The book I, Rigoberta Menchu details the nature of the problems facing Guatemala and the response of the people from the point of view of one peasant woman who has become a leader in the underground resistance in that country. An examination of her story provides much information on the nature of the political and social struggle in Guatemala and elsewhere in the Third World today and suggests certain relationships with theorists who have detailed their view of how change is brought about and of the way the struggle has developed to this point and is likely to develop in the future.
The story of Rigoberta Menchu is her own, arranged in this book by an anthropologist who has interviewed the woman and who shapes the material so as to categorize and arrange Rigoberta's story to be most meaningful to the reader. While the emphasis is on the everyday life of the peasants of Guatemala, the relationship between that life and the larger political struggles taking place across that nation and indeed across the borders of the countries of Latin America are made clear. The anthropologist-editor, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, provides a context for the book in her introduction to it. She notes, for instance, that Rigoberta is a Quiché Indian woman, a member of one of the largest of the 22 ethnic groups in Guatemala, and Burgos-Debray also notes the importance of Rigoberta's story:
Her life story is an account of contemporary history rather than of Guatemala itself. It is in that sense that it is exemplary: she speaks for all the Indians of the American continent. . . The voice of Rigoberta Menchu allows the defeated to speak.
The Indians constitute the majority in Guatemala, which differentiates their situation from that of most countries in latin America where the Indians are a minority without even the most elementary rights. Yet, a white minority has the power in Guatemala, and it seems likely that the fact that the majority I...