Letter To The Author Of I, Rigoberta Menchu :: essays research papers

Dear Rigoberta MenchuI have recently put down your autobiography I, Rigoberta Menchu, in which your portray as an oppressed yet ultimately triumphant victim of classism, racism, colonialism, and of course sexism. In your book you talk about your family, a Quiche Indian family, which was very poor. The vitiated plot of land that the family owned did not produce enough to feed everyone. Life on a plantation was harsh.People lived in crowded sheds with no percipient water or toilets. Your people, the native Indians in Guatemala had no rights of citizenship. You were restricted to people of Spanish descent and were, therefore, vulnerable to abuses by those in power."We are living in a troubled world, in a time of great uncertainty. Its a time to reflect about many things, especially about humankind as a whole, and the balance between collective and individual values". This is something you have mentioned and something that I completely agree with. Indigenous people are among the most victims of repellent incomprehensible repression and violation of the law in many parts of the world.The atrocities that you wrote about in your book are both compelling and heartbreaking. Though, I have not limited myself there, I have investigated further your story. I searched the Internet several times about your book, story, and life what I found amazed me. I read articles stating that your book I, Rigoberta Menchu is falsely chronicled. "A recounted in your autobiography, the story of Rigoberta Menchu is the stuff of classic Marxist myth. According to your book you came from a poor Mayan family, living on margins of a country from which had been dispossessed by Spanish conquistadors. Their descendents, known as Ladinos, try to drive the Menchus and other Indian peasants off claimed land that they had cultivated. As said in your book, you are illiterate and were kept from having an education by your peasant father, Vicente. He refuses to send you to school becaus e he needs to work in the fields, and because he is hangdog that the school will turn his daughter against him. From the articles I found on the Internet it has been proven that you went to a private institution, and that your family wasnt as poor as to the plosive speech sound of starvation.You make these linkages explicit "My personal experience is the reality of a whole people". It is a call to people of good will all everywhere the world to help the noble but powerless indigenous peoples of Guatemala and other Third World countries to gain their rightful inheritance.