From the very first lines of her autobiography, Rigoberta Menchú Tum claims to be speaking not only in her own voice, but also as a representative of her entire Maya-Quiché community. What emerges from Rigoberta’s narrative is the conviction that, as a member of an Indigenous group, she does not exist alone, but rather as part of a broader community that she’s responsible for representing and defending. In this community-oriented approach to life, one’s identity is defined in large part by one’s adherence to ancestral traditions. But for Rigoberta and other Maya-Quiché people, this involves keeping certain aspects of life secret, as this is the only way to preserve the community’s most sacred traditions and beliefs. Although certain external influences, such as aspects of the Catholic Church, can be combined with Indigenous customs, core elements of the Indian identity must be kept secret, in order to remain free from external manipulation. With this, the book suggests that mainstream society tends to be hostile toward Indigenous communities, and that Maya-Quiché people can only honor their ancestors and keep their culture alive if some of their traditions stay hidden from outsiders.
According to Maya-Quiché beliefs, an individual’s primary responsibility is not to oneself, but to one’s ancestors and to the entire community. When a child is born, it belongs not to his or her parents, but to its Indigenous community. A Maya-Quiché person’s goal in life is to replace the dead: in other words, to carry on their ancestors’ fight for survival and freedom. The centuries-old Indigenous struggle against Spanish colonizers is extended to the present: it takes the form of a struggle against powerful white and ladino (mixed-race) people who oppress the Indians. Part of this respect for one’s ancestral legacy lies in political action, in particular the defense of the community’s land from being taken by ladinos. In Rigoberta’s village, all decisions are made collectively: the villagers gather to discuss practical issues, such as how to distribute their land or how to defend themselves against aggressive landowners. This allows them to keep a unified front against the dangerous threat of land appropriation. In addition, part of this self-defense is also cultural: the villagers must protect their customs from being changed or manipulated by outside influences. This involves, for example, refusing to use modern equipment in the preparation of maize for consumption, in order to keep ancestral techniques alive. More broadly, it involves keeping one’s ancestral beliefs hidden from the rich and powerful, so that no one can attempt to modify or destroy these customs.
However, despite their suspicious attitude toward modern ladino institutions, the Maya-Quiché do welcome some external influences that conform to their belief system, such as certain aspects of the Catholic religion. Some elements of Catholicism are compatible with Indian beliefs. Given Indians’ emphasis on respecting one’s ancestors, Rigoberta and her community see the biblical forefathers as the equivalent of their own ancestors. This leads them to understand the Catholic religion not as a threatening, rival creed, but rather as a complement to their own customs—one that they can use as yet another means of self-expression. Traditions in Rigoberta’s community thus become a hybrid mix between Catholic and Indigenous, without sacrificing core Indian beliefs. In fact, Rigoberta’s first leadership role in her village is to work as a catechist, a teacher of the Catholic religion. She memorizes prayers and ceremonies—which she does not always fully understand, given that she is illiterate and does not yet speak Spanish—in order to share them with her community, so that these ceremonies might complement their own Indigenous traditions.
At the same time, as an institution, the Catholic Church can prove threatening when it sides with the Guatemalan elite, which leads Rigoberta’s community to keep some of their practices secret from Catholic priests. As Rigoberta argues, some elements of the Catholic doctrine promote submissiveness and impede collective organization against injustice. Although some priests and nuns do support the peasants in their fight against oppression, others criticize the community’s democratic, collective form of organization, comparing their elected representatives to “sorcerers.” These negative interpretations of democratic elections, central to Rigoberta’s community, leads the villagers to distrust the clergy. More broadly, Rigoberta realizes that the Catholic doctrine, as taught by many Guatemalan priests, seeks to silence resistance. Instead of encouraging the poor to fight against injustice, they teach them that they will find justice and closeness to God after death. Rigoberta concludes that such religious doctrines encourage passivity among the poor, convincing them to accept suffering as an indelible part of life instead of revolting against the dominant class.
In addition, Rigoberta realizes that the Church’s hierarchical structure can be harmful to her community. Indeed, members of the Church hierarchy frequently side with the military government in Guatemala, proving that the Church can be just as harmful as other violent institutions, like the army or the police. These considerations encourage Rigoberta’s community to adopt a code of secrecy toward people outside the community. Although Rigoberta agrees to share her life story through her autobiography, she still keeps some aspects of Indigenous life secret, such as her nahual, the animal double that she was assigned at birth. This focus on secrecy keeps the community safe from external manipulation and misinterpretation. It allows them to keep their ancestral traditions alive, without the risk of losing them to modern institutions. In sum, despite integrating elements of the Catholic religion in their Indigenous customs, Rigoberta’s community prioritizes cultural survival, keeping aspects of their traditions secret so that people outside the community cannot modify or destroy them.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Ancestors, Tradition, and Community ThemeTracker
Ancestors, Tradition, and Community Quotes in I, Rigoberta Menchú
My name is Rigoberta Menchú. I am twenty-three years old. This is my testimony. I didn’t learn it from a book and I didn’t learn it alone. I’d like to stress that it’s not only my life, it’s also the testimony of my people. It’s hard for me to remember everything that’s happened to me in my life since there have been many very bad times but, yes, moments of joy as well. The important thing is that what has happened to me has happened to many other people too: my story is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.
Our people have taken Catholicism as just another channel of expression, not our one and only belief. Our people do the same with other religions. The priests, monks and nuns haven’t gained the people’s confidence because so many of their things contradict our own customs. For instance, they say: ‘You have too much trust in your elected leaders.’ But the village elects them because they trust them, don’t they? The priests say: ‘The trouble is you follow those sorcerers,’ and speak badly of them. But for our people this is like speaking ill of their own fathers, and they lose faith in the priests.
Watching her made me feel useless and weak because I couldn’t do anything to help her except look after my brother. That’s when my consciousness was born. It’s true. My mother didn’t like the idea of me working, of earning my own money, but I did. I wanted to work, more than anything to help her, both economically and physically. The thing was that my mother was very brave and stood up to everything well, but there were times when one of my brothers or sisters was ill—if it wasn’t one of them it was another—and everything she earned went on medicine for them. This made me very sad as well.
They told me I would have many ambitions but I wouldn’t have the opportunity to realize them. They said my life wouldn’t change, it would go on the same—work, poverty, suffering. At the same time, my parents thanked me for the contribution I’d made through my work, for having earned for all of us. Then they told me a bit about being a woman; that I would soon have my period and that was when a woman could start having children. They said that would happen one day, and for that they asked me to become closer to my mother so I could ask her everything.
I was thinking of our humble way of life and their debauched life. I said, ‘How pathetic these people are who can’t even shit alone. We poor enjoy ourselves more than they do.’
They turned us out of our houses, and out of the village. The Garcías’ henchmen set to work with ferocity. They were Indians too, soldiers of the finca. First they went into the houses without permission and got all the people out. Then they went in and threw out all our things. I remember that my mother had her silver necklaces, precious keepsakes from my grandmother, but we never saw them again after that. They stole them all. They threw out our cooking utensils, our earthenware cooking pots. We don’t use those sort of…special utensils, we have our own earthenware pots. They hurled them into the air, and, oh God! they hit the ground and broke into pieces. All our plates, cups, pots. They threw them out and they all broke.
The whole community helped get my father out. The landowners thought that my father was the king, the village chief, and that if they defeated the chief, they could defeat the whole community. But they soon realized that it wasn’t like that. My father carried out the wishes of the community. He didn’t make the laws.
I must say one thing, and it’s not to denigrate them, because the priests have done a lot for us. It’s not to undervalue the good things they have taught us; but they also taught us to accept many things, to be passive, to be a dormant people. Their religion told us it was a sin to kill while we were being killed. They told us that God is up there and that God had a kingdom for the poor. This confused me because I’d been a catechist since I was a child and had had a lot of ideas put in my head. It prevents us from seeing the real truth of how our people live.
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.
I know that no-one can take my Christian faith away from me. Not the government, not fear, not weapons. And this is what I have to teach my people: that together we can build the people’s Church, a true Church. Not just a hierarchy, or a building, but a real change inside people. I chose this as my contribution to the people’s war. I am convinced that the people, the masses, are the only ones capable of transforming society.
That is my cause. As I’ve already said, it wasn’t born out of something good, it was born out of wretchedness and bitterness. It has been radicalized by the poverty in which my people live. It has been radicalized by the malnutrition which I, as an Indian, have seen and experienced. And by the exploitation and discrimination that I’ve felt in the flesh. […] Of course, I’d need a lot of time to tell you all about my people, because it’s not easy to understand just like that. And I think I’ve given some idea of that in my account. Nevertheless, I’m still keeping my Indian identity a secret. I’m still keeping secret what I think no-one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets.
