I, Rigoberta Menchu

by Rigoberta Menchu

  We took the disarmed soldier to my house, taking all the necessary precautions. We blindfolded him so that he wouldn’t recognize the house he was going to. We got him lost. We took him a round-about way so that he’d lose his sense of direction. We finally arrived back. I found it really funny, I couldn’t stop laughing because we didn’t know how to use the gun. We were very happy, the whole community was happy. When we got near the camp, the whole community was waiting for us. We arrived with our captured soldier. We reached my house. He stayed there for a long time. We took his uniform off and gave him an old pair of trousers and an old shirt so that if his fellow soldiers came back–we tried to keep him tied up–they wouldn’t know he was a soldier. We also thought that those clothes could help us confuse the other soldiers later on. Then came a very beautiful part when all the mothers in the village begged the soldier to take a message back to the army, telling all the soldiers there to think of our ancestors. The soldier was an Indian from another ethnic group. The women asked him how he could possibly have become a soldier, an enemy of his own race, his own people, the Indian race. Our ancestors never set bad examples like that. They begged him to be the light within his camp. They explained to him that bearing a son and bringing him up was a big effort, and to see him turn into a criminal, as he was, was unbearable. All the mothers in the village came to see the soldier. Then the men came too and begged him to recount his experience when he got back to the army and to take on the role, as a soldier, of convincing the others not to be so evil, not to rape the women of our race’s finest sons, the finest examples of our ancestors. They suggested many things to him. We told the soldier that our people were organized, and were prepared to give their last drop of blood to counter everything the army did to us. We made him see that it wasn’t the soldiers who were guilty but the rich who don’t risk their lives. They live in nice houses and sign papers. It’s the soldier who goes around the villages, up and down the mountains, mistreating and murdering his own people.

  The soldier went away very impressed, he took this important message with him. When we first caught him, we’d had a lot of ideas, because we wanted to use the gun but didn’t know how. It wasn’t that we wanted to kill the soldier because we knew very well that one life is worth as much as many lives. But we also knew that the soldier would tell what he’d seen, what he’d felt and what we’d done to him, and that for us it could mean a massacre–the deaths of children, women, and old people in the village. The whole community would die. So we said: ‘What we’ll do with this man is execute him, kill him. Not here in the village but outside.’ But people kept coming up with other ideas of what to do, knowing full well the risk we were running. In the end, we decided that, even though it might cost us our lives, this soldier should go and do what we’d asked him, and really carry through the role he had to play. After about three hours we let him go, in his new disguise. His comrades, the troop of ninety soldiers, hadn’t come back for him because they thought he’d been ambushed by guerrillas and they were cowards. They ran off as fast as they could back to town and didn’t try to save the soldier left behind. We didn’t kill the soldier. The army itself took care of that when he got back to camp. They said he must be an informer, otherwise how could he possibly have stayed and then returned. They said the law says that a soldier who abandons his rifle must be shot. So they killed him.

  This was the village’s first action and we were happy. We now had two guns, we had a grenade, and we had a cartridge belt, but we didn’t know how to use them, nobody knew. We all wanted to find someone who could show us but we didn’t know where or who, because whoever we went to, we’d be accused of being guerrillas using weapons. It made us sad to open the rifle and see what was inside, because we knew it killed others. We couldn’t use it but it was the custom always to keep anything important. A machete that’s not being used for instance, is always smeared with oil and wrapped in a plastic bag so it doesn’t rust with the damp or the rain. That’s what we had to do with the weapons because we didn’t know how to use them. From then on the army was afraid to come up to our villages. They never came back to our village because to get there they would have to go through the mountains. Even if they came by plane they had to fly over the mountains. They were terrified of the mountains and of us. We were happy. It was the most wonderful thing that had happened to us. We were all united. Nobody went down to the finca, nobody went to market, nobody went down to any other place, because they would be kidnapped. What we did was to go over the mountains, go to other towns where they sell local salt, or rather some black stones which are really salt. I don’t know if you only get this type of black stone in Guatemala, it’s black and it’s salt. It tastes very good, delicious. So we got very large stones and cooked with these so we didn’t have to buy salt in the market. The compañeros got salt by other means. You find these stones in Sacapúlas, a town in El Quiché. It’s rather strange there because it’s up on the Altiplano where it’s cold and yet when you go down a bit, it’s warm. It’s on a hillside which produces all the fruits you get on the south coast. You get mangoes, watermelon, bananas. And that’s where you get this salt stone. They sell it but it’s very cheap because nobody wants to buy. In Guatemala it’s called ‘Indian salt’. We don’t eat sugar, we’re not used to drinking coffee. Our drink is atol, ground maize made into atol. We produce the maize in our own areas and we do it collectively to grow things better and make better use of the land. The landowners were frightened to come near our village because they thought they would be kidnapped now that our village was organized. So they didn’t come near us. The landowners went away, and didn’t threaten us like before. The soldiers didn’t come any more. So we stayed there, the owners of our little bit of land. We began cultivating things so we wouldn’t have to go down to town. It was a discipline we applied to ourselves in the village to save lives and only to put ourselves at risk when we had to. My village was organized from this moment on.

  I couldn’t stay in my village any longer because, now that it could carry on its struggle, organize itself and take decisions, my role was not important. There was no room for a leader, someone telling others what to do, any more. So I decided to leave my village and go and teach another community the traps which we had invented and which our own neighbours had used so successfully. It’s now that I move on to teach the people in another village.

  XIX

  ATTACK ON THE VILLAGE BY THE ARMY

  ‘Don’t wait for strangers to remind you of your duty, you have a conscience and a spirit for that. All the good you do must come from your own initiative.’

  —Popol Vuh

  I was free in those days. My father told me: ‘You are independent, you must do what you want to, as long as you do it for our people.’ That was my father’s idea. I was absolutely free to decide, to leave for another village. So I said: ‘I’m going away.’ I went because they hadn’t kidnapped anyone, nor raped anyone, in our village. But in other villages they had, and I couldn’t bear so many women–hundreds of women, young girls, widows–being pregnant because the soldiers had used them sexually. I was ashamed to stay safely in my village and not think about the others. So I decided to leave. My father knew and he said: ‘Where you are going, you may not have control over your life. You can be killed at any time. You could be killed tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or any time.’ But I knew that teaching others how to defend themselves against the enemy was a commitment I had to make–a commitment to my people and my commitment as a Christian. I have faith and I believe that happiness belongs to everyone, but that happiness has been stolen by a few. That was what motivated me. I had to go and teach others. That’s why I went to the villages most in need, the one most threatened. I had friends there already, I’d met many compañeras from that community down in the fincas. I’d also met them when we went to the river to collect these little animals–jutes–to sell in the town. Those girls were collecting them as well. The animals are like little snails. We sell them in
the market and people like eating them very much because they come from the mountains. So every Saturday, my mother used to go to the river and fish for jutes, and the next day she’d take them to market to sell. Women do it more than men because on Saturdays they are fixing the animal pens or doing other little jobs around the house, things that they don’t have time for the rest of the week. So we spent a lot of time fishing for jutes. At the same time, we women felt a lot of affection for the river. It’s a lovely feeling down by the river, even if we have to spend the whole day in the river looking for jutes among the stones. I enjoyed it very much. I made these friends there and we became closer friends later on when we worked together down in the fincas picking cotton. They were still only little. Cotton picking has three ‘hands’, as we say in Guatemala. Cotton is like sponge, like snow. The first ‘hand’ is picked by adults, and they pick the second ‘hand’ too. But the third ‘hand’ is picked by children because they can get in underneath the bushes. A cotton bush is not very tall, only about three feet high. The tallest ones would be only five or six feet. So the children get in under the bush to pick the bits which are left; we mustn’t miss a single bit or they don’t pay us what they owe us. So with these friends, because I was big and they were little, we’d agreed that I’d pick the second ‘hand’ and they would do the third ‘hand’. They went underneath and I went on top. So we’d talk to each other while we were picking cotton. We became friends.

  When I heard from neighbours the news that so-and-so and so-and-so had been raped by the army, I was very angry thinking about my friends–pretty, humble girls. That’s really what made me decide to go. I said, ‘I can’t possibly stay here at home while that is happening there.’ Of course, our region hadn’t been liberated and we were still in constant fear of the enemy, with its more and more modern machines, modern weapons, and there could be a massacre in my village at any time. Nevertheless, I felt a greater need to be in the other village and I moved over there to be close to my friends. They told me of their despair at having been raped. There were four of them. Two of them were pregnant by soldiers and the other two not. But they were ill too because they’d been raped by five soldiers who’d come to their house. While I was living in the house of one of my friends who was pregnant, she told me: ‘I hate this child inside me. I don’t know what to do with it. This child is not my child.’ She was very distressed and cried all the time. But I told her: ‘You must love the child. It was not your fault.’ She said: ‘I hate that soldier. How can I feed the child of a soldier?’ The compañera aborted her child. She was from a different ethnic group than ours. Her community helped her by telling her that it wasn’t unusual, that our ancestors did the same when they were raped, when they had children without wishing to, without any love for the child. But my two friends suffered very much. I didn’t know what to do, I felt helpless.

  I spoke the same language as they did in that village. What happens in Guatemala is that the Quiché language is the most common. The main languages are Quiché, Cakchiquel and Mam, and from these three mother languages spring all the other languages found here. However one ethnic group doesn’t all speak the same language. For instance, the Ixiles are Quichés but they don’t speak Quiché and their customs differ from those of the Quiché. So there’s a conglomeration of ethnic groups, languages, customs and traditions, and even though there are three mother languages, that doesn’t mean we all understand each other. We don’t. It was the same with my four compañeras. They were from another people, another community, and we just understood each other but with many deformations of the same language. I must say it’s unfortunate that we Indians are separated by ethnic barriers, linguistic barriers. It’s typical of Guatemala: such a small place but such huge barriers that there’s no dialogue between us. We Indians say: ‘This is my group and this is where I must be.’ The government takes more and more advantage of these barriers. The two who’d been raped but weren’t pregnant must have been about fourteen. They were very ill, but I didn’t really know what was the matter with them. One couldn’t walk very well and the other had very bad stomach pains. She said her stomach hurt but, honestly, I had no knowledge of things like that. The two who were pregnant rejected their babies and didn’t want to mother soldiers’ children. It made me feel so helpless. I didn’t know what to do. I felt so much pity for them. Their situation was very difficult. But my staying with them did them a lot of good because I spent time with them and talked to them as we’d done when we were young, when we were little girls.

  We started setting traps in that village, the same traps as ours but in slightly different ways. The community had many things hidden that they hadn’t used out of respect for those objects. But we decided that we needed to use them, because life is worth more than objects even if it means revealing many of our Indian secrets. We started to use them. Another community nearby, the village of Cotzal, was very persecuted. It had been very badly repressed in 1960. From then on there’d been many massacres, many women raped, many men tortured. While I was in the village, a woman arrived, a very old woman. As my father said, unfortunately we don’t live very long in Guatemala these days. We usually live to about sixty, that’s the life expectancy. People die early because of the conditions we live in. But this woman was extraordinary. She was an exceptional case in this village. She must have been about ninety. They had just killed her last son. First they’d killed her husband. He’d gone to town and hadn’t come back. One of her sons went to look for him and he didn’t come back. Another went and didn’t come back either. The others were all kidnapped from their house. So this woman was left all alone. She was looking for a refuge. I was in the village and my compañeros said there was a very old woman who wanted to join our community. She thinks she should stay here. I said: ‘Of course, she must. We must all help each other and defend ourselves to the very last person.’

  With all the compañeros, we’d installed a self-defence system like the one in my village, using this village’s own traps. We said that if the army were to arrive during the night it was good for the very old woman to be with us. We decided that before it got dark, we’d all go and sleep in the mountains. We kept combined watches during the night–a young girl with a boy or a man. This way we’d protect the community throughout the night. That was different from the way we’d done it, but the village wanted to combine the duties for a reason. Keeping watch at night meant turning ourselves into tree trunks, without moving, or else we’d be cannon fodder for the army. The girl would be on another side making herself look like something different from the man. That was this village’s idea. Their traps were different and their weapons were different. Everything was the way the compañeros of the village were used to doing things. Nevertheless, they accepted me. We set to work and I was accepted because of all the help I gave the village.

  The army raided the village at night. When they heard the dogs, they fired wildly into the air. They fired everywhere but there was no-one at home. The whole village had taken all their belongings out of their houses and carried them to the camp. So even though the army wanted to steal things, there was nothing there. And even though they burned the houses, it didn’t matter very much because the mountains were sheltering the community. We spent two, three, four nights like this. The old lady got really fed up. She couldn’t stand the cold. It rained and rained. When it started to pour with rain during the night, the water gushed down through the camp and we got soaking wet. That old lady couldn’t bear the cold and one day decided: ‘Let them kill me if they want, but I’m not going with you to the mountains.’ It was hard for us to accept the idea of leaving that dear old lady there. She’d taught us many things and often helped us through the experience of her years. The community said they wouldn’t agree to her staying in her hut. But she said: ‘No, I’m staying. I must stay here. If they kill me, they kill me. Anyway, I’ve no children, no grandchildren, all my grandchildren have been taken away and I’ve nobody left. If I have helped in any way, it
was only my duty.’ So, with a great deal of sadness, and pain, we had to leave her in her house.

  When night came, we all left for the mountains. We left one by one and met up in the mountains. We’d left traps at the doors of all the houses. The trap consisted of a pole and a big, big pit, about as deep as the distance between the floor and the roof. We put the pole across the pit and a board on the pole so that whoever stood on it would fall in. We take it off during the day and set it at night. Everyone in the village knew each others’ traps so none of us would fall in. The old lady set her trap. She set the trap and prepared her axe, her machete, her hoe and her stones. She got everything she needed to defend herself ready and went to sleep. We saw our lookout giving the signal from far away and we left. We always have compañeros on watch at the main entrance to the village. They signal with their torches. They light it and indicate the number of soldiers approaching by the number of times they wave it. And when the soldiers leave, the compañero also has to tell us if they’ve all gone or not. Everyone was distressed, and I most of all, because I was sure they were going to kill the old lady or rape her. I knew those murderers were so criminal they didn’t respect anyone’s life, neither old people nor children. They like raping old people and children. At around two in the morning the dogs began to bark and there was shooting and everything, but we didn’t hear any shouts from the old woman. We were quite a way away from the village but, all the same, we could pick up all the noises from there. But we didn’t hear anything. We thought they’d killed the poor woman. At about half past three, the lookout gave the signal that the army had left the village. He indicated how many had left. Some were still there. We didn’t know what to do. So we waited until dawn to see if we should go back to the village or stay in the mountains. At about half past five, when dawn was just breaking, we saw the old woman coming towards us. How could she possibly have escaped death? She stopped and said: ‘I have a surprise for you,’ and she was laughing and crying at the same time. But she was crying with joy. There was also anxiety written on her face, however, and we immediately thought that she was an ‘ear’.