For Rigoberta’s Indigenous Maya-Quiché community, clothing does not simply serve the practical purpose of keeping warm. Rather, it has a symbolic function: honoring one’s ancestors, respecting tradition, and staying true to oneself. As Rigoberta’s mother emphasizes, Maya-Quiché women in particular are encouraged to be very careful about what they wear: a woman must always take care of her corte (multicolored material that Guatemalan women use as a skirt) and wear her apron at all times. Indeed, consistency in dress and appearance represents one’s integrity, as well as one’s adherence to ancestral traditions. Modifying or removing such clothing, on the other hand, signals one’s rejection of the community and might be associated with prostitution, which the community considers an offensive activity.
This emphasis on clothing as a sign of belonging in Indigenous groups contrasts with the way outside society treats Indians. During folklore festivals organized by rich ladinos, Indian “queens” are displayed in traditional clothing. For Rigoberta, this suggests that the upper classes in Guatemala only appreciate Indian costumes as a form of entertainment and novelty—they don’t actually care about the Indigenous traditions they represent. In this way, traditional clothing proves to be yet another instrument through which ladinos appropriate elements of Indigenous culture for their own purposes, without actually respecting Indians or giving them a more favorable position in Guatemalan society.
Maya-Quiché Clothing Quotes in I, Rigoberta Menchú
We slept in the same clothes we worked in. That’s why society rejects us. Me, I felt this rejection very personally, deep inside me. They say we Indians are dirty, but it’s our circumstances which force us to be like that. For example, if we have time, we go to the river every week, every Sunday, and wash our clothes. These clothes have to last us all week because we haven’t any other time for washing and we haven’t any soap either. That’s how it is. We sleep in our clothes, we get up next day, we tidy ourselves up a bit and off to work, just like that.
In the schools they often celebrate the day of Tecún Umán. Tecún Umán is the Quiché hero who is said to have fought the Spanish and then been killed by them. Well, there is a fiesta each year in the schools. They commemorate the day of Tecún Umán as the national hero of the Quichés. But we don’t celebrate it, primarily because our parents say that this hero is not dead. […] His birthday is commemorated as something which represented the struggle of those times. But for us the struggle still goes on today, and our suffering more than ever. We don’t want it said that all that happened in the past, but that it exists today, and so our parents don’t let us celebrate it. We know this is our reality even though the ladinos tell it as if it were history.
Well, the compañeras had to go to a cheap hotel after the presentation. This is what hurts Indians most. It means that, yes, they think our costumes are beautiful because it brings in money, but it’s as if the person wearing it doesn’t exist. Then they charge the people who go to the festival a lot for their tickets and get a lot of money from the presentation of the queens. Everyone has to pay to go in. Only people with money can go.
Maya-Quiché Clothing Symbol Timeline in I, Rigoberta Menchú
