In the Footsteps of Rigoberta

According to the April 1999 issue of World Press Review, the Guatemalan Quice Indian who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 had fabricated the events in her 1983 book I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Menchu’s coauthor, a Venezuelan anthropologist named Elisabeth Burgos, says she realized by 1990 that much of the story was fabricated. (For example, Rigoberta’s brother Nicolas did not die of hunger; he is still alive.) In January 1999 anthropologist David Stoll published Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans, 400 pages of detailed information about the Rigoberta myth and the actual suffering and abuse of Guatemalan Indians. In February Rigoberta admitted at a New York press conference that her “true story” is not actual autobiography after all. Nevertheless, some of her loyal readers are outraged at David Stoll.