Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans: New Foreword by Elizabeth Burgos

Rigoberta Menchu is a living legend, a young woman who said that her odyssey from a Mayan Indian village to revolutionary exile was "the story of all poor Guatemalans." By turning herself into an everywoman, she became a powerful symbol for 500 years of indigenous resistance to colonialism. Her testimony,I, Rigoberta Menchu, denounced atrocities by the Guatemalan army and propelled her to the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. But her story was not the eyewitness account that she claimed. In this hotly debated book, key points of which have been corroborated by theNew York Times, David Stoll compares a cult text with local testimony from Rigoberta Menchu's hometown. His reconstruction of her story goes to the heart of debates over political correctness and identity politics and provides a dramatic illustration of the rebirth of the sacred in the postmodern academy.This expanded edition includes a new foreword from Elizabeth Burgos, the editor ofI, Rigoberta Menchu, as well as a new afterword from Stoll, who discusses Rigoberta Menchu's recent bid for the Guatemalan presidency and addresses the many controversies and debates that have arisen since the book was first published.

David Stoll teaches anthropology at Middlebury College. His other books include Is Latin America Turning Protestant? and Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala.