I, Rigoberta Menchu

by Rigoberta Menchu

  My mother didn’t have to show us our food, because we had to go and look for food for ourselves. We had to look for new things to eat because it’s tedious always eating the same sort of plants. And more so at harvest time, when there’s only one woman at home while the others are all working in the harvest. So, the one who stays at home has to find food for the midday meal. My mother liked always being busy. She could make mats, weave cloth, plait straw for hats, make earthenware pots and comales. She knew how to do all these things. Sometimes, on a Sunday for instance, when she wasn’t doing the washing (we all did it when we were older), my mother would make some things for the house. She’d have time to make one or two comales, or some cooking pots. Or people used to ask her to make things for them. During our last days in the village, she had a cow which she loved very much, really very much. When we were older, and when my sisters-in-law were there, my mother didn’t have to do so many of the chores in the house, so she’d get up in the morning and go straight away to see the animals, or take them to places where they’d be for the whole day. And when the men went off to work, she’d go to work in the fields as well. People thought a lot of her because she was the woman who was all over the place, even though we sometimes didn’t like my mother going off so much because we missed her at home. There were times when she didn’t come home for two or three days because she had to look after people who were ill. We used to get annoyed, my brothers especially. We wanted our mother to be at home. Later on, she started going to other villages and became a militant. She’d go and visit the sick but at the same time she worked in the organization. She organized the women.

  There was something my mother used to say concerning machismo. You have to remember that my mother couldn’t read or write and didn’t know any theories either. What she said was that men weren’t to blame for machismo, and women weren’t to blame for machismo, but that it was part of the whole society. To fight machismo, you shouldn’t attack men and you shouldn’t attack women, because that is either the man being machista, or it’s the woman. Because very often we go to two extremes whereby the woman says she is free and becomes radicalized in that sense. And instead of solving the problem, it just makes it bigger. My mother said: ‘We women have a very important role to play in this sense, because we are better at expressing affection.’ And she’d point to my father as an example. When they were young, my father always liked to be served. He was also very jealous. But my mother told us that they began to discuss these things because they had to learn to be adults. When she got married, it was difficult for them to understand that they had to start a new life, and that married life would not be like before. Well, anyway, I can’t say because I’m not married; but my mother used to say that where there’s a couple, there will always be problems. However good the marriage is, there will be problems. But it will be up to the two of them to solve those problems, and to solve them they must make a life for the two of them, an adult life. Perhaps that’s what my mother was referring to when she talked about the problem of jealousy my father had. It was only when they started discussing that they both understood the problem and solved it. Because no matter how aware the woman is or how aware the man is, if they don’t discuss things they can’t understand. She said: ‘The thing is that nobody, not even other women, are going to solve the problem if you yourself don’t think about how you’re going to do it.’ It’s the same with men.

  Another example my mother gave us was that, when my father was really angry, my mother never answered him back. Then afterwards, when they were getting on well and were in their senses, that was when they’d discuss it. That’s how the defects of both of them were sorted out and how they managed to have a happy family. Of course there were problems and they did argue sometimes, but that didn’t mean that it was a bad marriage, no, it meant they understood each other and got on together. And it was mainly because of that that my mother had so much freedom to do her work and go out, because among Indians, it’s often very difficult for a woman to go out alone. In fact, as I was saying before, when we were young girls, we were only allowed out with our mother or one of our brothers. And it’s still like that today. A married woman is not free to go out, to go alone or visit her neighbours. Perhaps it’s because her husband is jealous, since we always have to take into account our life in a community, and behave so society does not disapprove of us. It’s the image we have to give to everyone. That’s how this way of life emerges, often dependent on others. But my mother had absolute freedom to go out because she represented our community. We’d managed to have a relatively communal life in my village. Sometimes the women went to market or went together to town to buy some things. I remember that whenever we went down to the town, a whole troupe of women would go, all from our village, and we always had plenty to discuss with our neighbours. And sometimes men, women and children would all go down the path together. We’d split up to buy our things and then all go back again.

  My mother also had a lot of patience with her children, and her daughters-in-law. There were lots of problems because we grew up in a very big household. There were my grandparents, all our children and my sister-in-law and her three children who lived with us. This meant a lot of work, looking after the house, the food and the dishes. Well, most of us went off to work and my sister-in-law stayed at home or sometimes she went with us to work. It was nice when we all went off to work. We liked it best of all when we were picking the beans and bringing in the maize harvest. Sometimes the beans are picked before the maize and sometimes afterwards. My brothers and sisters and I always got on well together. But the time came for some of them to get married and my mother had to cope with big problems because, first, her son’s wives weren’t used to the kind of work we did, and second, because they didn’t want to live on their own since they came from big families as well and they’d feel bad being in a house alone with their husbands. So they stayed with us. It is an obligation that every community has; to let the wife live with her husband’s parents. We began having problems because my sister was very bad-tempered and she didn’t like things being left half finished–she liked things done and done quickly. My sister was hardly ever still. She was always working, always busy, and, of course, it was difficult for my sisters-in-law to adapt to this sort of work. We were forced to find somewhere separate for my sisters-in-law because there was no way they could go on living in our house. So my mamá faced a lot of problems because she had to share her affection between her children and her daughters-in-law as well. We felt very hard done by. There was a bit of jealousy on our part when my other brothers got their houses and my mother would go over there and still look after them as if they were little boys. We began to be jealous and scolded my mother when she got home. We quarrelled with my brothers because of my sisters-in-law. But my mother shared herself with all of us and said that if she loved one she had to love all. Or she’d have to reject all of us!

  My mother couldn’t express her views about political things; but she was very politicized through her work and thought that we should learn to be women, but women who were useful to the community. And so from when we were very small, we had to go with her to learn from her example and copy all the little things she taught us about politics. She was the first to decide to join the struggle, before I did, because I didn’t really know anything, or what anything meant. My mother was a woman who already had a political vision and was already working in organizations before I knew anything. She didn’t belong to any specific organization. She received information from the CUC, but when she got to know the compañeros in the mountains, the guerrillas, she loved them like her sons too. She’d known them first in other areas because my mother used to travel a lot tending the sick, and she was often called to assist pregnant women in other areas. That’s how she got to know them. When she worked with the CUC, she represented the CUC, but she didn’t belong to any specific organization. She said what was important was doing something for our people. She said it would be sad to die
without doing anything, without grasping reality in your hands. When she talked to me, before I had any specific work for the CUC (because at the beginning I only helped them with any work they wanted done, I wasn’t an organizer), she said: ‘My child, we must organize. It’s not something I demand of you because I’m your mother. It’s your duty to put into practice what you know. The days of paternalism, of saying “poor girl, she doesn’t know anything,” are over.’ My mother made no distinction between the men’s struggle and the women’s struggle. She 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. But you mustn’t join as just another number, you must carry out important tasks, analyze your position as a woman and demand a share. A child is only given food when he demands it. A child who makes no noise gets nothing to eat.’ And that is why I felt that I had to participate more actively.

  My mother was also very courageous. On Sundays, she’d leave for the town at three in the morning with only her horse for company. As I said, my mother was brave but, nonetheless, I learned more from my father. I regret this very much now because my mother knew many things that I don’t know, things like medicines and what she knew about nature. I know this as well, of course, but only on a general level, not at all profoundly.

  My mother had the same idea of women as our women had had in the past. They were very strict and believed a woman should learn her womanly occupation so that she could live and face many things. And she was right. Because we can see a difference. My father was very tender and always protected me, but it was my mother who coped with the big problems in our family. She was capable of seeing her son even as he was dying and doing everything she could to save him. But my father, for instance, he’d see my little brother ill or nearly dying and he’d escape from it. For him it was better to get drunk and forget everything, while my mother didn’t allow herself the luxury of getting drunk when she had to do something to save my little brother whose life was in danger. There were many estimable things in my father; many things which he could face but also many things he couldn’t face. And my mother too. She could face many things, but there were other things she couldn’t do. So I love them both the same. I love them both but I have to say that I grew up more at my father’s side. My mother taught many people many things, but I didn’t learn as much from her as I should have learned.

  XXXI

  WOMEN AND POLITICAL COMMITMENT. RIGOBERTA RENOUNCES MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD

  ‘We have kept our identity hidden because we have resisted.’

  —Rigoberta Menchú

  I still haven’t approached the subject–and it’s perhaps a very long subject–of women in Guatemala. We have to put them into categories, anyway: working-class women, peasant women, poor ladino women, and bourgeois women, middle-class women. There is something important about women in Guatemala, especially Indian women, and that something is her relationship with the earth–between the earth and the mother. The earth gives food and the woman gives life. Because of this closeness the woman must keep this respect for the earth as a secret of her own. The relationship between the mother and the earth is like the relationship between husband and wife. There is a constant dialogue between the earth and the woman. This feeling is born in women because of the responsibilities they have, which men do not have.

  That is how I’ve been able to analyze my specific task in the organization. I realize that many compañeros, who are revolutionaries and good compañeros, never lose the feeling that their views are better than those of any women in charge of them. Of course, we mustn’t dismiss the great value of those compañeros, but we can’t let them do just whatever they like. I have a responsibility, I am in charge, and they must accept me for what I am. But in this respect I’ve met serious problems when handing out tasks to those compañeros, and I’ve often found it upsetting having to assume this role. But I really believed that I could contribute, and that they should respect me. All the same, it was difficult for me to say: ‘Listen, compañero, these tasks are for you; and you, compañero, these are your defects, what are we going to do about them?’ It doesn’t mean you dominate a man, and you mustn’t get any sense of satisfaction out of it. It’s simply a question of principle. I have my job to do just like any other compañero. I found all this very difficult and, as I was saying, I came up against revolutionary compañeros, compañeros who had many ideas about making a revolution, but who had trouble accepting that a woman could participate in the struggle, not only in superficial things but in fundamental things. I’ve also had to punish many compañeros who try to prevent their women taking part in the struggle or carrying out any task. They’re sometimes willing to let them participate but only within certain limits. They start saying: ‘Oh no, not that. No, not here. No.’ Well, we’ve had to talk seriously with these companeros to solve that problem.

  My mother, of course, didn’t know all these ideas, all these theories about the position of women. But she knew all these things in practice. I learned a lot from my mother but I also learned a lot from other people, especially when I had the opportunity of talking to women who aren’t from our country. We discussed the organization of women and we came to the conclusion that many women so often take other people’s problems upon themselves and push their own to one side. This doesn’t do us any good. It shows us that we must solve our problems ourselves and not ask someone else to come and solve them, otherwise it’s dishonest. No-one will solve our problems for us.

  The Indian women who have a clear political vision and participate in the leadership of the organization are realizing this. We’re seeing change, revolution, taking power, but this isn’t the profound change within society. We women compañeras came to the conclusion (because for a time we thought of creating an organization for women) that it was paternalistic to say there should be an organization for women when in practice women work and are exploited as well. Women work picking coffee and cotton, and on top of that, many women have taken up arms and even elderly women are fighting day and night; so it isn’t possible to say that now we’re setting up an organization so that women can rebel, work or study women’s problems. It won’t always be like this, of course. That is just the situation we’re facing at the moment. Perhaps in the future, when there’s a need for it, there will be a women’s organization in Guatemala. For the time being, though, we think that it would be feeding machismo to set up an organization for women only, since it would mean separating women’s work from men’s work. Also we’ve found that when we discuss women’s problems, we need the men to be present, so that they can contribute by giving their opinions of what to do about the problem. And so that they can learn as well. If they don’t learn, they don’t progress. Our struggle has shown us that many compañeros have clear ideas, but if they don’t follow in the footsteps of their woman, they’ll never have the clarity that she has, and they’ll be left behind. What is the point of educating women if men aren’t there to contribute to the apprenticeship and learn as well? By creating an organization for women we would be presenting the system which oppresses us with another weapon. We don’t want that. We must fight as equals. If a compañero is asked a question about machismo, he must be able to give a wide, balanced view of women, and a woman must be able to do the same for men, because the two have been studying the problem together.

  That has been my experience anyway. I’m not married, but I’ve taken part in important discussions where we’ve talked about the problem of men and women, in a mixed group. We think that this is the right path to follow. Naturally, we can’t say that this alone will do away with machismo, because it wouldn’t be true. In all revolutionary countries, socialist countries, wherever you care to name, machismo still exists. The whole world is afflicted with this sickness. It’s part of society. Part of it we can improve, and part of it we can wipe out. But perhaps it’s not possible to solve the problem entirely.

  There is something else we are discovering in Guat
emala to do with intellectuals and illiterate people. We’ve learned that we haven’t all got the ability of an intellectual: an intellectual is perhaps quicker and able to make finer syntheses. But nevertheless, others of us have perhaps the same ability for other things. Before, everyone used to think that a leader had to be someone who knew how to read, write and prepare documents. And our leaders fell into that trap for a time, and said: ‘I am a leader, it’s my job to lead and yours to fight.’ Well, in every process there are certain exchanges which have to be made. That is not unusual. I think that every movement has gone through the process whereby an opportunist arrives, feels that he is worth more than the others and abuses their confidence. At one time, many of our leaders would come from the capital to see us in the finca and say: ‘You peasants are stupid, you don’t read or study.’ And the peasants told them: ‘You can go to hell with your books. We know you don’t make a revolution with books, you make it through struggle.’

  And that was why we decided to learn many things, and rightly so, because, remember, that now everything was in our hands. We had to make big sacrifices. And so, we peasants have learned to direct our struggle ourselves, and that we owe to our understanding of our situation. A leader must be someone who’s had practical experience. It’s not so much that the hungrier you’ve been, the purer your ideas must be, but you can only have a real consciousness if you’ve really lived this life. I can say that in my organization most of the leaders are Indians. There are also some ladinos and some women in the leadership. But we have to erase the barriers which exist between ethnic groups, between Indians and ladinos, between men and women, between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, and between all the linguistic areas.