I, Rigoberta Menchu, written by Menchu (1) begins with the statement that "My personal experience is the reality of a whole people." The people of whom she writes and of which she is a part are the peasants of Guatemala, a people who in her words have been subjected to generations of exploitation, oppression, discrimination, torture and murder (106). The portrait painted by Menchu in a text that belies her contention that she is barely educated and "never went to school" (1) is of a family devastated by the ladinos who control the economy and land of her native Guatemala, of a country in turmoil, and of the struggle for equality in which she and other peasants were long engaged (223). In this brief essay, the text and other materials will be used to answer the questions of what constraints impact upon development in countries in the "Global South" and what possible strategies are available for overcoming such obstacles to development.
Menchu's (80-83) narrative suggests that the peasants of the Global South (i.e., those poor, largely agrarian and dependent workers whose labor benefits the wealthy land-owning classes) are most constrained by several factors; these factors include a lack of education, exclusion from land ownership and participation in the political and economic life of their country, and all of the associated ills of poverty. Exacerbating or perpetuating the situation of the peasants is achieved by terror tactics; Menchu's (173) younger brother is tortured for sixteen days before being burned alive, and her father is killed when he and a group of rebels (or, alternatively, freedom fighters and civil rights protesters) occupy the Spanish Embassy.
What emerges from her narrative of the experiences of her family and friends is a strong determination "to learn many things" while making sacrifices and directing their own struggle for equality (Menchu, 223). The struggle in which she and others have engaged i...