• Background and Early Life: Menchú's resistance was influenced by her childhood experiences of displacement by wealthy landowners and her father's involvement in the Guerilla Army of the Poor, leading to his death in 1980.

• Exile and Advocacy: After going into exile in Mexico, Menchú continued her resistance by writing a book about her experiences, which gained international attention and contributed to the global awareness of the Guatemalan Civil War.

• Impact on Democracy: Menchú's efforts and the documented atrocities by the United Nations led to international pressure, resulting in Guatemala's first democratic elections in 30 years in 1984, although political oppression continued for another decade.

• Legacy and Recognition: Menchú's activism and her role in the documentary "When the Mountains Tremble" highlighted the convergence of corporate, military, and class-based oppression in Guatemala, earning her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.

By 1960, the specter of the American fight against the spread of communism loomed large over Latin America.  In Guatemala, in the 1940’s and fifties, citizens had elected leftist governments, and so the U.S. intervened, installing a military dictatorship in a coup d’état that ushered in a forty-year reign of absolute power, and precipitated the Guatemalan Civil War lasting until 1996.  A long series of military dictators would continue the regime and its cozy relationship with the U.S. during the war, continuing a series of programs designed to squash all dissent by arresting or killing left-leaning or anti-government individuals, organizations, or movements.  A leading figure in the civil war fighting against this oppressive regime was Rigoberta Menchú, an indigenous woman born in the north-central region of the country in 1959.  By her own account, Menchú and her family were brutalized by the dictatorship.  After finishing college and working as a human rights activist, she was exiled and lived in Mexico where she continued her efforts at resistance by writing and narrating a book about her experiences and those of other indigenous people in Guatemala.  Her testimony, writes one scholar, “was an important instrument in a discursive war tied to cold war politics,” earned her international recognition as an advocate for the oppressed, and resulted in her winning the Nobel Prize for peace in 1992.

The impetus behind Menchú’s resistance efforts probably stems from her recognizance of childhood memories of her family farm being overtaken by rich landowners, and being forced into area hills to farm maize, as had been the traditional lifeway for her people since time immemorial. From there, as a member of the Guerilla Army of the Poor, her father would later be killed by government forces in the burning of the Spanish embassy in 1980, emboldening his daughter to raise her voice for the movement for Guatemala’s indigenous and poor people.

Thus began a series of attacks on her village, and by 1982 a more dedicated, organized, and oppressive dictatorship took over.  As Menchú went into exile and published her narrative, garnering the attention of the world after an interview in Paris in 1982, a report by the United Nations Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Históric “documented a total of 626 army massacres,” across the nation within a year.  The guerilla movement that had engaged the government in the civil war stepped up its efforts, attacking outposts but also spending a good deal of time interacting with indigenous communities, providing them with resources and safe hiding places while gaining recruits in return.  International pressure brought about by Menchú and the documented efforts of the guerillas, inspired by her voice, resulted in the first democratic elections in the country in 30 years, on July 1, 1984.  But although a constitution was adopted the next year, terroristic political oppression and killings continued, and it would be another decade before Guatemala could normalize democracy.

Nevertheless, Menchú, her indigenous partners in the guerilla movement, and her status on the world stage were instrumental in tearing down years of institutionalized oppression.  As the cold war began to fade in the late 20th century, these actors came together not only to resist as fighters but also as indigenous people, working together in the spirit of a liberation theology, expressed in Menchú’s call to action, to provide for one another as a community. “This combination of solidarity and insurgent individuality is the heart of Menchú’s memoir,” notes one historian.  In fact, throughout history, women in societies that have experienced oppression have reacted in many ways, as facilitators of economy, repositories of cultural heritages, and outspoken leaders lending voices to disaffected communities, all focused on ‘solidarity and insurgent individuality’ as key components for survival, often against insurmountable odds.  In this way, as a sort of microcosm of cold war-era international dispute resolution, Menchú stands out as an example for people everywhere in exposing and resisting oppressive institutions.

By the end of the cold war the atrocities of Guatemala’s succession of military dictatorships were shown to have been the result of a convergence of corporate, Guatemalan and U.S. military, and class-based needs and wants, as depicted in the documentary When the Mountains Tremble, narrated by Menchú herself.  In this poignant film with dramatic footage of the indigenous resistance, The United Fruit Company, today’s Chiquita Brands, figures prominently, alongside high-level representatives of the Catholic church, as complicit in the subjugation of Guatemalan poor, in order that they be put to work at low wages.  This 1983 retrospective provides a glimpse at the dark underbelly of the cold war and memorializes the contributions that Menchú has made to Latin American resistance movements in the modern era, while highlighting the role that women have played in world history.  Menchú’s participation in this ‘discursive war’, embodied in her participation in When the Mountains Tremble, resonates today.

References

Arias, Arturo. "Authoring Ethnicized Subjects: Rigoberta Menchú and the Performative Production of the Subaltern Self." PMLA. Vol. 116, no. 1. 2001.

Grandin, Greg. "It Was Heaven That They Burned." Nation. Vol. 291, no. 13. 2010.

Kessenich, G. R. “I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala.” The Circle: News from an American Indian Perspective. 1999.

Ward, Thomas. "Manuel González Prada and Rigoberta Menchú: Measuring 'Indigenismo' through Indigenous Thought." Hispania. Vol. 95, no. 3. 2012.