Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in I, Rigoberta Menchú, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Tolerance vs. Resistance
Class, Race, and Inequality
Ancestors, Tradition, and Community
Gender and Sexuality
Language, Education, and Power
Spirituality, Nature, and the Sacredness of Life
Summary
Analysis
Rigoberta explains Indians’ attitudes toward death. She notes that death is an event for which everyone prepares. Old people’s coffins are prepared in advance so that they become accustomed to it. In the final moments of someone’s life, the person dying tells the person closest to them about their life experiences and gives them advice about how to behave in their community. This allows them to fulfill their duty to the community, sharing their knowledge and wisdom. These recommendations are kept secret and passed on from generation to generation.
As is usual in Rigoberta’s Maya-Quiché community, the ceremonies surrounding death are centered on sharing information from generation to generation, in order to keep the community’s history alive. The goal is for one’s life to serve as an example to others: to retain age-old traditions and to provide avenues of reflection for the next generation, so that it may find innovative solutions to current problems.
Themes
The community pays for all expenses related to the death ceremony. This is one of the rare occasions in which the community eats meat and prepares a ceremony similar to the one anticipating the maize harvest. They light candles and cut flowers, another series of sacred, rare events. Everyone talks about the dead person, in both positive and negative terms, to honor the entirety of the individual’s life. The burial is an important event, as each person is buried with the objects that were dear to them and that they used regularly.
The fact that the community pays for everyone’s funeral serves a symbolic role: it emphasizes that each person’s life doesn’t solely belong to themselves or their immediate family, but instead to the entire community. In the same way that each person strives to respect the laws set by the community, the community honors its responsibility toward all of its members by taking care of their final moments.
Themes
Death by violence is viewed as particularly intolerable by the Indian community, which rejects all forms of violence. Given how insufferable the political-military situation had become, Rigoberta supported the work of the “compañeros in the mountains” (the guerrillas), who were ready to die to defend their community’s way of life. Anyone about to join a guerrilla performed the death ceremony, so that they would have passed on their secrets even if they died while fighting.
Rigoberta’s support of the guerillas does not imply that she has modified her beliefs concerning nonviolence. Rather, it reflects a situation in which violence is no longer interpreted as aggression—it’s a form of self-defense, meant to ensure the survival of the entire community. Instead of rigidly condemning all violence, Rigoberta understands that, in extreme contexts, violence is sometimes necessary to achieve justice and long-term peace.
Themes
