i rigoberta menchu sparknotes literature guide

Illiterate till adulthood, she narrates her account in interviews with an anthropologist. Murders and violence became commonplace as the authorities tried to silence them.Menchu has a powerful story to tell. Malnutrition, defrauding of the workers, and horrific accounts of peasants killed on the fincas by the indiscriminate use of pesticides, make for grim reading.As government-backed landowners muscled in, trying to seize the Indians' lands, Menchu and her family got caught up in the peasant struggle for rights in a corrupt regime. Menchu was an uneducated Indian girl, brought up between the family home, subsistence farming in the Altiplano, and the fincas (plantations), where the family would spend some months earning a little money in almost slave-like conditions.Menchu's story took place from the 1960s to 80s she tells of the very traditional Mayan lifestyle - its happiness and security but also the way Indians were dismissed by the Ladino (Spanish) population as almost a sub-species.

Read moreĪnd that's when my consciousness was born'By sally tarbox on 22 December 2017Format: Kindle EditionThe autobiography of a young Guatemalan peasant woman who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Readers will be inspired by the story of this fierce and determined woman. She speaks on the traditional beliefs of her community, her response to feminism, and her ideas about socialism. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala is a story of a woman who rose up and fought for what was right despite the enormous odds against her. Instead of being overwhelmed or crushed by her circumstances, Menchú chose to fight.įilled with righteous anger, she builds pit traps for soldiers, practices tactics to blind them, and organizes communities to revolt. As an expression of political revolt and religious commitment, she learned Spanish and turned to catechistic work. Her brother, father, and mother were murdered by the Guatemalan military. Indian woman and Guatemalan national leader Rigoberta Menchú is a courageous and passionate person whose sense of justice is her guiding compass.Įarly in life, Menchú was the victim of gross injustice and hardship.

This memoir chronicling the personal and political life of Rigoberta Menchú is a global bestseller.

I rigoberta menchu sparknotes literature guide