabeth Burgos's self-designation as "the instrument that would bring about the transition from the spoken to the written word" (Menchui, 1983: 18, my translation) and categorical denial of having changed Rigoberta's testimony in the least (except for grammatical errors and the ordering of specific themes into cohesive chapters), I am of the opinion that Rigoberta authors her testimonio while Elisabeth Burgos en- gages in the "clerical" activity of writing it. In designating Rigoberta as "author" and Elisabeth Burgos as "scribe," I do not intend to minimize in any way the editor's contribution to the production of Me liamo Rigoberta Menchut. Clearly, Elisabeth Burgos's professional expertise accounts for the text's readability and overall coherence, while her sensitivity to Rigoberta's situation facilitated the retrieval of deeply disturbing and painful memories. However, I concur with James Clifford (1983: 140): "Anthropologists will increasingly have to share their texts, and sometimes their title pages, with those indigenous collaborators for whom the term 'informants' is no longer adequate if it ever was."

CONCLUSION

It would be foolish on my part to attempt an all-inclusive theory of testimonio, since approaches to writing such texts vary greatly and there are indeed examples in which well-intentioned editors appropriate subaltern narrators' voices in attempts to legitimate a personal political/ideological position. However, to deny the authenticity of the subaltern narrator's voice




simply because inauthentic representations of this voice exist would be a grave injustice to many individuals who, in displays of solidarity and com- mitment to a common cause, have risked their lives and livelihoods to make public stories of individual and class oppression. Rather than sweeping generalizations asserting the First World intellectual's utter inability to break the pernicious habit of imperialist subject-construction and denying the Third World subaltern subject the ability to speak, what is needed in literary analyses of postcolonial discourse is knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the production of each text that claims to represent the subaltern's voice. Likewise, a clearer understanding of such texts can be gained through knowledge of the political, personal, ethical, and economic motives that compel First World intellectuals and Third World subaltern subjects to participate in projects of information retrieval from society's "silenced" sectors.

NOTES

1. Metonymy is a linguistic trope that consists of designating one entity with the name of another in virtue of a relationship (causal, spatial, or spatiotemporal) between the two. Although metonymy has primarily a referential function, it also serves the function of providing understanding. For example, if we accept as valid the metonymy Rigoberta/Guatemalan Mayan community, which designates Rigoberta as representative of the larger indigenous community to which she belongs, it is only logical that her testimonio should make it possible for us as readers to achieve a more thorough understanding of the experiences shared by members of this community. (For a more detailed discussion of metonymy, see Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 35-40.)

2. In her analysis of Guatemalan society and politics, Susanne Jonas (1991: 127) describes the CUC as "a national peasant organization, including both peasants and agricultural workers, both Indians and poor ladinos, but led primarily by Indians-almost by definition a 'subversive' organization, from the viewpoint of the ruling coalition." According to Jonas, the CUC emerged between 1976 and 1978 in response to massacres of Indian communities.

3. For examples of critical analyses of testimonial texts that support Spivak's theory of the intellectually constructed subaltern subject, see Gonzalez-Echevarrfa (1980), Foster (1984), and Sklodowska (1982).

4. She writes, "Never having met Rigoberta, I was at first somewhat reluctant, as I realized that such projects depend to a large extent on the quality of the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. Such work has far-reaching psychological implications, and the revival of the past can resuscitate affects and zones of the memory which had apparently been forgotten forever and can lead to anxiety and stress situations" (Menchu, 1984: xiv; 1983: 11-12).

5. She writes, "I must warn the reader that, although I did train as an ethnographer, I have never studied Maya Quiche culture and have never done fieldwork in Guatemala" (Menchu, 1984: xviii-xix; 1983: 16).

6. For example, see Claribel Alegria and D. J. Flakoll's No me agarran viva: La mujer salvadorenia en lucha (1983), Elvia Alvarado's Don't Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman



Brittin / MENCHU AND BURGOS 113

Speaks from the Heart (1987), Sergio Ramfrez Mercado's La marca del Zorro (1989), and A Dream Compels Us: Voices of Salvadoran Women (1989), edited by Brenda Carter et al.

7. I am very grateful to Rigoberta Menchu for granting us this interview (on November 18, 1991), in which she revealed several facts previously unknown to the public concerning the compilation of her testimonio.

8. As John Beverley (1993: 89-90) observes, "In spite of that textual metonymy in the testimonio that equates individual life history with the history of a group or people, testimonial narrators like Rigoberta Menchu are not exacdly subaltern as such-Spivak is correct that the subaltern cannot speak in this sense; they are rather something more like 'organic intellectuals' of the subaltern who can speak to the hegemony by means of this metonymy of self in the name and in place of it."

9. Deixis is the location of utterance in relation to a speaker's viewpoint, whether in space (e.g., theselthose), time (e.g., nowlthen), or interpersonal relations (e.g., welyou). The words that do this are called "deictics."

10. Tyler (1986: 127) writes, "The hermeneutic process is not restricted to the reader's relationship to the text, but includes as well the interpretive practices of the parties to the original dialogue. In this respect, the model of post-modem ethnography is not the newspaper but that original ethnography-the Bible."

REFERENCES

Alegria, Claribel and D. J. Flakoll 1983 No me agarran viva: La mujer salvadoreina en lucha. Mexico: Ediciones Era.

Alvarado, Elvia 1987 Don't Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaksfrom the Heart. Edited by Medea Benjamin. San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy.

Barthes, Roland 1982 "Authors and writers," pp. 185-93 in Susan Sontag (ed.), A Barthes Reader. New York: Hill and Wang.

Beverley, John 1993 Against Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Brittin, Alice and Kenya Dworkin 1993 "Entrevista con Rigoberta Menchu." Nuevo Texto Critico 6 (11): 207-220.

Carter, Brenda et al. (eds.) 1989 A Dream Compels Us: Voices of Salvadoran Women. Boston: South End Press.

Clifford, James 1983 "On ethnographic authority." Representations 1, 2 (Spring): 118-146.

D'Souza, Dinesh 1991 Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. New York: Free Press.

Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub 1992 Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. New York and London: Roudledge.

Foster, David William 1984 "Latin American documentary narrative." PMLA 99(1): 41-55.




Gonzalez-Echevarrfa, Roberto 1980 "Biografla de un cimarr6n and the novel of the Cuban Revolution." Novel 13: 249-263. (Reprinted in The Voice of the Masters: Writing and Authority in Modem Latin American Literature. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.)

Holub, Robert C. 1984 Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Methuen.

Jonas, Susanne 1991 The Battlefor Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power. Boulder: Westview Press.

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson 1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Menchu, Rigoberta 1983 Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu. Edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. Havana: Casa de las Americas. 1984 I, Rigoberta Menchu': An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Edited and introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray; translated by Ann Wright. London: Verso.

Ramfrez Mercado, Sergio 1989 La marca del Zorro: Hazainas del comandante Francisco Rivera Quintero contadas d Sergio Ramirez. Managua: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua.

Sklodowska, Elzbieta 1982 "La forma testimonial y la novelfstica de Miguel Barnet." Revista/Review Interameri- cana 12(3): 375-384.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 1988 "Can the subaltern speak?," pp. 271-313 in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Cultures. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Stoll, David 1990 "I, Rigoberta Menchu' and human rights reporting on Guatemala." Paper presented at the Conference " 'Political Correctness' and Cultural Studies," Berkeley, CA, October.

Tyler, Stephen A. 1986 "Post-modem Ethnography: From Document of the Occult to Occult Document," pp. 122-140 in James Clifford and George E. Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Zimmerman, Marc 1992 "El otro de Rigoberta: Los testimonios de Ignacio Bizarro Ujpan y la resistencia indigena en Guatemala." Revista de Critica Literaria Latinoamericana 36: 229-243.



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Issue Table of ContentsLatin American Perspectives, Vol. 22, No. 4, Redefining Democracy: Cuba and Chiapas (Autumn, 1995), pp. 1-126Volume Information [pp. ]Front Matter [pp. ]Introduction [pp. ]The Future of Democracy in Cuba [pp. 7-26]Responses to Edelstein [pp. 27-38]Responses to Edelstein: Rejoinder [pp. 39-42]Workers' Parliaments in Cuba [pp. 43-58]The Nonsugar Industrial Bourgeoisie and Industrialization in Cuba, 1920-1959 [pp. 59-80]For Richer and Poorer: South America's Tenuous Social Truce [pp. 81-87]The Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the National Democratic Convention [pp. 88-99]Close Encounters of the Third World Kind: Rigoberta Mench and Elisabeth Burgos's Me llamo Rigoberta Mench[pp. 100-114]Book ReviewA Farewell to Arms? [pp. 115-120]

Back Matter [pp. ]

redefining democracy: cuba and chiapas || close encounters of the third world kind: rigoberta menchu...

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