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
Finally, the compañeros succeeded in helping Rigoberta leave the country for Mexico. Abroad, Rigoberta met many people who gave her just as much affection as her family. At a religious conference on Latin America, she talked about the struggle in Guatemala and tried to hold back her grief when discussing her mother, reminding herself that many other courageous women had suffered and still continued to fight in Guatemala.
Rigoberta’s exile is a matter of necessity: she is now too famous in Guatemala to survive much longer. Although the political groups she belongs to accept death as a natural risk, they also seek to prevent it as best they can—hence, in this case, their decision to temporarily send Rigoberta into exile. Rigoberta's talk serves as a prelude to this book, which seeks to illustrate the plight of an entire people through Rigoberta’s personal story.
Themes
Rigoberta was joined in Mexico by some Guatemalan compañeros, including her little sister, and was overjoyed. At the age of eight, her sister secretly joined the guerrillas, because she felt so strongly about defending her people. Her family only discovered this after her sister disappeared. In Mexico, Rigoberta also met Europeans who offered to help her move to Europe. However, Rigoberta says that these people did not understand that her commitment is in Guatemala: her dedication to her community was so strong that she was willing to accept any risk in order to defend their cause.
Rigoberta’s little sister’s decision to join the guerillas shows that different people have different approaches to the same problem. Whereas Rigoberta believes that education is an important tool to reform society, her sister believes that, without armed self-defense, no progress will be made. As Rigoberta discovered when her village first organized, these approaches are, to a certain extent, complementary: without some degree of armed resistance, many of these communities would have been decimated by the army.
Themes
After the army’s repression calmed down, Rigoberta returned to Guatemala. She decided that the CUC already had enough leaders, so she joined the Vicente Menchú Revolutionary Christians. She considered this group in line with her early role as a catechist, trusting that her duty as a Christian was to fight against injustice and denounce the harmful actions of the Church hierarchy. To support this decision, she recalled the nuns’ indifference to the plight of other people, focused as they were on their own comfort.
Rigoberta’s criticism of some of the Catholic Church’s harmful political deeds transforms into action. Instead of simply criticizing others, she takes it upon herself to provide an alternative: a group in which Catholic devotion is not separate from a commitment to social progress and justice in the present. Instead of solving problems through conflict, she argues for creating positive alternatives to harmful behavior.
Themes
Rigoberta declares that her life belongs to this political cause, and that she is ready to give her life in the name of her compañeros. Convinced that only the masses are capable of changing society, she believes in the possibility of building a true Church for the people. Her commitment is the result of much suffering and anger, radicalized by the poverty and exploitation she has both witnessed and experienced. Rigoberta is committed to fighting for Indigenous communities’ customs and dignity, even if this includes traveling abroad and sharing their stories with other people. She concludes that many aspects of her community are still secret, and that she is devoted to keeping the core of this identity hidden, safe even from the investigations of anthropologists and intellectuals.
Rigoberta does not keep her personal story separate from the history and political struggle of her people. These aspects of life are interdependent, since the political actions of so many brave compañeros—including her own—derive from the personal experiences of grief and suffering. It is precisely because of this interconnection between the personal and the political that Rigoberta prefers to keep certain aspects of her life secret. Indeed, the elements of her identity that she considers most precious are also those that are most closely tied to the survival of her community’s cultural heritage—which has so often been threatened by external influences.
Themes
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