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/
