I, Rigoberta Menchu

by Rigoberta Menchu

  Everyone set to work, so that in two hours there were coffins for all the bodies. Everyone busied themselves with finding a blanket to put over them. I remember they picked bunches of flowers and put them beside them. The people of Guatemala are mostly Christian. They express their faith one way or another; they went to fetch the priest (I suppose that priest’s since been murdered as well) to ask him, since he was a long way from the village, to bless the blanket to put over the corpses. When the fires died out, for a while nobody knew what to do: it was both terrifying to see the burned, tortured bodies and at the same time it gave you courage, strength to keep on going. My mother was half dead with grief. She embraced her son, she spoke to him, dead and tortured as he was. She kissed him and everything, though he was burnt. I said to her: ‘Come, let’s go home.’ We couldn’t bear to watch, we couldn’t bear to keep looking at the dead. It wasn’t through cowardice, rather that it filled us with rage. It was intolerable. So, all the people promised to give all the dead and tortured a Christian burial. Then my mother said, ‘I can’t stay here.’ So we had to go, to leave it all behind and leave off looking. My father and my brothers were there, grieving. We just saw that the people…there were flowers, there was everything. The people decided to bury them there, not to take them home. There would have been a wake in one of the houses, but the people said, they didn’t die in a house, it’s fitting that this place should be sacred to them. We left them there. And it started to rain; it rained heavily. There they were getting wet, the people watching over the corpses. None of them left that spot. They all stayed.

  But we went home. It was as though we were drunk or struck dumb; none of us uttered a word. When we got home Father said: ‘I’m going back to work.’ Then he started to talk to us. He said, rightly, that if so many people were brave enough to give their lives, their last moments, their last drop of blood, then wouldn’t we be brave enough to do the same? And my mother, too, said: ‘It’s not possible that other mothers should suffer as I have suffered. The people cannot endure that, their children being killed. I’ve decided too to abandon everything; I shall go away.’ And we all said the same: there was nothing else you could say. Though, for myself, I didn’t know what would be the most effective: to take up arms, to go to fight–which was what I most wanted to do–or to go to some other village and continue consciousness-raising among the people. My father said: ‘I may be old, but I’m joining the guerrillas. I’ll avenge my son with arms.’ But I also considered that the community was important, since I had experience in organizing people. We concluded that the most important thing was to organize the people so that they wouldn’t have to suffer the way we had, see that horror film that was my brother’s death.

  The next day my father sorted out his things and left the house without delay. ‘Whether I return or not,’ he said, ‘I know the house will remain. I’ll try to attend to everything in the community; that’s always been my dream. Well, I’m going now.’ And my father left. Mother stayed in the house, not knowing what to do. She couldn’t bear it, she remembered the whole thing. She cried from moment to moment, remembering. But most of the time she didn’t cry; she tried to be cheerful. She said that her son was the one who had been a lot of trouble to bring up, because he’d nearly died as a little child. She had to go into a lot of debt to cure him. And then for this to happen to him. It made her very sad. But there were times when she cheered up. I remember that during this time Mother was very close to the compañeros in the mountains. Since we still had my brother’s clothes–his trousers and shirts–my mother gave them away to one of the compañeros in the mountains, saying it was only just that they should be used by the compañeros because they were her son’s clothes and her son had always been against the whole situation we were facing. And since the compañeros were against it too, they should use the clothes. Sometimes my mother was mad. All the neighbours would come and look. And mother thought: ‘If I start crying in front of the neighbours, what sort of example will that be?’ ‘No crying; fighting’s what we want,’ she’d say, and she’d act tough, and in spite of the fact that she was always a little ill and felt very tired, she’d battle on.

  I stayed in the house a week longer. Then I made up my mind and said: ‘I must go.’ So I left, keener than ever to work. I knew that my mother also had to leave home. There was hardly any communication between us, either about where we were going or what we were going to do. I had the chance to say goodbye to my brothers, but I didn’t know what they were going to do either. Each of us took our own decision. And so I left.

  XXV

  RIGOBERTA’S FATHER DIES IN THE OCCUPATION OF THE SPANISH EMBASSY. PEASANTS MARCH TO THE CAPITAL

  ‘My father said: “Some have to give their blood and some have to give their strength; so while we can, we’ll give our strength.”’

  —Rigoberta Menchú

  In November of that same year, 1979, I saw my father quite by chance. I’d gone to El Quiché for a meeting. It was a meeting of leaders of the Committee from many different areas. I’d been invited. When I saw my father, I was delighted. And in front of all the compañeros, he said: ‘This badly brought up daughter has always been a good daughter,’ and he asked them to be a father to me, to all of us, if one day he was killed. The meeting lasted a long time and a lot of things happened with regard to our work. After the meeting I was able to talk to my father for two days. We talked about our experiences in our work. He was pleased and said that as our people became able to organize by themselves, as new compañeros were coming up to lead the struggle, he was ready to take up arms. Because he said: ‘I am a Christian and the duty of a Christian is to fight all the injustices committed against our people. It is not right that our people give their blood, their pure lives, for the few who are in power.’ His views were as clear as any theoretician, as if he’d studied and all that. All his concepts were clear. Then he gave me some encouragement for us to go on with our work. ‘We may not see each other for a long time but remember that, alive or not, I will always help you in whatever way I can.’ Then he told us to look after my mother. He said we should look for her and find her so that she shouldn’t put her life in such danger because–‘Some people give their blood and some people give their strength. So while we can, we must give our strength. In this hour of need, we must look after our little lives very well so that they provide a source of strength for our people.’ And he said clearly: ‘We want no more dead, we want no more martyrs, because we already have too many in our land, in our fields, through too many massacres. What we must do is protect our lives as much as we can and carry on with our struggle…’

  Then I said goodbye to my father. He recommended I be in the capital in January because there was going to be some action calling on the government to do something about the situation. The situation would only improve if many of us were willing to risk our lives. It was going to be another demonstration with students, workers, unions, peasants, Christians, all protesting about the repression in El Quiché. Soldiers were kidnapping people all the time in El Quiché. We’d hear news of ten, fifteen people who’d disappeared somewhere but they never said who they were. We’d get news like that every day. So my father said it was very important for me to be there. He would be there, and my brothers, and I should be there too if I could. I was determined to be there.

  I arrived in the area where I was to work. They were being repressed too and needed to organize. What should we do? We got a course of self-defence under way. My father sent me word of the date of the demonstration but I had a commitment. I remember this peasant compañero there saying: ‘No, compañera, this course is important. You can’t go to the capital.’ I thought about it a lot. It was perhaps my only chance of seeing my father. I loved my father very much. But our situation wouldn’t allow me to go. The course was very important too. We had to support the peasants there right away. So I stayed to do my work.

  The march on the capital was organised to demand that the army leave El Quiché.
They brought many orphaned children with them as proof of the repression. They took over several radio stations to tell people about our plight. At the same time, they thought they should make it known internationally by occupying an embassy where the ambassadors would be spokesmen. Unfortunately most of us were too poor to think of going on a tour of other countries. We were very poor and our organization didn’t have the resources to fight the army. The people wanted arms to defend themselves. And so first they occupied the Swiss embassy in Guatemala. Others took over radio stations. The peasants came from many different areas. From the south coast, from the east, but most of them were from El Quiché because that’s where the repression was concentrated. Almost all the leaders in the struggle were peasants. My father was, so were many other compañeros who died that day. The last action was to occupy the Spanish embassy. Before the occupation–it was a miracle–I heard that my mother was willing to go, and so were my brothers. But the organization said no, because they were afraid something might happen; the compañeros were all prepared to put themselves in any kind of danger. So they occupied the Spanish embassy.

  But what happened afterwards was something we could never have imagined. First, because they were important people; and second because government officials were there and they died in the fire together with the peasants. Of course we knew there would be tension, but we thought that they would give all the ones who occupied the embassy permission to leave the country as political refugees, and they would be able to spread the news of our struggle abroad. The objective was to tell the whole world what was happening in Guatemala and inform people inside the country as well.

  They were all burned to death. The only thing left was their ashes. This was a tremendous blow for us. For me, it wasn’t mourning my father so much. It was easy for me to concede that my father had died, because he had been forced to lead the same brutal, criminal life that we all had. My father was prepared, it was clear that he had to give his life. So for me it wasn’t painful accepting my father’s death, I was happy because I knew he hadn’t suffered as I imagined he would have suffered if he’d fallen into the enemy’s hands alive. That was what I dreaded. No, what hurt me very, very much was the lives of so many compañeros, fine compañeros, who weren’t ambitious for power in the least. All they wanted was enough to live on, enough to meet their people’s needs. This reinforced my decision to fight.

  But I had to face some terrible moments. First, when the news came that the bodies were unrecognizable and I thought that my mother and my brothers were there. What I couldn’t bear was the idea of them all dying together. We must all give our lives, I know–but not all together. Let it be one at a time so that someone is left, even if it’s only one of our family. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear to be the only one left. I actually wanted to die. These are things which happen to you as they do any human being. But we face them and bear them. I desperately wanted to go to the city. Even if only just to see my father’s grave. There will be many compañeros to bury, and my love will be for all of them, not just for my father. I didn’t go to the capital.

  The burned bodies were buried. It was something extraordinary for the whole of Guatemala. Never in all its history had the people been so militant, on every level. Thousands of people buried the compañeros who died. The people were moved by resistance to and hatred of the government. People at all levels–poor, middle class, professional–all risked their lives by going to the funeral of the compañeros from the Spanish embassy. They’d occupied the Spanish embassy perhaps because of our relationship with Spain. The good thing was that Spain broke off relations with Guatemala immediately. Although if you think about it, Spain has a lot to do with our situation. They have a lot to do with the origins of the suffering of the people, especially of the Indians.

  Some of the versions they gave out were, that the peasants were armed, that they burned themselves, etc. Neither we nor any of our compañeros can say what the real truth is because no-one from the Spanish embassy siege survived. All of them, every single one–died; the compañeros who coordinated the action and the compañeros who were keeping watch. Some were gunned down in other places after the embassy events. The G2 and the police stormed the embassy. There were a lot of journalists there, in fact, because of the solidarity work of other compañeros. They say that the police threw bombs, or I don’t know what, at the embassy and it started to burn. The only clues we had were that the bodies were stiff, rigid and all twisted. From the study made by our compañeros afterwards and the opinion of other people who know about explosives and bombs that kill people, they could have used sulphur bombs so that they only had to breath in the smoke to become stiff straight away. But it is incredible, because my father had five bullet holes in the head and one in the heart, and he was very stiff. It’s thought that the grenades thrown into the embassy were what punctured the bodies.

  Endless versions have been offered. But, in fact, one of our compañeros, Gregorio Yuja Xona, was still alive among the bodies. We managed to rescue him and take him to a private hospital for medical attention. He was the only one who might have told what really happened. But later he was kidnapped from the hospital by armed men, men in uniform who just calmly took him away. The next day he was left in front of San Carlos University: tortured, with bullet wounds, dead. So the government itself had not allowed this compañero to live. We weren’t able to talk to him because he was dying. The real truth is that we know the peasants couldn’t have had firearms. They’d have had weapons like machetes and stones with them. That was all they ever used in the places they took over. However, as I said to someone who asked me for specific details of what happened in the Spanish embassy, I can’t invent my own personal version from my imagination. None of our compañeros can know exactly. This event marked my life personally as much as it did the lives of many of my compañeros. We moved on to a new stage of the struggle.

  XXVI

  RIGOBERTA TALKS ABOUT HER FATHER

  ‘Remember us after we have gone. Don’t forget us. Conjure up our faces and our words. Our image will be as dew in the hearts of those who want to remember us.’

  —Popol Vuh

  My father was our community’s elected leader, and so was my mother. My father used to say: ‘We don’t do this so that our neighbours can say, “What good people they are!” We do it for our ancestors.’ So anything we did that our neighbours might take as a bad example, my father would correct us at once. But he didn’t chastise us, because he considered that the things we did, we’d learned from the times we live in. He blamed the times we were passing through, but he also said that we had to prevail over these times through the living memory of our ancestors. He would give us many examples from our grandparents: ‘Your grandparents used to do this, your grandparents used to say that.’ And then when they were hunting my father and he had to be away from the village often, the responsibility fell on my eldest brother. But he didn’t talk about himself, he’d say: ‘This is what my father did.’ And they knew the whole of our grandparents’ lives like a film. My father used to say: ‘There are many secrets we must not tell. We must keep our secrets.’ He said that no rich man, no landowner, no priest or nun, must ever know our secrets. If we don’t protect our ancestors’ secrets, we’ll be responsible for killing them. And this is something which has restricted us a bit, because everything we’d do, we’d do thinking of others: would they like this? or wouldn’t they like that?–and even more so because of my father, since everyone loved him and considered him a very important man. So, we, his children, must follow his example.

  We also had the example of my grandfather. My grandfather is still alive, I think. He’s one hundred and six years old. He’s my mother’s father. That grandfather used to tell us many bits of his life: he said that years ago, he’d lived when there was slavery. He was the eldest of his brothers and sisters and in those days, the eldest of a family was forced to work as a slave for white men. At whatever time the landowner came to get him
, he had to go, because, well, he was their slave. It happened to my grandfather because he was the eldest. He told us about many parts of his life. And it was like an education for us. My father used to tell us: ‘My children, whenever you have time, go and talk to your grandfather. He knows what our ancestors said.’ It was like a political discussion every time we talked to him, whereby he’d tell us about his life, his own grandparents’ lives, and something of the lives of those who’d lived before them. He’d explain why our people didn’t live as long now as our ancestors did. He said that when he was a boy, he saw people of a hundred and fifteen, a hundred and seventeen, still alive. And women of a hundred and ten too. He said: ‘It’s not you children’s fault. The modern machines which have come to our land are to blame.’ You have to remember, of course, that my grandfather never went to school. But he’d say: ‘It’s that you eat these chemical things today and that stops you living as long as you should. It’s not your fault but that’s how it is.’

  My grandfather used to curse the Spaniards. The Spaniards were at the root of our plight. They began taking so many things out of our lands, they began stealing from us. Our ancestors’ finest sons were those who were dishonoured. They even raped the queens elected by our community. That’s how the ladinos came into being. The caxlans, that is, of two bloods, Indian and Spanish. Caxlan means a bit of a mixture. My grandfather used to say: ‘The caxlans are thieves. Have nothing to do with them. You keep all our ancestors’ things.’ And he’d be continually talking about his life, about himself. And this helped us preserve our things very much; the majority of our people still keep many things. But many things have been lost too. Now they’re not done in exactly the same way as they were before. We have our secrets. My mother had many little secrets that she taught us, just small things. For instance, what to do when a lot of dogs are barking or biting someone. My mother has never been bitten by a dog because she had a secret way of quietening them. And I think this is part of nature, because it has its effect.