Modern Language Association

Authoring Ethnicized Subjects: Rigoberta Menchu and the Performative Production of the Subaltern Self Author(s): Arturo Arias Source: PMLA, Vol. 116, No. 1, Special Topic: Globalizing Literary Studies (Jan., 2001), pp. 7588 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463643 Accessed: 19/06/2009 23:11
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I6.I

Authoring Ethnicized
Menchu of the and Subaltern
ARIAS

Subjects:

Rigoberta

the

Performative Production Self

ARTURO

THE

IS CERTAINLY NOTMINE: 'CAN THESUBQUESTION

ARIAS is directorof LatinAmerARTURO ican studies at the University of Redlands. Cowriter of the screenplay for the film El Norte (1984), he is author of five novels in Spanish-Afterthe Bombs (1979; Eng.trans.,Curbstone, 1990), Itzam Na (1981), Jaguaren llamas (1989), Los caminos de Paxil (1991), and Cascabel (1998)-and winner of the Casa de las Americas Award and the Anna Seghers Scholarshipfor two of them. In 1998 he publishedtwo books of literary Laidentidad de la palabra(The criticism, Identity of the Word"),on twentiethcentury Guatemalanfiction,and Gestos ceremoniales ("Ceremonial Gestures"), on contemporaryCentral Americanfiction. He has finished a new novel in Spanish,Sopa de caracol,and is editing the critical editionof MiguelAngelAsturias'sMulata de tal and a collection titled The Rigoberta MenchuControversy.

altern speak?" However, the case of Rigoberta Menchu and the recent attacks on the factuality of her mediated discourse in the testimonial I, Rigoberta Menchu force us to reconsider it. GayatriSpivak's seminal questionpresupposesthat a subalternsubjectwhose voice has been recorded in print is no longer a subalternsubject because the "speakingsubject"must enunciatethe languageof reasonto be heardby Westerninterlocutors.That is, "authentic" discourse is a suppressedor hidden "truth" because of the Westerner'sinability to comprehendit in its own terms;thus, subalternsubjectsare forced to use the discourse of the colonizer to express their subjectivity.This essay attemptsto extract from the debate surrounding Menchu'stext a meaningfulcontribution to currentthinking about these issues regardingthe status that the ethnicized subject and testimonio as subalterntextuality have in academic circles in the United States. By "ethnicizedsubjects"I mean individuals who identify themselves with a group or community that considers itself, and is regardedby others, as culturally distinct from other, more powerfulgroupsinhabitingthe same nationalspace. The contradictions that derive from the subaltern's positionality have created the conundrumin which Menchuiis trapped. In a recent book, RigobertaMenchuand the Storyof All Poor Guatemalans(1998), David Stoll finds her, on the one hand, not Western enough when it comes to the rigor of her logic and her use of facts. He thus accuses her of invention, of fibbing. On the other hand, he finds her too Westernin her politics, and he thereforeclaims that her ideas are not representative of what he judges to be authentic"native" Mayanthought. Centralto this contradictionis the natureof discourse.Authenticity and truth-if they exist at all-resist comprehension, expression, and
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definition.What is more, even the most strategically plannedelocution may elude the speaker's intentionsbecause of the polysemy of language. When someone tries to reduce the multiple meanings of a discourse and ignores the slippages inherentin translation(in this case, from K'iche to Spanish to English), the polemics generatedseem inevitable. The testimonyof RigobertaMenchui, a Mayan woman from Guatemala,lwas an important instrumentin a discursive war tied to cold war politics.2 The debate has centered on whether Menchu told the truth in her book. This issue opens up the problematicsof truth,the natureof testimonio as a genre, and the relation between political solidarity and subalternnarrative.We can only expect an absolute truthif we believe in perfectly verifiabletruthsor if we still see or insist on seeing "authentic" indigenous subjects as noble savages whose alleged primitiveness puts them closer to some imaginednaturaltruth. According to these criteria,indigenous persons who use discourse strategically either lose authenticity or are being manipulatedby external forces. Therefore,they must be seen de facto as pawns and mimics of Westerncolonizers or of the colonizers' revolutionary opponents. This is the argumentthatDavid Stoll makes in his book, which sparkedthe controversysurroundingthe 1992 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. In constructingan argumentaboutMenchu'sinauthenticity, Stoll finds discrepancies between her account and interviews he conducts with other Mayas. He claims that Menchu's inaccuracies suggest that she is a spokespersonnot for the Maya people but ratherfor the radical,revolutionaryleft in the form of the GuerrillaArmy of the Poor (EGP), for whose ends she distorted Mayan truth.Thus, althoughStoll begins with a seemingly neutral and objective concern-"A recurring question is, Whom to believe? How do we weigh the reliability of Rigoberta's account against the versions I collected and docuan mentarysources?"-he quickly demonstrates ideological bias: "I hope to convince readers

that the EGP never developed the strong social base in Uspantanthat Rigoberta would have us believe" (xii-iii). This sentence rhetorically links Menchuto the EGP,implying that she was a propagandistfor the organization.Ironically, this maneuveralso reveals the strategicmanipulation of informationin Stoll's own account. It may even cause us to question whether we can define fact in the Guatemalan context, where disseminatinginformationoften leads to torture and death. This also raises a question about the role of truthin testimonio.

The Function of Testimonio Theoretical attention to testimonio grew at the end of the 1980s. Georg Gugelberger refers to the genre as a "desirecalled ThirdWorldliterature"(1), addingthattestimoniobecame the center of polemics in canon debates.John Beverley claims that what is of interestin a testimonialis its "truth effect."Testimonydoes not produceor reflect exact historical data, he explains; rather, it questionsthe privilegingof literature as an institution,at the same time that it becomes a new literarygenre of the subalternsector of society. Thus, testimoniodoes not produceor reproduce reality, but-like that which, in the Lacanian sense, resists absolute symbolization-it produces a sensationof experiencingreality (82). Testimonio was nevermeantto be autobiographyor a sworntestimonyin thejuridicalsense; rather,it is a collective, communalaccount of a person'slife. This is what Menchuimplies when she says, "Thisis my testimony.I didn't learn it from a book and I didn't learnit alone. [...] My personalexperienceis the realityof a whole people" (Burgos-Debray 1). The testimonio of the 1980s also implied the logic of collective political action.A testimoniowas assumedto exercise a formativeinfluence and thus play a pedagogical role analogous to that of slave narrativesin the United States before and during the Civil War.This role was necessarily contingent,since it exceeded the symbolic dimensionsfromwhich

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it originated, markedby violence and conflict. Inasmuchas the genrewas developedas a means of empowering subaltern subjects and hearing their voices, one can hardly be surprisedthat it was a tool for political agency. The recent debate surroundingthe truthfulness of Menchu's testimony,Elzbieta Sklodowska explains, is oddly out of place in an era that has redirected its critical energy from investigating the truthto the study "of inventing, makAfter all, she ing, creating,or [. . .] constructing." claims, recentstudiesacrossa broadrangeof disciplines in the humanitiesand social sciences focus on the constructedor inventednatureof such notions as ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, and gender.If these concepts fit the category of createdobjects,it is logical to assumethatMenchu's testimonialnarrative, too, should be approached with "a self-conscious acknowledgmentof [its] artifactual nature" ("Poetics"). Thoughno one has deniedthatMenchu'stext is an appealfor international supportto stop the genocide of herpeople, few criticshavepaidattention to the way in which testimonio is understoodby its readingpublics. The realissue in the presentdebaterevolvesmore aroundthese problematics thanaroundthe notion of testimonioas a genre or the potentialinability of Westerners to graspa subaltern testimonio.By virtueof its hybridity,testimoniohas invited differentandconflictingreadingsfrom literarycritoralhistorians, ics, anthropologists, philosophers, and political scientists. This interdisciplinarity makesit clearthatthe interpretation of testimonio is contingenton the reader'sideological purpose anddisciplinaryfocus. As Sklodowskaindicates, the lesson to be drawnfromthe current whirlwind of declarations aboutMenchi's book may be that it is an open text thatcan be readaccordingto differentparameters. Rigoberta Menchu's Testimonio as Political Discourse on Ethnicity A significantpercentageof indigenousMayaswhich included the Menchu family and their

community-fought in the late 1970s against the oppressive rightist military dictatorship in Guatemalaas allies of the left, albeit with their own agenda for ethnic empowerment and cultural signification. It is estimated that approximately 150,000 Mayas out of a population of five million were massacred or were "disappeared"during the peak of the conflict (197884), and the Guatemalanarmy admits razing at least 450 villages (Proyecto Interdiocesano de Recuperaci6n de la Memoria). The international invisibility of this massacre before the publication of Menchu's testimonio prevented the opposition to the government from garnering public support abroad. ArturoTaracena, a noted Guatemalan scholar and the representative of the Guatemalan Opposition in Exile in France during the early 1980s, helped organize the visit that first brought Menchu to that country in an effort to raise awareness of the oppressionin Guatemala.After Menchii arrived in Paris,Taracenaconceived the idea of recording her life story as a way of furtheringsolidarity work on the European continent. It was he who introduced Menchu to Elisabeth BurgosDebray and arrangedfor a week of interviews. These interviews resulted in the book I, Rigoberta Menchu. In her testimonio, Menchu speaks of her people's pain and their modes of resistance to Ladino oppression. She mixes this with their struggle for land; Mayan rituals of birth, marriage, and death;the exploitativenatureof plantation work; the death of two of her siblings from malnutritionand pesticides; her migration to the city; her experience of racism while she worked as a maid; the radicalization of many Mayas as a result of experiencessimilarto hers; the creation of self-defense organizations;their destruction by the army; the subsequent death by tortureof most of their members, including Menchu'sparentsand brothers;and her survival throughflight from the country. In I, RigobertaMenchut, one must acknowledge the force of the writing, its metaphoricity,

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and its rhetorical devices as a "productivematrix"(Bhabha 23) that circumscribes the social engagementof the Mayansubjectandmakesthis struggleavailableto othersas an objectiveof and for action.Menchi's visibility at the end of 1981 did not extendbeyond circles close to the Guatemalan opposition and to its solidarity groups in of the MaMexico. They saw her as the daughter who was a activist martyrof the yan grassroots burningof the Spanishembassyandwhose name had become emblematic of that misadventure.3 She was a memberof the Committeefor Peasant Unity and workedon its behalf in Mexico City.4 However,the natureof exile implied that political work done outside the country had to focus on international solidarity or diplomacy. This was particularlytrue of disempowered peoples who continuedto be framedby a cold war mentality according to which any "leftism" representeda potentialthreatto the United States. Menchu's backgroundis Mayan and Catholic, and her text is therefore interstitial. She often talks about traditionalMayan religion to underlineher ethnic roots, while also painting a social scene of communalist unity among the Mayas along Catholic lines, as Duncan Earle points out. She does not nuance the complexity of Mayan society in her text, limiting herself to using the Mayas' traditionsand experiences of racism and oppression to justify their claim to human-rightsprotection. Even in this singular displacement, we can see the absence of a simplistic binarismin her enunciations.Let us look at an example: I remember that,whenwe grewup ourparents talkedto us abouthavingchildren.That'sthe time parentsdedicatethemselvesto the child. In my case, becauseI was a girl, my parents toldme: "You're a youngwomananda woman has to be a mother." TheysaidI was beginning my life as a womanand I would wantmany have.Theytriedto tell me thingsthatI couldn't that, whatevermy ambitions,I'd no way of achievingthem. That'show life is. They exwhatlife is like amongourpeoplefor a plained

young person,and then they said I shouldn't wait too long beforegettingmarried. I had to not thinkfor myself, learnto be independent, rely on my parents,and learn many things whichwouldbe useful to me in my life. They with gaveme the freedomto do whatI wanted I obeyed my life as long as, firstandforemost, thelawsof ourancestors. (Burgos-Debray 59) In this paragraph we can immediatelydiscern at least four contradictoryattitudes:(1) Menchu's seeming obligation as a young woman to have children;(2) her parents'fatalismabouta young Mayan woman's inability to fulfill her dreams; (3) Menchu's personal need, the two previous attitudesnotwithstanding, to be independentand learn to exercise her freedom; and (4) a paradoxical subordination of all the above to the laws of Mayanancestors.These concernsrepresent the symbolic array of concepts by which this group attempts to define itself through its cultureand to differentiateitself from other,primarily Western groups. We have here, not the representation of a revolutionary dogma, but what Alberto Moreiras has defined as largely unconscious "workon a culture"to create ethnic bordersthroughdifference(225). The style and content of the entirenarrative reinforce the hybridity of Menchu's discourse. The interpellationof competing discourses undermines the rigidity of Western ideologies, weaving a new rhetoricof the self, buildinga site for the performance of sly transgressive practices thatpush away from tutelarypowers (such as the Guatemalan left).What non-Mayan revolutionary Marxistrevolutionary would say the following? It wasabout thattimethat[mymother] saidshe was going to learnfroma chimdn. That'swhat we call a manwho tells the Indians'fortunes. He's like a doctor for the Indians,or like a said:"I'mgoingto be a chipriest.My mother mdnandI'll learnwithone of thesemen." And she wentto the chimdn andhe taught hermany connected withanthingsoutof his imagination withwater, withthesun.My imals,withplants, mama learned a greatdeal,butwhoknows,per-

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hapsthatwasn'tto be herrolein life. Nevertheherless, it helpedhera lot to learnanddedicate self to otherthings. lovedthenatural My mother worldverymuch. 213) (Burgos-Debray The focus here on Menchu's motherin a Mayan religious context and worldview starkly contrastswith the residualracism and masculinism of the Western-looking whose antirevolutionary, and stance often capitalistic anti-imperialistic disregardedethnicized subalterns and misconceived theirpremodern past. Even so, one cannot read Menchu's text as feminist in the Western sense, even when it seems to be so, as in the following quotation: My motherused to say thatthroughher life, throughher living testimony,she triedto tell womenthattheytoo hadto participate, so that whenthe repression comes andwithit a lot of suffering, it's not only the men who suffer. Women must in theirownway. join thestruggle mother's words told them thatany evoluMy tion,anychange,in whichwomenhadnotparticipated, would not be a change, and there wouldbe no victory. Shewasas clearabout this as if shewerea woman withall sortsof theories anda lot of practice.My motherspokealmost no Spanish,but she spoke two languagesQuiche, and a bit of Kekchi. She took all that courageand all thatknowledgeshe had, and wentto organise herpeople. (196) Menchi's mother does not construct a feminist theoretical discourse; rather,her life itself is a "living testimony"in Quiche (or K'iche, as currently spelled) and Kekchi (K'ekchi). What is more, the activism she proposes can only be understood in the context of Mayan culturalpractices, since women "join the struggle in their own way." Menchu may display an ingenuous certitudeabout her mother's qualities, but there is no simplistic leftist or feminist rhetoric. One can also discern in Menchi's text a debt to liberation theology, a branchof the Roman CatholicChurchthatdefendedthe poor and pushed for fundamental social change. Men-

chi's discourse borrows a great deal from the Scriptures,as is explainedby GeorgeLovell and ChristopherLutz and by Victor Montejo. Menchu comments: The Bible taughtme [to struggleforjustice].I triedto explainthis to a Marxistcompanera, who askedme how couldI pretend to fightfor revolutionbeing a Christian.I told her the whole truthis not foundin the Bible, but neitheris the wholetruth in Marxism, andthatshe hadto acceptthat[...] as Christians, we must also defend our faith within the revolution(246) ary process. The relation between Catholicism and Mayan culture is a complicated one. It is well known, for example, that the conqueredMayan people, despite their apparentconversion to Christianity, continued to worship their gods in the figures of Christand Catholic saints. A visit to the churchof Chichicastenango easily confirmsthat the Mayas' practice of Catholicism became a form of mimicrythat only masked their cultural autonomy in a new, hybrid religious context. From a purely anthropological perspective, it should be more interesting to speculate about the forms of mimicry in Menchu's text than to worryabouther supposedMarxism,which itself would be no more than a mimicry of the simulacrum of the Soviet ghost that many United States policy makers saw in the CentralAmerican guerrillamovements. Menchu understoodherself to be a Mayan subject. She did not regard herself as just another member of the Guatemalan opposition, and she was perceived as a representative of the members of the Mayan peoples by non-Mayan opposition as well.5 However unsystematic her approachwas, she visualized a double task: to explain Mayan culture and subjectivity to the outside world and to arguefor its rightful place in the Guatemalanopposition. These undertakings forced her into an inevitable duality. She had to embrace elements of Westerndiscourse to make herself heard by her target audiences,

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nos, themselvesnot homogeneouseither.Mayan identity cannot, as a result, be more than a symbolic expression to determine agency. Catholicism, Protestantism,and Mayan religion might divide Mayan communities, but Mayas kept silent about their disagreements for the sake of empowerment as an ethnic group and because they saw a common denominatorin the 1980s massacres,which recalledcrimes fromthe Spanish Conquest.Even for ordinaryMayas, this link was no abstraction. The relation between the events of the sixteenth century and those of the 1980s is clear:they areall still an open, suppurating wound. we should [Wemaywell ask]whether notknow Given the symbolic natureof identity,howthemfor ethicalreasons,becauseour knowlever, and the fact that Mayas are still searching edge wouldleadto poweroverhercommunity. for communitarian origins and a sense of collec[. .. But] even if her own explicit rationaleis tive identity-a trait among groups whose surthe nonempirical, ethical rationale[ . .] she vival is threatened-combined with the absence reason.It is the degreeof our suggestsanother of an established protocol to frame what it ourcultural difference thatwould foreignness, means to be Mayan,we have to read testimonios makehersecretsincomprehensible to the outsuch as Menchu's as open-ended texts whose sider.Wecouldneverknowthemas she does, becausewe wouldinevitablyforceher secrets function is exploratory and tentative: they are intoourframework. often a first attemptto frame a rhetoricof being (34) and to name agency for a particular subaltern Menchu might be an organic intellectual in group. As a result, they are allegorical by nathe Gramsciansense and might have more eduture, or, as Moreirassays, a testimonio is an alcation than she admitted publicly, but she is legory of an allegory (204). Their argumentis no intellectual in the Western academic sense. framed in an ethical insistence on the right of Therefore,for her, Mayan identity is a fluid nosubalternsto be themselves and thus implicitly tion. It has to do with a certainoral traditionindefends culturalpluralityor hybridity.Ethnicity heritedfromher grandparents andparents,which is a language-and power-driven self-awareness. The construction of ethnicity is an activity corresponds more to the region in which she grew up andto the singulareconomic position of whose effects are never firmly fixed; it is never her family thanto a trulypan-Mayan identity. present. Always re-presented, it is produced in The concept of identitymore often thannot a slippage. It is constantly and simultaneously signifies a binary opposition between a self and under erasure and reiterated, an irreducible dian other as part of a rhetorical continuum. As lemma of representation charged with ironic Moreiraspoints out, this perceptiontends to unovertones,hyperbole,brokensyntax.Ethnicityis derline difference (205). In Guatemala Mayas constructedperformativelyand functions metowere considered different from non-Mayasis a functionof nymically.Ethnicperformativity that is, Ladinos. This view presupposed a hothe reiterativepractice of regulatorydiscursive mogeneity of Mayan identity that did not exist. regimes that control the formation of personal All Mayas, heterogeneous among themselves, andcollective identity.Therearelines of flightin had in common their difference vis-a-vis Ladiethnicity,because it is an assemblageof a multi-

but she also had to guarantee the preservation and continuityof her Mayanidentity,which was the validating element of her discourse. This is why she performsher identity as she does, mediating Mayan "secrets" and Western parameters of understanding,and it is why she says at the end, "Nevertheless,I'm still keeping my Indian identity a secret. I'm still keeping secret what I think no one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets" (247). Doris Sommer has speculated on the meaningof the trope "secrets"here:

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plicity of perceptions without a center or verifiable dataotherthan its own reiterationas a truth effect. Its repetition-a sortof never-ending dress and sustains the rehearsal-produces power of the trutheffect and of the discursive regime that constructed the effect andthatoperatesin the productionof racializedandethnicizedbodies. Testimonioas a written means to begin exploring the contours of a collective identity is a concrete historical genre that evolved in Latin Americaduringthe"guerrillerista" period(196090), just as it had,in similarfashion,in otherparts of the worldduringspecifichistoricalevents,such as the Spanishcivil war,the Algerian war,or the Palestinianstruggle for a homeland. Homi Bhabha, among others, finds related expressions in SoutheastAsia, and,of course, similartexts have in Africaduringthatcontinent'snumerappeared ous strugglesfor liberation fromWesternpowers. These imperfect,reaccented discoursescarry in them a buddingquestioningof Westernleftist thinking by virtue of their bilingual, ethnicized nature,which challenges myths of interpretative transparencyand mastery.In this context, Menchi's writingis not only the productof temporal conditions in particular locations but also a transgressive way of replacing, if not relacing, revolutionarydiscourse from a crypto-feminist, subaltern naivebeliefs perspective.It undermines in the alleged simplicity of subaltern subjects, yet at the same time it impairs the doctrines expressed by traditionalMarxist revolutionary rhetoric. For these reasons, although a privileged place from which to subvert Guatemalan Ladino dominantdiscourse, Menchu's text contains slippages that mark issues the official left has nevercaredto confront. However,it is inevitablethatthese discursive elements in her zigzagging narrative logic would create a certain degree of cultural misunderleft chooses to standing.Because the Guatemalan emphasize and identify with the passages that supportits ideological tenets, it does not realize that it is criticized in the text. In contrast, nonGuatemalan observers are drawn to other pas-

sages because theirreadingsare framedby their singularways of perceivingpoliticalissues. The misunderstandingsignaled above has led some to wonderhow Menchu'svoice was mediatedby ElisabethBurgos-Debray's compilation of hertestimony. In an interviewwithDavidStoll, Burgos-Debray claims that she considerably editedthe transcription of Menchu'soralaccount: HerSpanish wasverybasic.Shetranslated from herownlanguage thisis whatcost [inherhead]; me a lot. Yes,I corrected verbtensesandnoun genders,as otherwiseit wouldnot havemade herownpowsense,butalwaystryingto retain erfulformof expression. narrative Rigoberta's wasanything butchronological. It hadto be put in order.[.. .] I hadto reorder a lot to give the text a thread,to give it the sense of a life, to makeit a story, so thatit couldreach thegeneral public,whichI did via a cardfile, thencutting andpasting. It washard to giveit a senseof conin Rigoberta's ownwords. tinuity
(Stoll, RigobertaMenchut 185)

Stoll uses this quotationto arguethat the words attributedto Menchu could not possibly have been hers. What is implicit in his observation, however inadvertently,is that to make the text intelligible to "the general public," Burgosthe "subaltern" Debrayattemptedto subordinate defines (as it), turning Mayancomponent Spivak the text into a hybridWestern-Mayan document with clear Western legibility. It is as such that Menchu's story is now coming under attack.6 However, Stoll contradicts his own argument when he states in subsequentinterviews that he has now heard the bulk of the tapes in BurgosDebray's possession and that they pretty much flow in the same format as the book ("David Stoll"; "Stoll: I Don't Seek"). Therefore, we must ask, did Burgos-Debraychange the manuscriptand disguise Menchi's Mayanvoice, or is the book a relatively faithful translationof the recording?In the absence of a full disclosure of the original tapes by Burgos-Debray,there is no evidence, and thereforeno reasonto believe, that

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Menchuand the Performative Production of the Subaltern Self Rigoberta the transcripts diverge from the taped interviews. Why, then, does David Stoll contradict himself. Whatis at stakehere? The Anthropologist, the Subaltern Subject, and Truth Demanding representational accuracy in the positivist sense, modern (as opposed to postmodern) normative conditions have framed, formed, commodified, reified, and reiterated that which has come to be called ethnicity. The dominant power's regime of truth has always recognized the intellectual who interprets the subalternsubject in the name of Westernaccuracy. It has been less interested in deconstructing particularstrategies deployed by subaltern subjects in metropolitan or foreign spaces or even in their attemptsto frame historicaldata in non-Western parameters. It is for this reason that Menchu's discourse became stereotyped:it turnedinto that otherness which is the object at once of desire and of derision and which Bhabha discusses. Menchu opened up the indigenous or Native American fantasy that operates as the stereotypeof phobiaand of fetish for neoconservativeculturalinclinations. David Stoll's book evidences the problematics of a positivist assessment of testimonio in its shifts between a supposedscientific objectivity and a tendency to take sides in the complicated matterof veracity in Menchi's discourse. In his text, there is no treatmentof textual absences, just a preoccupation with closed monads, elements irredeemablyseparatedfrom the trace of the signifier that names them. His only concern seems to be a verifiabletruth:the "tangential relationship [of her testimonyl to her life, family and village" (189). For this reason, Stoll ridicules the notion of "collective memory" (190) and criticizes testimonio in general for not being conducive to finding a certified truth.He sees in the genre "a significantamount of reinvention" (192) and a lack of linearclarity. Indeed, as I explained above, testimonio is not

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the equivalent of a sworn testimony in which every fact has been verifiedand can be classified as evidence of a crime.7 Stoll claims to maintaina pureview of Menwhile recognizing the myths that chi's narrative may lead the scientistandthe publicin generalto misinterpretit. For example, he views the symas symptopathyfor Menchuoutside Guatemala maticof "romancing the revolution" (277):
I, Rigoberta Menchuiis one of many works to

win a mass audienceby appealing to Western about nativepeople.[...] Sinceinexpectations andpeasants tendto be viewedas rustic dfgenas innocents,they mayhaveto charmtheiraudiencejust to get a hearing. [...] Anthropologists arenot completelyinnocentin this regard: alour thoughwe refutethe crudest expectations, studies of culture andtradition haveencouraged newformsof paternalism [...]. (232) Those romanticswho idealize the claims of "native" peoples seem to be Stoll's others here, although he suggests that anthropologists have operatedunderthe same myths. Westernanthropologists, he also admits, grant their subjects a that special truthclaim even while interpellating truth according to Western symbolic systems. Stoll says he is innocent, however, uninfluenced by mythologies regardingthe indigenous speaker.Yet his absolutedeclarationsin phrases like "Thatalone" (83) and his use of words like and "win"reveal that his "innocent,""hearing," text has more in common with the protocol of the United States judicial system than with a self-aware anthropological project that values differentdiscursiveand culturalsystems. In fact, Stoll's book reveals a disdain of cultural difference-particularly in relation to Mayan concepts of time, history, and community-that is surprising in the work of an anthropologist. It also reflects a poor understanding of the social and cultural realities of the Ladino Western elite in Guatemala, where the government, the newspapers, and the judicial system work more like an obscure (and ob-

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negates the possibility that Menchu's text was a strategic discourse in defense, not of leftist guerrillas per se, but of a certain sector of the Mayan people, perceived by Menchu as victims of a genocidalpolicy of the Guatemalan government. Menchu is certainly not making up her story, nor does Stoll ever say she is. If Menchu crafted a strategicdiscourse to preventthe conCuban of Rigoberta andElisabeth's tinued genocide of her people, how can we promotion book suggestedthatit mightbe speakingfor questionthe authenticityof that act? the guerrillasmorethanfor peasants.The inStoll uses the testimony of other "authentic ternecine disputesdividingRigoberta's neighnatives" to contradict Menchu's authenticity. bors droppedout of the story,makingarmed This textual strategy treats the subaltern subsoundlike aninevitable reaction to opstruggle truthclaim as intact, even while silencing at a time when pression, Mayasweredesperate jects' to escape the violence. I, RigobertaMenchu the most prominentsubalternvoice. Moreover, by deciding himself which of these testimonies becamea wayto mobilizeforeignsupport for a is the authenticvoice of the Mayanpeople, Stoll wounded, (xiii) retreating insurgency.8 implies that the subaltern'sdiscourse can only The mention of Cuba cannot be accidental: for be validatedby a white anthropologist. Thus, alUnited States readers, Cuba is an emotionally he uses new he reverts to the tactics, though classical attitude of his field, maintaining the charged trope of Soviet intervention in Latin America. By rhetorically associating Menchui hegemony of the white anthropologist while apwith Cuba here, Stoll insinuatesthat she was an credence to the subaltern's disparently giving even course. Stoll is right in arguingthat Guatemalan arms-wieldinginsurgentcombatant, though he is seemingly focusing on the uses of her text history needs to be reconstructedwith multiple after its publication. One could claim that what voices, but he undercuts that project with his Stoll's text does best is to expose the double own text. After all, Western anthropologists bind of the colonizer's discourseregardingtruth, have imposed their views on indigenous peoethnicity,culture,ideology, and politics. Indeed, ples, not respecting their truth in their own I believe that the book has generated so much terms. Guatemalans, Mayan and non-Mayan debatebecause it points to unresolvedcontradic- alike, do need to reconstructtheir history with tions in the culturallogic of the West. This is so multiple voices and not with a single voice or in to the of lefttruth,but they do not need a self-chosen North especially regard predominance over other Americanarbitrator to do so. right polemics types of political speech and rhetoric available to subalternsubAssuming that indigenous peoples are injects in a non-Westernframework.The controcapable of realizing their goals strategically Stoll's book in the and outside Western paradigms, Stoll gives the versy surrounding press among the intellectual elite in the United States following explanation of why peasants join a suggests thatthe CentralAmericandebateis still guerrilla organization or support insurgents: more about United States politics and paranoia "Perhapspeasantsare inspiredby revolutionary thanabouta Mayantruth. ideology,thatis, the idea of transforming society. This obsession with an imaginarycold war Or perhaps[. . .] they thinkthey have something more immediate to gain. Or perhaps they are perspective denies Menchui any agency outside that dynamic because it ignores political, pressured into cooperating with the guerrillas, and social issues in Guatemala. It economic, afterbeing swept up in a process of provocation, scuring)kafkaesquelabyrinththanlike the ideal enlightened image projected by their United States counterparts. Stoll's principalrhetoricaldevice is to suggest a connection between Menchu and Marxism repeatedlywithout ever offering conclusive proof of it. For example, he states that

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Menchuand the Performative Production of the Subaltern Self Rigoberta retaliation, and polarizationthat forces them to choose sides" (63). While ethnicity is centralto Menchu, nowhere does Stoll suggest an ethnic reactionagainstracism as a possible reason that Mayas joined the EGP. He also does not quote Guatemalan sources that document how even well-off Mayas gave this explanation for their joining the guerrillamovement (Arias, "ChangPorras; Payeras;Colom; ing";Arias and Arriaza; In this the situationis analsense, amongothers). to that of the African National ogous Congress (ANC): even though some of the rhetoricof the ANC had a clear Marxistcontent,the movement attracted even upper-middle-class SouthAfricans because its primarygoal was to end racism.One of the issues not yet studied in depth to this day is the abyss between an organization's official rhetoricand the motivationsof inrevolutionary dividuals who join the organizationand project onto it their own phantasms or desires, which often contradictthe group'srhetoric. Why does Stoll avoid the issue of racism? In Menchu's book, it is clear. She tells us, "My grandfather used to curse the Spaniards. The Spaniards were at the root of our plight. They began taking so many things out of our lands, they began stealing from us. Our ancestors' finest sons were those who were dishonoured. They even rapedthe queens elected by our community.That'show the ladinos came into being" (Burgos-Debray 189). To ignore such an assertion implies that ethnicity is only a trope for muddled thinking ratherthan a political issue based on perceived differences among groups. Stoll's narrativeseems in this sense to resist understanding, accepting, and valuing modes of being thatdiffer from those in the West. Cognizant of the imprecision of language and the limits on cultural understanding,most Westernacademics recognize that they exercise less authoritythanin the past, thoughthey experience greaterdialogism when engaging otherness. Writing in general is unable to capture otherness because signifiers float, perpetually

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deferring meaning and resisting rational interpretation in a sea of contradictions that trap any semblance of truthin semantic ambiguities or silent regions that hide the other's secrets. Those darkvoids of reasonbecome indefensible positions where one meaningcannotbe made to coincide with another. Stoll acknowledges the impossibility of knowing the truth when he says that "still another reason these incidents are difficult to recover is that bystanders were confused about exactly who was doing what to whom" (33). He is also aware of the contradictionsthat his own discourse generates. As a result, he defends his version of events by arguingthat the left wants to cover it up: In thecase of thebookyou havein yourhands, a white male anthropologist is accusing an indigenouswomanof makingup partof her issue is not whethershe story.The important did or not. Instead,it is Western domination, whichI am obviouslyperpetrating. Reasoning like this enables Rigoberta'sstory to be removedfromthe field of testablepropositions, to insteaduse as a proof-textthat foreigners canuse to validate themselves. (277) The subtle rhetoricalshift in the last sentence to the xenophobic term "foreigners" cancels out his acknowledgment of his otherness (that is, his foreignness in Guatemala). The foreigners here are not anthropologistslike him. They are Guatemala'sleftist intellectuals who repudiate scientific methods by removing the story "from the field of testable propositions" and "use" Menchi's text for their own ends. The slippage of the term "foreigners" gives away his ideological bias and undermines his allegations that what he intendsis a constructivecritique. Stoll divides Mayas into two groups in his work-Menchui and reliablewitnesses. He complains thatMenchuconfuses the datespertaining to when the army first sent troops to Uspantan (277), even though he knows that when she re-

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cordedthe materialin January1982, she was sufferingfromwartraumaandhad only her memory of the events that took place in her community three years before. He never criticizes his own "reliablewitnesses"for theirinabilityto remember dates. In fact, it is amusing to point out that Stoll himself, armed with historical data, confuses dates as well. For example, he transposes the dates when activistswere secretlyorganizing the community (1977-78) with those when the army initiated repression in the area after the EGP occupied the town of Uspantan in April 1979 (92). Elsewhere in the book Stoll states categorically,"Thedate was September9, 1980" (66). It should be 1979. Errorslike these undermine his claim to truth,whose declaredpurpose text is to root out andcorrectthe errorsin another thatdoes not make the same type of truthclaim. Stoll's apparentbelief that the interviews with other Mayan subjects are untouched by envy, fear, or greed and the conclusions that he derives from these accounts suggest thathe sees Mayas as informants,in the conventional sense of positivist anthropology. He never allows any voice but his to comment on and frame the meaning of the raw materialthat the Mayas provide. Nonetheless, the contradictionsof this position become immediately obvious. Unable to offer any proof other than the credibility of his informantsand his own word that such disthanMenchu'sbecursivityis more trustworthy cause it is not taintedwith political partisanship, he reinforces their authority with disruptive justifications like the following: "given the vagaries of memory and the translation of eyewitnesses accounts [Stoll does not speak any Mayan language] into secondhand ones, it is hardly surprisingthat there are conflicting versions" (69). Despite these elliptical permutations, doubts about concrete facts remain, and he is forced to admit it. One uncertainty is the case of San Pablo, where everyone agrees that the army attackedthe village, yet no one agrees

on why or how it happened,how it started,and how many were killed. Anotherelement thatdeflatesthe illusion of totality is that the Mayan subjects speak in the midst of a community occupied by the army, where armed soldiers and intelligence agents roam freely. As a consequence, their discourses are even less objective or truthfuland are more metamorphosed and metaphorized than free communication. Stoll is thus forced to admit that "perhapsmy sources in Chajul were still too afraidof the Guatemalanarmy to acknowledge what they had witnessed" (69). And "obviously the two widows could be afraid to (87). acknowledgewhat they remember" His resource is to go back to the generic witness issue as a defense: "Theimportant point is that her story [.. .] is not the eyewitness acto be" (70). He is thus able count thatit purports to know more than Menchu because he never claimed to be present when the events happened, whereas, accordingto him, she did. Stoll I, disrequiresMenchu'seye to be the narrating the as an ethnic fact that, testimonio, regarding her book is a communalperformanceand reapof collective historicalsigns and that propriation for Mayas there is no clear separationbetween an individualsubjectand a community,between being and belonging. In this instance,Stoll's positioning appearsto be the synecdoche of a desire for authorization in the face of cultural differentation that makes it problematic to fix the "native's" will to power. The anthropologist's desire for panopticalcontrol is thrownoff balance,disquieted,by the subalternsubjectthat dares to speak for herself. When the invisible subject claims a right to be heard in the language of the oppressor,the "native's"refusal to address the colonizer in his own terms is justified by the colonizer in paranoid language, as Bhabhaand Slavoj Zizek have pointed out. Can we explain Stoll's argument in these terms? That is, can we say thathe refuses to admithe is playing the performative role of an oppressor,

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since he claims to make his gesture in the name of an alleged and undefinedtruth,whose representativenesshe eitherconfiscatesor craves? We know from Edward Said that a certain type of culturalproductionby Westernacademics-who were products of a liberal humanist traditionthat presentedthem as naturallysuperior to subaltern subjects-was decisive not only in framing the historical context of colonialism but more specifically in constructingthe strategiesfor the marginalizationof ethnic subjects. The subjectification of those individuals was in turn made possible and plausible-as Bhabha argues-through the stereotypical discourse the humanistscreated. What some scholars still do not realize is that when we identify with a certain political discourse, we relate to a fantasy that stages a scenariohiddenbehind the shifting meanings of the words. Encoded in this fantasy is a resistance to meanings that arises from the impossibility of translating and transculturating subaltern languages into anything other than metaphorizations. The shifting meanings prevent any categorical assertionabout established truths, creating an indeterminacythat provides the groundsfor the legitimizationof listening to subaltern subjects-that is, of recognizing the validity of discourses that operate as symbolic expressions of agency, as tropes for the constructionof identities, even if the discourses do not fit entirely in the Westernconception of rationality, which we now recognize as ambiguous and indeterminate as well. Tentative Conclusions The controversyaroundMenchu gives us a better understandingof the issues with which her uncannycentralityin United States culturaldebates confronts us. These include the natureof testimonial literature, the need to rethink the concept of identity,and the desires and fantasies of subjective transformationbut also the identity politics that are a phantasm of hegemonic

subjects' fears of disempowerment. The controversy also brings us back to the question of whether a testimonio should be read only as a narration"of urgency" or additionally as an "unhomelyfiction"-as "a fiction which would focus on those freak social and cultural displacements, as a fiction which relates the traumatic ambivalences of a personal psychic historyto the wider disjunctionof political existence"(Bhabha11). Perhapsthe two salient issues of the debate are the performative natureof ethnicityas a creative assemblage of the self and the problematics of reading testimonios. If we accept the first notion as valid, then we must recognize that only bricoleurs assembling their own particular senses of ethnicity can claim any trutheffect, in the Foucauldiansense, for their singularperformativity.9 No one else can read or decode the sets of rules by which subalternsubjectsoperate while exercising agency by reinventing their selves as a way of restructuring theirrelationsof power with hegemonic subjects. As for the second issue, we can ask ourselveswhetherreading a testimonioinvolves the readerin a continuous act of faith unlike that involved in literaryreading. This is a broad issue that needs to be explored further,since it leads to the question of how the reader's solidarity or political identification with victims, dissidents, and opposition movements works when a testimonio is read. Answeringthis questionimplies a new theoryof reading, given that, although Stoll argues that human rights call solely for a legal discourse (277), they in fact demand a kind of affective, empathetic reading, in which individuals who enjoy guaranteedfreedoms or hegemonic positions discover and sympathize with subaltern subjects. It is a reading, however,that may lead to concretepolitical action. Thus, readinga testimonio is radically different not only from reading literature but also from reading legal documents, reportsof scientific data, and other such texts. For this reason, the question of how

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the reader of a testimonio authenticates its meaningis complex, and it remainsunexplored. In the Menchu-Stoll debate, the indigenous subject is held up to a standard of truth that those who flauntotherdiscourseshave neverhad to meet. Menchi's efforts were aimed at ending the massacre of her people at a time when indigenous peoples did not enjoy any kind of internationalsympathy, much less privilege. Her text, and her subsequentpolitical efforts, forged a recognition of Mayan subjectivity, as well as an acceptance of the growing social, cultural, and political importance of the Mayan people. Menchui performeda role to achieve these aims, and fortunatelyshe has been largely successful. If her text, which did not make any historical truthclaims, achieved the goals of ending massacre and creating respect for Mayan culture, does it matterif it did not conformto how Western science contextualizesdocumentary facts?

NOTES
1Born in the tiny village of Chimel in the western Guatemalanhighlands,Menchdis partof the K'iche people, one of twenty-threeMayan groups living in this CentralAmerican country, which is the size of Tennessee but has been crucial to the United States for strategic reasons since the beginningof the cold war.Born in extremepoverty,Menchd tells us that she startedworking at eight. In Guatemala,indigenous peoples have been discriminatedagainst since the Spanish Conquest, in the sixteenth century, in much the same way thatblacks have in South Africa. Menchui's father, Vicente, fought as a progressive Catholic leader against the governmentthat helped "Ladinos"(non-Mayanmestizos of Westernheritage)take away the Mayas' land by force. 2Now, afterthe release of CIA documentsaboutthe role the United States played in replacing democratic governments with repressive military dictatorshipsand supporting genocidal campaignsin CentralAmerica and afterPresident Clinton's apology to the Central American people for that role, we may rightlyfeel confused aboutthe rhetoricused to freedomfighters, contras, Marxist justify that intervention: guerrillas, government forces. These expressions varied throughoutthe 1980s according to the ideological orientation of the CentralAmericangovernmentin question-thus, even though the "freedom fighters" used guerrilla tactics, they were not called guerrillas, because they were trying to

topple the Sandinista government. Guerrillas were always Marxist, so much so that guerrilla was almost always preceded by Marxist. Even the word guerrilla, pronounced "gorilla"by most newscasters and politicians, conjuredup images of darkprimitives launching a bestial battle against in the jungles "downthere"--"south enlightenedWesterners of the border," a tropesynonymouswith barbarism. 3 On 31 January 1980, a group of peasants (including Menchd's father,Vicente) and university studentsoccupied the Spanishembassy in GuatemalaCity. They demandedan international press conference to denounce the government's atrocities against Mayan villages in the Quich6 region. The Spanishgovernmentimmediatelyacquiesced,but the Guatemalangovernmentrefused to grantthe press conference and ordered the army to storm the embassy. In the ensuing attack, all occupiers, including Vicente Menchu, were burned to death, alongside visitors and embassy personnel. The only survivorswere the ambassadorand a Maburs. He was kidnapped yan peasant,who had third-degree from the hospital by security forces and murderedthe same night. Spain broke diplomaticrelationswith Guatemalaas a resultof this incident. 41 learned of this activity from Menchd Tum, Megan Thomas, and Elizabeth Alvarez, in Mexico in 1983, in the context of political duties we all sharedat the time. 5 As a non-Mayan opposition militant, I witnessed this perceptionof Menchi and discussed it with fellow militants in the early 1980s. 6 Thus, when Stoll complains, "Still, the chronology of how Chimel becomes a militant village is perplexing. [. ..] This is not the first point where 1, Rigoberta Menchu becomes confusing"(92), we may well ask, is this a critiqueof Menchu's Mayan style of narration, of her poor Spanish, of her alleged EGP puppeteersfor not being clearer about the chronology they imposed on her, or of Burgos-Debray's editing talents? Or could he simply be arguing that a genuine Mayansubjectcould not think in the fashion illustrated in the book? 7 The hurriedcomposition and oral natureof Menchi's text and her statusas an exile create even more ambiguities, silences, and absences. These factorsprecludedthe verification of any of the facts she narrated,so that the interplayof fiction and history in memory becomes a central issue in Menchi's text. For a more theoretical clarification of this issue, see Sklodowska,"Laformatestimonial"379. 8 The Elisabethto whom Stoll refersis Elisabeth BurgosDebray,who appearsas authorin the firsteditions in English and Spanish. Subsequently, under pressure from Menchu, she voluntarilywithdrewher name as author,but she has retained the copyright and the title "official compiler"of the text. The latterrole has also been questionedby Menchi and Arturo Taracena. Stoll interviews Burgos-Debray in his book, using this "testimony" by Menchd's interviewer to bolsterhis argument that Menchi was complicitouswith the

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guerrilla movement. Menchu and Taracenahave contested this claim in recentinterviews. 9 Truthas understoodby Foucaultis a system of ordered proceduresfor the production,regulation, distribution,circulation, and operationof statements(i.e., discourse),which he understands,following Nietzsche, as lies performedaccording to a fixed convention. The trutheffect derives from the way in which power produces a discursive regime, which permeatesan entire social body. Each society has its own discursiveregime, and each discursiveregime produces its own truth, which exists in a circular relation with the power thatproducesand sustainsit.

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Native Testimony in Guatemala." Arias, Rigoberta MenchdControversy171-97. Menchu, Rigoberta. "RigobertaMenchu: Those Who Attack Me Humiliate the Victims." With Juan Jesus Aznarez.Arias,RigobertaMenchuControversy109-17. Montejo, Victor. "Truth,Human Rights, and Representation: The Case of RigobertaMenchd."Arias, Rigoberta 372-91. Menchu' Controversy Moreiras, Alberto. "Pastiche Identity and Allegory of Allegory." Latin American Identity and Constructions of Difference. Ed. Amaryll Chanady. Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1994. 204-38. Payeras, Mario. Los fusiles de octubre. M6xico: Pablos, 1991. La profundizaci6n de las relaPorras,Gustavo."Guatemala: ciones capitalistas." ECA 353 (1978): 374-406. Proyecto Interdiocesano de Recuperaci6n de la Memoria. Guatemala, nunca mds: Informe. 4 vols. Guatemala: ODHAG, 1998. Said, Edward.Orientalism.New York:Pantheon,1978. Sklodowska,Elzbieta."Laformatestimonialy la novelistica de Miguel Barnet."Revista/Review Interamericana 12 (1982): 375-84. . "The Poetics of Remembering,the Politics of ForArias, Rigogetting: Rereading I, Rigoberta Menchui." bertaMenchuControversy 251-69. Sommer,Doris. "Rigoberta'sSecrets."LatinAmericanPerspectives 18 (1991): 32-50. Spivak, GayatriChakravorty."Canthe SubalternSpeak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271-313. Stoll, David. "David Stoll Breaks the Silence." Arias, RigobertaMencht Controversy118-20. . RigobertaMenchuand the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Boulder:Westview,1998. ."Stoll: I Don't Seek to Destroy Menchu." With Dina GarciaFernmndez. Arias, RigobertaMenchtiControversy66-69. Taracena,Arturo. "ArturoTaracenaBreaks His Silence." With Luis Aceituno. Arias, Rigoberta Mencht Controversey 82-94. Zizek, Slavoj. Gaze and Voice as Love Objects. Durham: Duke UP, 1996.