Life in the Altiplanos

 

This is a book unlike any I have read so far - simple, direct, brutal. 

It lends voice to many who were never heard before - the vanquished, the defeated, enslaved, and colonised; those who try to articulate themselves in the languages of their conquerors. The author won the Nobel Peace Prize of 1992, and being unlettered, dictated her life's story to Elizabeth Burgos who, in turn, edited and transcribed it as a first person account.

The book narrates a type of exploitation that has many facets, many layers. You can see within it glimpses of the caste system that was the hallmark of India's social structure for centuries,  the maoist movement which plagues parts of eastern-central India, all the way to the way we engage with our own domestic servants everyday.

Rigoberta Menchú is a Mayan from el Quiché province of Guatemala. When the Spanish conquered and colonised the Mayans a few centuries ago, hers is one of the numerous communities that were driven into the remote forests - the altiplanos. Descendants of the conquistadors now come in the form of white  or ladino landlords who try to push them off their land, further and further into the forests. 

Life is tough, food is scarce. So entire families end up as migrant labourers, working in the finca's along the coast, plucking coffee, harvesting sugarcane. Young girls are forced to work as servants in the cities, getting paid a pittance, being treated worse than dogs, and getting fired for refusing to 'initiate' their master's son's into sex... many end up as prostitutes. Those trying to seek justice are hounded, tortured and killed. Judges are bribed to ensure that protesters rot in jail. 

While reading Rigoberta's account you wonder how many millions more have suffered such horrors and privations. One of her brother's died of starvation, another was publicly tortured and burnt alive; her father was among the 38 who were burned to death during peasant uprising of 1980 and the consequent  burning of the Spanish embassy in Guatemala city. 

I saw in Rigoberta's stories the face of ShimaPolayan. A short, dark, muscular man who used to stay on my grandfather's land with his family, and labour in the paddy fields and estates. Perhaps his ancestors owned the area before it was forcibly taken over by newcomers who perhaps saw themselves as more civilised and entitled. Over the centuries, these people lost the confidence to fend for themselves and instead ended up at the bottom of the social pyramid, living in huts with their families and serving the 'upper castes' all their lives. 

ShimaPolayan lived in Southern Kerala and died maybe forty years ago, but during his lifetime he saw his children growing up in a more equitable world - going to school, learning the power of voting rights, and discovering that there was a better world beyond the endless toil in paddy fields.

Perhaps during his lifetime he realised that those whom he served were also slaves of a colonial power. That they may have spoken English with the correct accent, fought their master's bloody wars in lands far afield as Mesopotamia and the Flanders, and had conditioned themselves to believe that they were inferior to the white man.

The old pecking order of white-man, brown-man and black-man began crumbing after India became independent. Thanks to high literacy and democratic norms the ShimaPolayan's of the Kerala disappeared decades ago. 

On the opposite site of the world in South America the struggle still continues. How many more will it be before Rigoberta's people get back their land, and rebuild their communities?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigoberta_Mench%C3%BA 

* I, Rigoberta Menchu - Nobel laureate, 1992 - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1992/tum/facts/

Machuca

"Look at me!", screams 11-year-old Gonzalo. The soldier stops his pushing, shoving and shouting. Amidst the chaos of a military action on a city slum, he pauses as his eyes now notice that the kid he is just tied to detain happens to wear expensive sports shoes, jeans, a nice full shirt...he is also blonde and white. 

Gonzalo is allowed to run away even as his friends are being shot and detained.

Machuca (2004), a Chilean movie directed by Andrés Wood, living through the aftermath of General Pinochet's military coup in 1973. A dictatorship that lasted 17 years, leading to about 15,000 deaths and 2000 who just 'disappeared'.

In this film, I was struck by the role of Fr. McEnroe, of St. Patricks School. An elderly man who has the clarity of thought to foresee the dangers of a society in which there is a wide disparity in the distribution of wealth. In his predominantly White school, he persuades parents to allow poor, indigenous children to attend his school for free. The story revolves around a friendship that grows between a rich white kid, Gonzalo and Gonzalo, a poor, hardscrabble child from a local slum.

 The movie leaves you wondering what would have happened if people like Fr. McEnroe had indeed succeeded in their social integration projects, and if Chile had not suffered so much under dictators.

Paz on India

It is interesing to view India through the eyes of Octavio Paz. 

A few days back, a tweet got me searching for the book "In Light of India" at the Dayal Singh Public Library. I had not heard of the book so when went across and mentioned the name of the author to Pankaj, the ever helpful librarian, he looked as though I had reminded him of along forgotten childhood memory. And when he pulled out the book from a corner bookshelf, I understood why. The last time anybody had borrowed this book was in 1997 - more than 20 years ago!

The book itself is a monograph of memories from 1954, the time when Paz was posted to India as a young diplomat. As can be expected, he reflects on the prevailing attitudes and biases of the time: an admiration for Nehru and the "secular" Congress party, and wariness towards the "Hindu nationalist" BJP; a sense of bewilderment over the cacophony of colors, smells that greet a visitor, and the diverse set of people who called themselves citizens of a newly minted republic. One has come to expect such reactions from visiting foreigners but Paz turns out to be slightly different.

Unlike the typical Western view of India what you get here is a unique view of a South American poet and traveller. India's caste system, for instance, is a puzzle he tries to decipher - how did it manage to survive two millennia of foreign invasions and proseletizing? 

"Castes... are not only cooperatives, such as ours, but also solidarity groups, genuine fraternities...this fabric of religious, economic, political, territorial, linguistic, and familial relations gives the castes their extraordinary solidity... Hinduism does not convert individuals; it absorbs communities and tribes, their gods and rites."

Paz notes the strong influence of Mesoamerica in India's cuisine - the word "chili" is of Nahuatl origin for the plant originally came from the Americas...- Another Mexican import "Chico-zapote" is called Chiku is North India and Sapota in the South!

He dives deep into classical Indian poetry and is amazed to find in Vidyakara's anthology of poetry, erotic poems written by Dharmakirti, a Buddhist philosopher and logician who lived in the 7th century.

Yet, Octavio Paz has his failings. The clarity with which he looks at India clouds up when he compares the influence of 'Western Civilization' on Latin America. In his view, the Spanish conquistadors did a great thing by uniting the various tribes in South America, and weaning them away from cycles of war and blood-sacrifice, and introducing to them a new religion in which "sacrifice of a god who became man and spilled his blood to redeem the world". Not a word about the massacre of the Mayans, Zapotecs, Aztecs and Teotihuacanians, or the systematic destruction of a unique civilization, its unique art and architecture, or of the shiploads of gold and silver looted and taken away to enrich Europe! 

If the world is a kaliedoscope, the designs and patterns seen by Paz are unique, but his book leaves you feeling a bit shortchanged, of expecting a real South American perspective, and finding instead, merely another European dressed in a poncho.

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LINKS

- GoodReads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11708.In_Light_of_India