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
At the age of seven, Rigoberta got lost in the mountains during a trip with her father and siblings to collect mimbre (willow used to weave furniture and baskets). After their dog, in charge of leading them back home, abandoned them out of hunger, the group got lost and was forced to make its way back on their own. As the youngest and slowest member of the group, Rigoberta was accidentally left behind on the path. When she realized that she was on her own and that her family couldn’t hear her calls for help, she understood what it felt like to be an adult.
Rigoberta’s association of fear, solitude, and danger with adulthood shows that she considers adult life to marked by suffering rather than freedom or independence. This episode also shows how, despite the community’s emphasis on interdependence and cooperation with the natural world, nature can also prove threatening. Even the most faithful dog can revert to its basic, selfish needs, and people can get lost even amid the most beautiful scenery.
Themes
After seven excruciating hours, Rigoberta’s family finally found her and, although relieved, got mad at her for falling behind. After three days of collecting mimbre without eating anything, the group finally found their way back to the village. The other villagers, who knew that the group got lost, were overjoyed to see them. But Rigoberta was furious at having to live in such a precarious situation: her family had to leave a lot of mimbre behind because they could not carry it for so long, which lost them money, rendering the trip futile.
The family’s frustration with Rigoberta, and her own anger at this entire trip, reveals the emotional toll of their circumstances. Poverty does not allow them a moment of respite, and every mistake can cost them their entire wages—in the oppressive context of the finca, but also in the more comfortable setting of their beloved mountains. Rigoberta’s anger highlights her desire to rebel against these circumstances, instead of accepting such unfairness quietly.
Themes
Rigoberta (who describes herself as her father’s favorite) accompanied her father to the capital to help him sell the little mimbre they had left. Due to lack of familiarity with the capital, which kept them from knowing where to find potential buyers, Rigoberta and her father found themselves forced to sell the mimbre at a much lower price than expected. When they returned to the village, Rigoberta’s mother was furious to discover that, after such difficult experiences, the family still had barely enough money to get by.
This episode highlights the divide between the capital and the countryside. In the familiar setting of the mountains, Rigoberta and her family know how to take advantage of the natural environment—but in the city, they find themselves at a disadvantage. Given that Guatemala City is also the seat of political and economic power in the country, this episode serves a symbolic function: it reveals the disadvantages that poor Indians face in the ladino system, which is likely to trick them in a variety of ways.
Themes
Despite these financial worries, Rigoberta was fascinated when she saw the capital for the first time. On the way there, she and her father traveled in a truck with windows, so she was able to admire the countryside. In the capital, when she saw cars, she believed they were animals and was fascinated by the fact that they didn’t collide into one another but moved around in an ordered fashion.
Rigoberta’s surprise at seeing the countryside symbolizes the extent to which oppression keeps Indians in the dark: literally, by forcing them into closed lorries, and metaphorically, by keeping them from understanding the broader context of their lives. It is only once they understand how their personal experiences connect to a broader, national context of exploitation that they are able to resist such injustice.
Themes
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In Guatemala City, Rigoberta accompanied her father to the offices of the National Institute for Agrarian Transformation (INTA), in charge of land issues. Her father explained to her that Indians like them can be thrown in jail if they do not show up to their appointment on the right date and time. Her father behaved in a meek, humble manner with the officials in the building, which confirmed to Rigoberta that the city belonged to ladinos. She found the city disturbing and monstruous, although, later in her life, she became more familiar with this world.
Rigoberta’s father’s submissive behavior at the INTA shows that poor Indians are not fully integrated into the legal and political system: rather, they are forced to literally and metaphorically “bow” to its laws. Not doing so always involves a violent threat, such as imprisonment. The arbitrary nature of such rules—being thrown in jail for missing an appointment—reveals the arbitrariness of the unjust system that oppresses the Indians, as well as their lack of participation in the rules that determine their fate.
Themes
During their three days the capital, Rigoberta and her father stayed with a friend of her father’s on the outskirts of the city; the friend and his family barely had any food to eat. Rigoberta cried when she saw how eager the former villagers were to reconnect with nature and to return to the beautiful countryside they missed.
Rigoberta’s father’s friends’ desire to return to the mountains suggests that life in the city does not necessarily bring greater economic comfort. It also underlines the special relationship that Indigenous groups cultivate with nature.
Themes
