I Rigoberta Menchu Summary

I, Rigoberta Menchu can be used by historians in order to see the events and treatments of the low class Guatemalans and how this negatively impacted the lives of these people. Given this, the book is seen as a testimonio instead of an autobiography, with this the story loses historical reliability. Considering that the book is based off of personal reactions, it can not be relied on for historical fact. Instead it can show us examples of treatment and examples of experiences that one side of the Guatemalan conflict experienced. The perspective of the common people of Guatemala is often lost, due to other highly acknowledged historical accounts of this struggle portraying the conflict through the Government’s perspective.
When looking at historical events there are certain qualifications that are put into place in order for a book to be accurate and reliable. These qualifications often persist of accurate representation of both sides of a conflict, clarification of dates when the conflicts occurred, as well as details on who was involved. Often times this means that personal reconstruction of events are excluded unless it is formally
With this idea I, RIgoberta Menchu follows a valid form of historical accountancy. Since she is reciting the experiences of herself and her society, the historical memory found in the book is in fact correct. Given this the idea of historical value is still unchanged. As quoted by David Stoll’s Analysis of Rigoberta Menchu’s Testimonial, “Rigoberta turned herself into a composite Maya, with a wider range of experiences than she actually had”(Lanham 257). This idea shows that through historical memory, Menchu used the events of all poor Guatemalans to create the testimony of one person and in fact spoke of events personally that did not occur to