I, Rigoberta Menchu

by Rigoberta Menchu

  The First of May this year was very important as well. It was the most important action we’ve carried out in Guatemala. The First of May is Labour Day in Guatemala. We’d been calling strikes and demonstrations on that day for some time. All the peasants used to come to the capital on foot from the interior. In 1980 the regime showed its repressive capacity by killing workers, industrial workers and peasants. The demonstration was held in the capital and the army opened fire on the people. There were many kidnappings after the demonstration too. That’s why we commemorated the First of May, 1981, by more militant actions. Peasants, workers and Christians undertook actions in the capital and the interior. The police, the authorities, and the army were warned a week before that we were going to commemorate the First of May and they announced that they would be on the alert, controlling the situation. Well, on the 28th of April, we began our actions in the capital, and also in the interior. We set up barricades, threw ‘propaganda bombs’ and held lightning meetings. We had to complete each of these actions in a couple of minutes, or it would mean a massacre. And so, we were organized in such a way that the barricades would be opened, the propaganda given out, and the meeting held all at the same time. My part in this was in the Avenida Bolivar, in the capital. It’s a very important street which cuts across part of the city centre and has many smaller streets running into it. There were barricades in various streets in the city and, remember, each of us had a specific part in the exercise. People would say: ‘Come on, hurry up, hurry up!’ We were so worried, so afraid, that the enemy would arrive. Many compañeros set off ‘bombs’ explaining these actions, while others gave out leaflets, or called the enemy (the police or the army). The idea was that this dispersed their resources, because we knew we wouldn’t be there when they arrived. We’d finish with the barricade, call the enemy and when they arrived, we weren’t there any more. The First of May had arrived and we managed to do everything we wanted to.

  The government and the factory owners had to give the workers the day off. On the 2nd of May, we started fresh actions. We telephoned all the factories and told them that we’d placed high explosives there and that they were responsible for the lives of all those people. They had to get all the workers out and they let them leave. Many workers had a week’s rest because we threatened them every day. This was one way to get rest for the workers. But above all, what we achieved was that the government had to recognize that our strength lies in the strength of the people themselves, who step by step are learning to do things better. A compañero placed a box with an aerial which looked like high explosives near a building where people could see it. The police arrived and made a tremendous fuss. They called the army. They even came in tanks. They called high explosive experts to disconnect it very delicately with special pincers. They were furious when they discovered that it had nothing in it. The soldiers began firing in the air. They were livid. The 31st of January Popular Front has gone on doing this type of actions on all the commemorative days. And on other occasions too. For instance, when ex-Somoza officers in Honduran territory attacked Nicaragua, we repudiated this action by burning the offices of the Honduran airline. The important thing is that we were using all our resources.

  Women have played an incredible role in the revolutionary struggle. Perhaps after the victory, we’ll have time to tell our story. It is unbelievable. Mothers with their children would be putting up barricades, and then placing ‘propaganda bombs’, or carrying documents. Women have had a great history. They’ve all experienced terrible things, whether they be working-class women, peasant women, or teachers. This same situation has led us to do all those things. We don’t do them because we want power, but so that something will be left for human beings. And this gives us the courage to be steadfast in the struggle, in spite of the danger.

  The government has many, many spies in different places. It might be on a bus, in a restaurant, in a market, on any corner. They’re everywhere. They’ve got people who ride around in respectable bullet-proof cars, but they’ve also got poor people who sell brooms from door to door. But in spite of everything, this control hasn’t been able to stop the will of the people.

  After the events of the Spanish embassy, revolutionary Christians decided to set up an organization and give it my father’s name. It’s called the ‘Vicente Menchú Revolutionary Christians’. The Christians took my father’s name because he is a national hero for them: a man who despite his terrible experiences never lost his faith. He never confused what Heaven is with what Earth is. He chose to fight with his people, a people which through its faith came to denounce terror and exploitation. As a Christian, he fought against this. And this was because of the different churches which exist in Guatemala. There is the Church of the poor which is at war. We opted for the just war. In El Quiché many priests left the Church because they saw that this wasn’t ‘communism’, it was the people’s just war. Christians realized that they needed an organization, not only for the sake of having an organization in the struggle, but also because it actually reflects the attitudes of the Christians who are fighting in the mountains today, motivated by their Christian faith. The Christian hierarchy is not able to join the people’s struggle and this means that it will disappear in Guatemala. It does not understand the situation despite all the massacres. It doesn’t want to understand. It says we must forgive, but it doesn’t see that the government does not ask our forgiveness when it kills our brothers. The Church has actually divided into two: the Church of the rich, in which there are many priests who don’t want problems; and the Church of the poor which has joined us.

  The Church has always talked of love and freedom, but there is no freedom in Guatemala. Not for us at least. And we’re not going to wait until we see the kingdom of God in the sky either. I must also say that, although the majority of the Bishops conserve their church of privilege, there are some who have realized that their duty is not to defend a building, a structure. They’ve understood that their commitment is to their own people, so they’ve been persecuted and forced to abandon the Church. The ecclesiastical hierarchy has made its position very clear. For five or six years now they’ve been going around with bodyguards. This makes us think a lot about the attitudes of these men. At the beginning of the electoral campaign in 1981, Archbishop Casariego blessed the campaign. The cardinal and his priests were involved in it. To make all the priests clarify their positions, the government decided, in July of 1981, to send them telegrams with their complete names and addresses, calling them to the capital to attend a meeting with deputies and government ministers. Priests and nuns all had to attend; they had no choice. Before entering the Congress building they were asked their exact names and addresses, and had their photographs taken. At this meeting, that assassin Lucas called on them to initiate a literacy campaign. Many priests preferred not to say anything for fear of reprisals. The most militant were some nuns who said that they hadn’t waited for this meeting to teach people to read and write but had been doing it for a long time. They said that they had nothing to do with the government.

  After this, many priests had to go into hiding. Those who didn’t respond to the government’s invitation were attacked on radio and television. The government announced that there would be tighter control of religion in Guatemala, and that convents and churches would be searched. Well, they began raiding the houses of nuns who’d taken the side of the people. They kidnapped the Jesuit Luis Pellecer, and made him talk after torturing him badly. All that happened because the Church did not respond as it should have done to the death of hundreds of catechists and twelve priests. There was the case of a priest who handed over a group of forty peasants who’d taken refuge in his church. He then handed over his own niece because the girl’s mother was a union leader who organized a campaign for the reappearance of the forty peasants. This sixteen-year-old girl was raped by many of the G2 troops. Her mother was a union leader so a lot of pressure was applied, and the girl was saved but went out of her mind. She couldn
’t talk or move her body because of the repeated rape. They gave her three hours to leave the country and now she is out of the country, but she still can’t speak or move.

  XXXIII

  IN HIDING IN THE CAPITAL. HUNTED BY THE ARMY

  ‘My commitment to our struggle recognizes neither boundaries nor limits: only those of us who carry our cause in our hearts are willing to run the risks.’

  —Rigoberta Menchú

  Well, after all that, I was a hunted woman. They were out looking for me and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t live with any of the compañeros because it would put the family in danger. The army were looking for me in various places; and they were looking for my brothers too. For a time I stayed in the house of some people who gave me a lot of affection and all the moral support I needed at that time. All these memories are painful because those were very bitter times. Nevertheless, I knew I was a grown-up woman, a strong woman, who could face this situation. I told myself: ‘Rigoberta, you’ll have to grow up a bit more.’ Of course my experience had been very painful, but I thought a lot about things, especially all the other orphaned children who couldn’t speak and tell their story as I could. I tried to forget so many things, but at the same time, I had to face up to them as an adult, as a woman with a certain level of consciousness. I told myself that I wasn’t the only orphan in Guatemala. There are many others, and it’s not my grief alone, it’s the grief of a whole people. It’s the grief of a whole people, and all of us orphans who’ve been left must bear it.

  Then afterwards, I had the opportunity of being with one of my little sisters. She told me that she was stronger than I was and had faced situations better, because there was one point when I was losing hope. I asked her: ‘How is it possible for our parents to be no longer with us? They never killed any one, they never stole from their neighbours. And yet, this could happen to them.’ Thinking about this made my life very difficult and I often couldn’t believe it or stand it. I even wished that I had some vices. I said; ‘If I had some vices, perhaps I could lose myself in depravity, so I didn’t have to think or bear life.’ Well, the meeting with my little sister was lovely. She was twelve years old. She said: ‘What has happened is a sign of victory. It gives us reason for fighting. We must behave like revolutionary women.’ ‘A revolutionary isn’t born out of something good,’ said my sister, ‘he is born out of wretchedness and bitterness. This just gives us one more reason. We have to fight without measuring our suffering, or what we experience, or thinking about the monstrous things we must bear in life.’ And she made me renew my commitment completely and showed me how cowardly I’d been in not accepting all this. This encouraged me a great deal.

  Since I couldn’t live in one house, I had to change places all the time. Then I fell ill in the house of some people. I was in bed for fifteen days. I remember that that was when I got an ulcer. It was just after my mother died. I was very ill. I wanted to go out after that, but I told myself that I just could not do it. Then I dreamed about my mother and my father. My father said: ‘What you are doing is not right, my child. You are a woman. That’s enough of that!’ And my father’s words acted like a medicine and cured me straight away. So with my spirits raised, I left the house where I was staying. I went to a little town where the army spotted me. It was a little town in Huehuetenango. I was in the street. What happened was that by now I was fed up, tired of hiding in houses. There comes a moment when you just don’t want to hide any more. I went out, and coming down the street was an army jeep. It came so close to me that it nearly took me with it and its occupants said my whole name. I knew what that meant for me. It meant that I’d be kidnapped or killed. I remember the feeling I had at that moment. I felt I didn’t want to die, that I had a lot of things still to do, that it wasn’t time for me to die yet. The army came back again. They said they wanted to talk to me. They passed by again. There was hardly anyone in the street. I didn’t know what to do! I was with someone else. We thought of going into a shop but that was useless because they’d kill us there. So, we had to run and run, to the little church. We managed to reach the church but the army saw us go in. They went crazy looking for us. They came into the church. It was useless going into the priest’s room because they’d get me out in any case. So I said to myself: ‘Well, here it is then, my contribution.’ I was sorry to die because I thought that my participation was still pretty valuable and there were many things to do. I remember that I had very very long hair which I wore tied up. I let my hair down, and it all fell loose. My hair covered the whole of my back and I kneeled down. There were only two people in the church, no-one else. My compañera went and knelt down beside one of the people and I stayed beside the other. I waited for the moment they’d catch me. They went through the church but they didn’t see us. They were like madmen. The church adjoined the market and they thought that we’d managed to go through the church to the market. They didn’t recognize us. We waited there for over an hour and a half. They looked all over the market. Then they left the town and surrounded it. But we escaped another way.

  I wasn’t afraid because I wasn’t thinking. When you’re in danger and you know you’ve only a minute of your life left, you don’t remember what you did yesterday, or what you’re going to do tomorrow. I remember that my head was empty, empty. The only thing I knew was that I didn’t want to die, that I wanted to live longer. And that showed my real cowardice because I’d often wished for death. I’d felt that because of all that had happened, it was better not to be alive. But this strengthened my commitment again, and I said that, yes, I could give my life, but not like this. I’d give my life carrying out a task, a specific task. Of course. But not this way. Well, I was wrong then, but I was obviously suffering the consequences of contributing to the struggle of my people, suffering what they were suffering.

  We managed to get out of the town. I remember having to walk a lot to get far away from that town. I couldn’t stay anywhere. I couldn’t stay with peasants, nor any of the nuns sympathetic to us. The compañeros didn’t know what to do with me, or where to hide me. The trouble was that so many people knew me, many of them only because I’d worked in the fincas. And so had many young men before they’d been taken off for military service. So I’d be recognized in many different places. This was the situation I was faced with. The compañeros had to take me to Guatemala City; but what was I going to do when I got to the capital? Where was I going to stay? There wasn’t the organization then that there is now. Now they have all kinds of ways of hiding any compañero, but in those days we didn’t have those possibilities. Well, I went to work clandestinely as a maid in the house of some nuns. With all the horrors that I had inside me, it would have been comforting for me to be able to talk to all the compañeros, or people who understood me, people who were sympathetic. But I went to the house of these nuns and there I couldn’t talk to anyone, because no-one knew my situation.

  They set me to work straight away washing a pile of clothes and this made my problem worse, because as I washed the clothes, my mind was focused on the whole panorama of my past. There was no-one to tell, no-one in whom I could find some comfort. If I’d told them they wouldn’t understand. Anyway, I stayed there because I had no alternative. I was there for about fifteen days. But the nuns began to be suspicious of me, even though I didn’t say anything. I kept all my troubles, all my suffering, close to my heart. And the nuns, well, they were holy, they didn’t allow a humble worker near them. They had their own community, a house where they ate well. They had their own special bedrooms, and even their clothes had to be washed with great care because they were nuns. I found this intolerable. Just more misery. I told myself: ‘What a terrible situation to be in! Not even suffering for something, but suffering just to save my life.’ I stayed there. None of the nuns talked to me. They ignored me, but gave me a lot of work to do. As well as washing the clothes, I had to clean the house, and I also had a lot of extra things to do on top of my work. And frankly, I’d lost a lot of my
energy with all the worries I’d had. I’d been ill in bed, I hadn’t eaten for many days, and I had an ulcer. Everything was piling up together: it was all on top of me. Then, I became friendly with one of the nuns’ maids. At least it was someone to listen to me. Of course, I didn’t tell her about my situation or any of my problems; I told it in a different way, talking about my experiences in the finca. I found this a relief, there were less things on top of me.

  I remember having to get up very early. At five o’clock I’d get washed ready to start work. At half past one or two in the afternoon I’d be called to eat, to eat all the scraps off the plates. It was a very hard and difficult time for me. At the same time, I was obliged to hold my tongue. There were some pupils in the house, but I was forbidden to speak to them. I don’t know if it was because the nuns suspected something. And there was a young man who came to the house a lot. They’d put cake aside for him. He was the only man allowed into the community, into the nuns’ dining room. The nuns liked him very much. Well, I thought he was a seminarist or a priest. But from the way he spoke, he was something different, you could tell he wasn’t Guatemalan. Well, I asked myself: ‘Who am I with here, then? What am I doing here? Who could this man be?’ Every morning when he came, they’d said: ‘Here’s your coffee, and your plate, and your cake.’ And they’d ask if his food was hot, and all that. So I plucked up courage to ask the cook who this young man was. But she told me that she couldn’t say because the nuns would scold her if they found out. Well, then I became more suspicious. I had to find out who he was: because of all the danger I was in and the risks I was running, I had to know who the people were where I was living. So I took the cook to one side and asked her: ‘Who is he?’ And she told me he was Nicaraguan. ‘He comes from Nicaragua and has no father, and he’s poor.’ That’s what she said. I began suspecting many things. I told myself that I had to ask, even if it was indiscreet. I began getting to know one of the nuns and asking her things, and, finally, I said: ‘Who’s that young man?’ This nun had begun to trust me, so she told me that he had worked for Somoza, that he was poor and had no-one to look after him, and that they were being kind to him by looking after him. The government wanted to give him a house, but, poor thing, it’s awful to live alone. It just couldn’t be. And that was why they had him there in their house. This was enough for me to imagine who he was. I found out afterwards that that young man worked for the Judicial, the secret police. That’s the most criminal group in Guatemala, the ones who kidnap and torture. And I was living with the enemy! I didn’t want to stay there one more night; I didn’t want to spend any more time in that place because I knew I’d be discovered. The fact that they’d begun to be suspicious, that they told me not to talk to the pupils, was a sign that they were thinking something. I was very, very worried. I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about what I was going to do.