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
After 40 days, the child can accompany his or her family to work in the fincas. Rigoberta explains that Indians are taken to work in enclosed lorries, full of people and animals. The trip takes over 36 hours and, since people vomit and urinate on the way, the atmosphere in the lorry is terrible. By the time workers exit the lorry, they are all in shock, physically and emotionally stunned. Due to these trips in an enclosed vehicle, Rigoberta never saw the beautiful countryside of her homeland until she went to the capital with her father.
Rigoberta realizes that, in the Guatemalan economic and racial hierarchy, inequality is so severe that poor Indians are often treated like animals. Although taking a 36-hour lorry trip is considered part of ordinary life for many Indians, it is one of the many facets of the exploitative, dehumanizing finca system. The fact that the landowners subject their employees to these sorts of conditions shows that they don’t care about the workers’ well-being, only their labor.
Themes
On the fincas, recruiting caporales (agents) behave like the landowners that employ them. They speak Spanish and can thus function as intermediaries. Despite often coming from the same villages as the Indian works, the caporales treat the peasants with disgust and contempt, insulting the workers and constantly putting pressure on them to increase their productivity. Workers are fed tortillas and beans that are often rotten. Any additional ingredient served, such as an egg, is deducted from workers’ pay.
This description reveals that even members of an oppressed community can turn against their own members for personal gain: the caporales, for example, hope to climb the social and economic hierarchy by siding with the landowners. Given the importance that maize-based products such as tortillas play in Indigenous traditions and beliefs, the bad food they’re served is an additional insult, a form of disrespect to their culture and their basic human dignity.
Themes
The cantina (a bar where groceries are also sold) on the finca serves sweets and alcohol, which often leads workers to accumulate debt. Sometimes, when Rigoberta’s father (whom Rigoberta calls a sensitive man) was under stress, he would drink too much and end up owing all of his wages to the cantina. Rigoberta’s family then had to work even harder to pay back these debts. Because of this, Rigoberta’s mother, worried about incurring even more debt, would tell her children not to touch anything in the cantina, so that they wouldn’t have to pay for it.
This description highlights a difference in behavior between Rigoberta’s parents: while Rigoberta’s mother maintains strict discipline in the face of temptations such as the cantina, Rigoberta’s father uses drinking as an outlet for his negative emotions. Her father’s alcohol use emphasizes the need for many of these workers to numb their pain and fatigue in one way or another, in order to face their heavy load of suffering.
Themes
Overseers can kick workers out of the finca without paying them, as once happened to Rigoberta’s family. The overseers are usually ladinos but are also occasionally Indians from the Altiplano. These Indian behave in harmful ways toward their own community, stealing from them in order to accumulate wealth. The overseers’ cruelty and the intensity of the work on these farms made Rigoberta furious. She also noticed another injustice: during their trips back and forth, drivers would often stop to rest but would never let the people out of the lorry. As Rigoberta grew up, she found that her rage against these types of events lessened. She came to understand that her family had to accept these conditions out of necessity, and that this was a plight shared with the rest of the community.
This description once again highlights the fact that oppression is not necessarily divided perfectly along ethnic lines, since even members of Indian communities can turn against their own people for personal profit. Rigoberta’s private rage highlights how she’s internalized her parents’ teachings that suffering is an integral part of Indian life and must be met with dignity and endurance. However, Rigoberta later rejects such resignation.
Themes
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When Rigoberta was 12, the landowner, accompanied by 15 soldiers, visited the workers’ barracks and began talking to them about elections. Rigoberta’s mother understood a little Spanish, but none of the workers considered that the ladino government was their own. However, under pressure from the landowner and the soldiers, all workers were forced to cast a vote on a piece of paper—otherwise, they would be thrown out of the finca and not paid. Rigoberta and all the children were terrified, believing that the soldiers were there to kill their parents. At the same time, Rigoberta was shocked to notice how fat and tall the landowner and his family were.
This episode highlights the exploitative nature of the Guatemalan government. The fact that workers are coerced into voting for a candidate they do not even know suggests that this government is not democratic at all: it seeks to intimidate the poor and doesn’t about representing working-class people’s interests.
Themes
Later, after the elections, the landowner returned to congratulate the workers because the president they voted for won. The workers did not even know who they had voted for, and they laughed among themselves, aware that the president of the ladinos had never represented their interests.
The workers’ laughter highlights their awareness of this situation as much as their inability to do anything about it, given their absolute powerlessness when faced with the threat of violence and joblessness. Their ignorance of Spanish also plays a role in both highlighting and perpetuating their exclusion from politics. Since they don’t even share a language with those in power, they can’t make their voices heard.
Themes
