Anthropology Professor Defends Rigoberta Menchu

Professor of Anthropology Kay B. Warren defended Rigoberta Menchu's autobiography as a testimonial of a shared Mayan experience in a speech at the Peabody Museum last night.

Both Middlebury College Professor David Stoll and The New York Times have recently questioned the accuracy of Menchu's account.

In 1983, when she was 23, Rigoberta Menchu, a Quiche Mayan, dictated I, Rigoberta Menchu to an anthropologist. Menchu said it was a narrative account of her experience during the Guatemalan civil war. 80,000 civilians died in the 36-year war, which lasted until 1996.

Menchu received the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in support of indigenous peoples' rights.

But in a new book, Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans, Stoll questions Menchu's account of her education and the deaths of her family.

A Dec. 15, 1998 New York Times article on Stoll's assertions reported that one brother who dies of starvation in I, Rigoberta Menchu never existed. The article says that Menchu, who claimed to have been uneducated, actually studied for several years in a Catholic school.

Warren framed the conflict between Menchu and Stoll as a conflict between two genres of writing: the testimonial and the expose. She said the Mayan testimonial, testimonio in Spanish, diverges from strict personal narrative.

She reminded the audience of 100 that Menchu wrote, "I'd like to stress that it's not only my life, it's also the testimony of my people."

Waren said Stoll's chosen form of writing--the expose--also shaped his conclusions about Menchu.

"He refuses to read the autobiography as an instance of testimonio, with collective veracities," she said. "Facts outside of the immediate scope are ignored."

Warren predicted that Stoll's book would have a greater impact on the American intellectual debate than on the Guatemalan peace process. "I worried about the book," she said of Stoll's work. "If Stoll somehow discredited testimonio, rural people would not be heard."

According to Warren, a recent nine volume report by a truth commission detailing wartime atrocities overwhelmed Stoll's indictment of the testimonio. The controversy will endure as a legendary debate in anthropology and American electoral politics," Warren said.

"[The Menchu controversy] will have less to do about Guatemala...than about our own rambunctious cultural politics," she said.

As an example, she referred to a large advertisement that ran in early March in The Harvard Crimson and other college newspapers. The advertisement, purchased by a conservative think tank, attacked Menchu, and others who use her book, saying it was written with specific political motives.