Crossing the Borders

An Autobiography Continued

Rigoberta Menchu

Since winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, Rigoberta Menchu has traveled the world as a leading spokeswom an for the rights of indigenous people. A Quiche Indian from northwest Guatemala, she spoke only her native language until the age of twenty. She taught herself Spanish to pursue a political campaign against the terror being unleashed on her community by the Guatemalan army and rapacious landlords. Rigoberta's brother, mother and father were all murdered by the security forces. It is hardly surprising to discover in this extract from Crossing the Borders that Rigoberta's hardest journey was returning home after exile


The first time I went back to Guatemala was in 1988, on April 18th, at midday. We had decided to return home after a rather extravagant gesture by the Guatemalan Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva who, in the name of the government, invited us back. Of course the government had no wish to see us in Guatemala, quite the contrary, but it wanted to make a gesture to the international community demonstrating President Vinicio Cerezo's positive attitude to human rights. And they assumed we would be too frightened to accept the offer.

But we were determined to go back and so we did. We were frightened, we felt like a child who closes his eyes and doesn't know if he's going to be hit over the head, but is ready for it anyway. Immediately on arrival at the airport we were arrested. Four hundred police had been mobilized for our welcoming party. Their orders came direct from the President. The police also detained Rolando Castillo Montalvo and other companeros from the United Opposition Front who had traveled with us.

It was time for me to pay tribute to the disappeared, the kidnapped, those tortured in clandestine centres, those put on trial without a defence. It was time to remember the shadow of death which hangs over life in Guatemala. Our fear was all the greater because we knew that the government regarded us as subversives, communists, feminists and indigenists. In their eyes we were dangerous revolutionaries who by some accident of fate were still alive.

We were pushed into cars with darkened windows. Nowhere in the world have I seen so many cars with darkened glass as in Guatemala. In other places people show their faces when they are driving. But here the black windowed cars of the police and the paramilitary groups are commonplace. They are a constant reminder of the terror.

Rolando and I found ourselves in the back of the car surrounded by five armed men. Someone was trying to film us, pushing a camera through the open door. I felt angry when I saw the camera, I thought perhaps they were going to use the film as propaganda, showing how frightened we were. Then I remembered I had some chewing gum in my bag and took it out. Suddenly the guns of the security men were in the open, pointing directly at me, as if I had produced a powerful weapon. Mustering as much courage as I could I said firmly " Look I have no bosses to please. You're the ones who have to obey orders without knowing why. I intend to cooperate with you as far as I can". I smiled at them and they lowered their guns. Rolando and I started to tell each other jokes. Humor gives you courage when you are afraid.

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After a short time back in Guatemala I became increasingly aware of a further journey I had to undertake. Without returning to Laj Chimel, the village where I was born, I could not be settled and happy. Chimel is a very magic and profound place. The land is rich in so many varieties of trees, animals, birds, flowers, lianas and fungi. The forest is misty and mysterious, one of the few such forests left on earth, those they call "the lungs of the planet". The mountains around the village sheltered thousands of internal refugees and displaced people. I was fearful of the judiciales who roamed the area -- paid assassins who had a long and bloody record of violence against the poor people of the region. Many were landowners sons who had been trained to hate the villagers and had often carried out executions in broad daylight.

We arrived at ten o'clock and within a couple of hours we were sitting down to a meal which the local people prepared for us. It was not very long before we started reliving in conversation our memories of this precious place. This is the land where our memories reside. We wondered aloud why the local rivers had dried up, why the marshes had shrunk. Was it our recollection playing tricks with us? Was our land really bigger and more fertile in the old days? Or did the sense of community we had then, the strength of our friendships, make it see bigger than it was?

After we had eaten we set of from the house in search of a particular tree which we remembered well. It was cuxin, big and beautiful, which bore a lot of fruit. My sisters Luc and Anna told me that they had often dreamed of this tree. That surprised me because I had too had had dreams of sitting in its shade and eating its fruit. But when we went to find the cuxin there was no trace of it. I asked my brother Nicolas what had happened. He told me, with great sadness, that it had died and went on to explain why: Several of the inhabitants of the village had been shot against the trunk of the tree, others had been hung from its branches. After the executions, within a matter of weeks according to my brother , the tree withered and fell. It rotted way until there was no trace of it. The same thing happened to a tree near the house where I was born. The locals told us that a neighbor of ours, Don Geronimo Poli, a compadre of my father's, was hung from it along with another man.. Although it had been a sturdy tree, an evergreen oak, it too perished. Mountain people say that when trees are splattered with human blood they can no longer grow.

We found lots of bones in the surrounding fields and amongst the stones on the hillside. I asked Nicolas where they all came from. He told us that during the repression many of the assassin's victims were left unburied - people were scared that they would be ambushed if they went to reclaim the corpses. Bands of wild dogs roamed the area and fed on the bodies of those who had been murdered. They took the bones away to gnaw - that is why they all over the fields. The locals tell of a time when people were afraid even to pass the village because the dogs had become so used to feeding on human flesh. So many dreadful things happened here, and so few people are alive to tell the tale.

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There are eleven million Guatemalans. Of these, four to five million are adults. However, only one and a half million vote in elections. No one in government cares about this situation, in fact it suits them. Governing is less trouble if you do not have anyone to represent. Many indigenous people do not have the confidence to seek out their rights and exercise them. They are too accustomed to playing the role of the victim, too cowed to stand up for their culture. Language is an enormous obstacle to their integration into the society at large. Many Mayans will not speak in their native tongue if a Spanish-speaking person, a mestizo or ladino, is present. If their Spanish is poor they struggle with it nonetheless or remain silent. They have no expectations that a Ladino will try to understand Quiche. Yet our languages are very rich, they describe the universe of our culture. Almost all their signs and symbols are of objective rather than subjective things. The references in our language are to the mountains and the forests and the rivers. Exemplification is the key. The Spanish language is rich, too, but for us it is very abstract. For instance, in Quiche a single word has five or six meanings. When I use a word I have to explain the way in which I am using it. So listeners don't just understand what I am saying, they also learn why I am saying it. You don't find that in Spanish.