Rigoberta Menchú’s “Secrets” Weapon

             Rigoberta’s secrets are not of a personal nature. They are not her secrets per sé but the secrets of her ancestors, her community. So, as Doris Sommer asks in her essay, why has she then chosen to learn Spanish and speak? Why doesn’t she just “keep quiet”? Sommer expresses that “[Menchú’s] testimonial is an invitation to a tête-à-tête, not to a heart-to-heart.” (Sommer 127) She points out Rigoberta’s refusal is for her readers, which are Others to her and her people, to “forfeit the rush of a metaphoric identification.” (131) Menchú does not seek our sympathy she goes instead for the jugular. The harrowing account of the deaths of her brother and mother seem to rip out of the page and give the reader a visceral reaction rather than an emotional one. It’s as if she wants Elizabeth Burgos (and the readers) to throw up, to feel the nausea through every detail. She doesn’t want pity. She demands respect. She does not want to give away her identity. She wants to keep it. In truth, she still remains hidden behind the letter, the ciphers of the enemy’s language, the text of the ethnographer, Burgo’s editorial knife. She really does not want the reader to “live” through her, cause the reader could never speak her language, wear her worn out shoes, feel her hunger or her pain. She does not allow us that. What she seems to be doing is not revealing but employing her secrets:

“Cuando empezamos a organizarnos, empezamos a emplear lo que habíamos ocultado. Nuestras trampas. Nadie lo sabía porque lo habiamos ocultado. Nuestras opiniones…cuando estamos entre nosotros los indígenas, sabemos discutir, sabemos pensar y sabemos opinar… por eso cuando se trata de defender nuestra vida, nosotros estamos dispuestos a defenderla aunque tengamos que sacar a luz nuestros secretos.” (Menchú 196) This is the closest she ever gets in the text to explicitly stating what she means when she uses the word “secretos.” It’s not something you can unveil or translate, it’s the weapon that her culture can use – that they can argue, think and have opinions. It’s the fact that, even as Rigoberta is speaking to you, not about her but about her community, you can never truly know what her thoughts are, you will never know the thoughts of her community, what they are talking about, the traps they are setting. The enemy can never know their language, whereas she can (and has) learned the language of the enemy. Her testimony could be another one of the traps, as David Stoll might argue. The secret is the indigenous language itself. The enemy can never know what the Quiché’s are saying to each other, plotting, thinking, or how smart they really are, cause no one will ever teach them Quiché, no one will give away the secret.

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Other thoughts: Is Rigoberta Menchú merely an edited subject? Her voice literally rearranged to resemble an autobiography? What exactly is the hand of Elizabeth Burgos in this text? She herself has extracted her line of questioning, her methods of leading Rigoberta’s testimony. Maybe it is the anthropologist who has secrets of her own, of her methodology, her hidden weaving of Menchú’s words to create a narrative. Is Menchú’s refusal to divulge her secrets a reaction to Burgos’ prodding questions?