Rigoberta Menchu

After reading "I, Rigoberta Menchu," I wondered about Menchu's life now. So I did a goggle search on her name. Granted I wasn't looking for anything specific and thought I would probably only find information about this book. I was surprised to read she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. But what shocked me the most was the following story: (Now I grasp Amanda's question about how trustworthy I found Menchu)

"Fraudulent Storyteller Still Praised by Dinesh D’Souza" http://www.boundless.org/1999/departments/isms/a0000074.html

"I confess to having been mildly embarrassed when Rigoberta Menchu, Guatemalan political activist and author of I, Rigoberta Menchu, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. The Chronicle of Higher Education called the very day her prize was announced and reminded me that in my book Illiberal Education the year before, I had harshly criticized Menchu’s autobiography as a sadly typical example of the bogus multi-cultural agitprop that was displacing the Western classics on the reading lists for undergraduates at elite universities like Stanford.

“Now that Rigoberta has won the Nobel Prize,” the reporter asked, “what is your reaction?”

“All I can say,” I replied, “is that I am relieved she didn’t win for literature.”

For Rigoberta, the Nobel Prize proved to be a canonization in both senses of the term. This obscure Indian woman who published her 1983 autobiography when she was still in her mid ‘20s, suddenly received worldwide recognition as a leftist icon — a modern-day Saint Sebastian, pierced by the arrows of racist discrimination and colonial exploitation. She received several honorary doctorates and in 1992 was nominated as a United Nations goodwill ambassador and special representative of indigenous peoples. Her book, haled as a first-person account of Guatemalan bigotry and brutality against native Indians, spread from cutting-edge curricula like Stanford’s to become part of the canon of required and frequently assigned readings in high schools and universities around the globe.

Then, just last week, the New York Times revealed that much of I, Rigoberta Menchu is a fabrication. Times reporter Larry Rohter corroborated the research of an American anthropologist, David Stoll, whose interview with over a hundred people and archival research during the past decade led him to conclude that Rigoberta’s story “cannot be the eyewitness account it purports to be.”

For example, in one of the most moving scenes in the book, Rigoberta describes how she watched her brother Nicolas die of malnutrition. But the New York Times found Nicolas alive and well enough to be running a relatively prosperous homestead in a Guatemalan village. According to members of Rigoberta’s own family, as well as residents of her village, she also fabricated her account of how a second brother was burned alive by army troops as her parents were forced to watch..."

With this revelation how do you feel about the book? How much of the content do you believe? Do you feel victimized by Menchu's conscious deception? While her personal life stories have been proven false, do you think her stories reflect the general treatment of women and Indians in Guatemala?

Why did she feel the need to falsify her life story, surely there we true accounts she could have told. In her own words (I, Rigoberta Menchu, pg 1)"This is my testimony. I didn't learn it from a book and I didn't learn it alone. I'd like to stress that it's not only my life, it's also the testimony of my people."

Wordnet defines testimony as: "# S: (n) testimony (a solemn statement made under oath)
# S: (n) testimony (an assertion offering firsthand authentication of a fact) "according to his own testimony he can't do it"
# S: (n) testimony, testimonial (something that serves as evidence) "his effort was testimony to his devotion"

My initial thoughts about this book are now warped. While I believe the struggles the Indians endured, I would have rather had an accurate account. As the article concludes with the following: "Rigoberta Menchu has all along been a willing and crafty accomplice in this cultural transaction. With extraordinary canniness, she presented herself in her autobiography as the consummate victim, a quadruple victim of oppression. She is a person of color, and thus a victim of racism. She is a woman, and thus a victim of sexism. She is a Latin American, and thus a victim of European and North American colonialism. She is an Indian, and thus victimized by the Latino ruling class of Latin America." How do you feel about her canniness?