I, Rigoberta Menchu

by Rigoberta Menchu

  I remember the time I had my first communion. My parents had bought me a little piece of corte and a little blouse and a little apron. They also had to buy flowers and candles for me and all the other things I needed. So even before the fiesta they were in debt. My father was happy because I was alive, since it’s already a miracle when a child reaches five years old. We think he’ll survive then. So it was probably from happiness that my father went drinking and spent all his money. This meant that we had to go down to the finca for a long time, as after the fiesta we had to pay all the debts. I remember that I didn’t see or do much in that fiesta because we were only walking around on our own, or in one of the bars. I didn’t enjoy it.

  Once a year there is a fair as well and that’s when they choose the town’s queen. There has to be an Indian queen and a ladino queen. The days for the parade of the Indian queen are decided and after that come the days for the parade of the ladino queen. I don’t know the origin of this sort of parade. They choose an Indian girl, perhaps the most humble, to be the queen of all the town’s Indians. This is done in most of the towns in Guatemala, even in the smallest towns. But we should really look at who is behind it all. This is the incredible bit for me, because they’d talk about an Indian queen but I never knew anything about it because I lived in the mountains and never went to town for the fiestas when I was a child. People talked about it but I never knew anything about it. I was in the town in 1977 when they were choosing the queen. I saw that a lot of ladinos were voting for the Indian queen. There were three Indian girls as candidates. I remember that they had a ladino friend who put up a lot of money so that the one he liked best won. It wasn’t a competition because the votes were bought. And they also take a collection to buy the things for the queen. The municipality, that is, the authorities in the town, give a lot of money for the queen to appear in public and so on. This is some ‘folklore’ that I imagine has been imposed recently. It doesn’t come from years ago.

  The girl for whom most votes are bought becomes the queen. The votes are sold by groups of people interested in each girl. The candidates are chosen mainly by the young people in the town, either by friends, or some committee or organisation in the town itself, or by the municipality, that is, the authorities. So it’s not the ordinary people, not the Indian people, who choose. As most ladinos are found in the towns in Guatemala, the majority of Indians go and live outside the towns, leaving the towns for the ladinos. That’s what has happened in my town, Uspantán. Very few Indians live in the town itself. I saw that they began voting and then so-and-so won and everyone went to congratulate her. But these are only very small groups. I asked another friend, an Indian, and he told me that the mayor’s office promoted all these events and paid for and financed the Indian queen. It was something that made me very sad, mainly because they choose the prettiest girl in the town and then it’s like making this Indian girl into a business. After the queens are chosen, they appear in cars or carriages on the day of the fiesta. The Indian queen always appears first, on the 4th or 5th of May, and on the 8th they bring out the ladino queen. Or else they bring out the ladino first and then the Indian queen. They don’t appear together. Well, all this gave me a lot to think about.

  Later on they hold a big folklore festival in August at the fair in Cobán with the Indian queens from all the different areas. This fiesta is organised by the president in power, and important people like senators, foreign personalities, and ambassadors are invited. They all take part in the presidential fiesta. Well, the queen who was chosen by each town has to be there. It is obligatory, she has to be there by law. All the queens go with the costumes from the different regions but they have to get to Cobán by their own means. The president (he’s always a general) is there in Cobán, so are all the principal deputies, all the important guests and a lot of tourists. There are always a lot of tourists in our communities, in all the tourist spots in Guatemala. And they take all the photos they want. But for an Indian, taking a photo of him in the street is abusing his dignity, abusing him.

  Well, they make these Indian girls parade around, throw kisses, and wave to everyone. They take photos of them and make them behave like the stars of the rich. In Guatemala there are no stars among the poor. Then they parade so that the public will come and see them, more than anything because of their costumes. There are a whole lot of presentations. I remember that in the months before the fiesta, they fuss over the queens, teaching them how to present themselves because they assume that Indians don’t know. Well, they teach them and they arrive at Cobán all prepared. A friend who was a queen told me that they taught her how to present herself. This compañera couldn’t speak Spanish very well, so she had to learn the boring little speech she was going to give: greetings for the president, greetings for the most important guests, greetings for the army officers. They made her learn what she was to say. After she’d learned all the movements she had to make, they took her to a cheap hotel, not even to the hotel where the guests were. After the fiesta they told them: ‘You’ve played your part, now go home.’ So they asked to be given a place to stay and they gave them something for a cheap hotel: in Guatemala these are places where just anybody goes, where the drunks go. Well, the compañeras had to go to a cheap hotel after the presentation. This is what hurts Indians most. It means that, yes, they think our costumes are beautiful because it brings in money, but it’s as if the person wearing it doesn’t exist. Then they charge the people who go to the festival a lot for their tickets and get a lot of money from the presentation of the queens. Everyone has to pay to go in. Only people with money can go.

  XXX

  LESSONS TAUGHT HER BY HER MOTHER: INDIAN WOMEN AND LADINO WOMEN

  ‘My mother said: “I don’t want to make you stop feeling a woman, but your participation in the struggle must be equal to that of your brothers.”’

  —Rigoberta Menchú

  Indian women are not coquettish. They don’t have time for new hairstyles, and arranging their hair, and all those things. But ladino women do. Even if they’ve nothing to eat, they’d rather put pins in their hair, and have a waistline, and at all costs wear shoes. There are many differences between us. I remember my mother telling me: ‘My child, you don’t need to paint your face because make-up abuses the wonders God has given us. Don’t you learn these things.’ But there came a time when I began to move away from my mother and this worried her very much. It isn’t that I didn’t love my mother, but I felt slightly more love for my father. It’s probably because of all his work, because of all the threats made against him. I never thought my mother would meet a worse death than my father. I always thought it would be worse for my father than for my mother.

  But when I was ten I was closer to my mother. That’s the age she told me about the facts of life. She taught me by talking about the experiences of her grandmother: she told me about when her grandmother was pregnant. She didn’t pass on her own experiences, not that she hadn’t had them, but because she felt more comfortable teaching me through the experiences of others. Well, my mother told me that an Indian woman is only respected if she’s wearing her full costume. If she forgets her shawl, the community starts losing respect for her and a woman needs their respect. ‘Never forget to wear your apron, my child,’ my mother used to say.

  Our tenth year actually marks the stage when we enter womanhood. It’s when parents buy their daughters everything they need: two aprons; two cortes; two perrajes; so that when one is being washed she can wear the other. Whenever we go out to do an errand, we must wear our complete costume. My mother told me not to cut my hair: ‘If you cut your hair, people notice and say that that woman is breaking with many of our things, and they won’t respect you as they ought to.’ My mother often used to scold us when we’d run off without our aprons: ‘You must dress as you’re always going to dress. You mustn’t change the way you dress, because you’re the same person and you’re not going to change from now on.’ My mother also explained what maize meant for
us. She said that a pregnant woman mustn’t carry maize which has been cut in her apron because the cuttings are what give the maize life. It’s the womb of the maize which nourishes us. But you can’t liken it to a child either. The child will eat maize when he grows up. The child deserves as much respect as the maize cuttings. You can’t compare the two, then. They mustn’t be mixed. That was the significance my mother saw in it. Our aprons are also something very important: women use them all the time, in the market, in the street, in all her work. It’s something sacred for a woman and she must always have it with her.

  Later my mother explained many other little things. For instance, about birds, about medicines. She’d say: ‘Don’t ever eat this or that plant, or take it as medicine,’ and she’d explain why not. A pregnant woman can’t take just any kind of medicine, or any old concoctions from trees either. She went on to explain that I’d have to have periods. I asked her a lot of questions out loud while we’d cut plants at the foot of the mountains but, as I said, she usually told me about my grandparents, not about herself. But when I had stomach ache, I didn’t tell my mother, I’d usually look for my father because of that very trust I had in him. And there were many little things I could have asked my mother, but I asked my father. My mother told me that she’d been rather abandoned when she was a little girl. No-one looked after her so she’d had to learn everything alone. She said: ‘When I got my period, I didn’t even know what it was.’ Mamá used to get very angry. She taught us to do all our jobs well, and if we didn’t do them right, she’d punish us. She said: ‘If it’s not put right now, who’ll teach you later on? This is for your own good, not mine.’ I remember beginning to make tortillas when I was three. I could wash the nixtamal. She taught me to wash it and to make it. When I was older she explained that there were certain things you mustn’t walk over–a plate or a cup, for instance–and not to walk over the maize since maize is our food. Well, just details we had to learn!

  I also remember going to sow our crops in the fields. Mamá explained the days which were fertile for sowing. She always dreamed about nature. I think it was just her own imagination working. But when someone believes, things that you imagine often happen. I’ve proved this many times with medicines. I’d say: ‘This is sure to make me better,’ and logically I’d get better even though it’s not the medicine that had the effect. I think that my mother was like that. She said that when she was little she used to climb on tree trunks and up trees and look after animals and things like that. She used to talk to animals a lot. When she hit an animal, for instance, she’d say: ‘I hit you for this reason, so don’t be angry.’ And this way she gets on good terms with it again. And she also told me that, once, when she was little, she’d found a little pig in the mountains and she knew it didn’t belong to anyone because we had no neighbours then, we were the only families living there. There were other families a few kilometres away from where we were. She picked the pig up and carried it home. By my grandfather was a very honest man and was capable of beating any of his children if they stole anything, even a fruit or something small. Among Indians, it’s forbidden to steal from a neighbour’s house. Nobody can abuse his neighbour’s work. So my mother took the little pig home but she didn’t know how to explain to my grandfather because he’d probably throw her and her pig out of the house. So she hid it in the temascal and left it there. My grandfather had two cows and the cows gave milk, and they made cheese to take to market to sell to rich people. Well, my mamá took part of the milk and gave it to the little pig so that he’d grow without my grandfather seeing. But after fifteen days–it’s incredible that the little pig was alive–it had grown and got bigger and bigger even though it didn’t have a mamá. And my grandfather noticed that my mother had a little pig.

  He almost killed her. He said: ‘Go and take that pig away. I don’t want stolen pigs in my house.’ There was a terrible row. But afterwards the little pig was allowed to grow up, although my grandfather told my mother that she had to find food for it herself. Well, my mother made sacrifices, and the pig was soon big, about five or six months old. My mama was very worried and discussed it with the pig. She said: ‘My papá doesn’t love you, but I do.’ Then, one night some coyotes came in and took the pig away. There were about three or four coyotes. And the pig started screaming and my mamá went running out. She was resolute and went into the mountains running after them to try and catch the pig, but when they got further into the mountains, my mother felt a breeze and said: ‘Ah, it’s obvious that the pig belongs to the world, not to me.’ So she left the animal and went back. But she used to dream about her little pig all the time. She’d see it in the coyote’s mouth as they were taking it away.

  It was about that time that she said she was going to learn from a chimán. That’s what we call a man who tells the Indians’ fortunes. He’s like a doctor for the Indians, or like a priest. My mother said: ‘I’m going to be a chimán and I’ll learn with one of these men.’ And she went to the chimán and he taught her many things out of his imagination connected with animals, with plants, with water, with the sun. My mamá learned a great deal, but who knows, perhaps that wasn’t to be her role in life. Nevertheless, it helped her a lot to learn and dedicate herself to other things. My mother loved the natural world very much. In Guatemala the sky is nearly always blue, so when clouds begin to gather on the sides of the mountains, it means it is going to rain. My mother could tell the days it was going to rain; what kind of rain was going to fall; if it was going to be heavy or not. When a whole line of clouds passed in a certain direction, my mother would say: ‘Hurry up, children, because it’s going to rain.’ And it was true. It rained exactly as if she’d planned it herself. She enjoyed life very much, in spite of the sad life we had and even though she suffered very much when we were ill. I remember that sometimes I couldn’t walk because the soles of my feet split. When it rained, it was the mud which split them and it went septic between my toes. One thing I remember is that my mother knew a lot about natural country medicine and whatever illness we had, she’d go looking for leaves of plants and cured us immediately.

  Another of the special things about my mother was that she loved giving little presents. Even if we didn’t have very much, she said that any person who comes to a house must always be given something, even if it’s only a little pinol or at mealtimes a tortilla with salt or whatever there is. ‘You must always know how to give,’ my mamá would say, ‘because a person who gives will also receive when the time comes. When you’re in a difficult situation, you won’t have to face your troubles alone. You’ll always receive help, even if it isn’t from the same person you gave to. There will always be people who will hold you in high esteem.’ She always made us have some hot water on the fire so there would always be something for anyone who came to the house, even if it was only a little atol.

  She also taught us to look after and preserve our household things. Our cooking pots, for example. She had a lot of earthenware pots that she’d had for many years and they hadn’t broken or been ruined because she knew how to look after her things. Well, she told us that if you are poor, you can’t buy things all the time, nor must you only expect things from your husband. You yourself have to do your part to keep your little things too. And she gave us examples of people whom she knew or that she’d helped to improve themselves: ‘That’s what happens with women who don’t look after their pots and then when they don’t have them any more, they have to go and buy more.’ She was like that with everything. Another of our customs she taught us was that you mustn’t mix women’s clothes with men’s clothes. She told us to put our brothers’ clothes on one side when we wash them. First you wash the men’s clothes and then, at the end, our own. In our culture we often treat the man as something different–the woman is valued too, of course–and if we do things we must do them well. First, because they are our men, and second, because it’s a way of encouraging them, in the same way our ancestors did for their men. Not mixing the clothes
was, I think, the order they respected. My mother said that we women have certain things that a man doesn’t have, like our period for instance. So we keep all our clothes separate. It’s the same for everything: we don’t mix them, but most of all with our clothes. However, with kitchen utensils and all the things for the house, there isn’t one for each.

  There’s something else I used to see my mother do. My father would often come home from work tired, and my mother liked to give him the largest portion of the food and keep a little for herself. And I used to ask her: ‘Why did papá have to eat a lot?’ My mother would say that my father used a lot of energy in his work and that if we didn’t look after him, he could become ill and get weaker. She gave him food to encourage him. That’s how she was with everything. One of the important things, my mother used to say, is that it depends on the woman how little money is spent. In the country we buy things for a whole week and it’s up to the woman how she manages her household expenses. She’s the one who keeps the money. If it’s the woman’s turn to go to market, she buys the things, but if it’s not, she has to show the man what they need so that he can buy it. My mother hardly ever went to market. My father used to go and he’d buy all the things my mother told him to, even if it were only a pot, or a broom. The other thing was that since my mother was a midwife for a long time and knew most of the medicinal plants, or any remedies for adults or children, she’d often be called out at three or four in the morning to go and see someone who was ill. She was hardly ever at home. She, therefore, had to give us a lot of advice and from when we were very little she taught us how to look after the house, and how to care for our things so that they didn’t get ruined. My mother was very happy because I have a sister who copies my mother in every way. She learned all the small things, all of them, from my mother and acted like her in the house. She’s married, but I don’t know where she is now.