Rigoberta Mench Tum

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Rigoberta Menchú Tum

• Born in 1959 in
• Guatemalas
• department of El Quiche
• Native language
• is Quiche (Kiche)
• Mountainous topography of Quiche site of much
  guerilla activity and subsequent army repression

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I, Rigoberta Menchú

• Menchú and her family participated in CUC
  (Peasant Union Committee)
• Brother tortured and killed by army in 1979
• Father (Vicente Menchú) killed in Spanish embassy
  fire in 1980
• Mother was raped, tortured, and killed by the
  army later that year
• Menchú (in her early 20s) went into hiding and
  then went to Mexico in exile

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I, Rigoberta Menchú An Indian Woman in Guatemala
(1983)

• While living in exile in Mexico, Menchú gave a
  testimonial account of Guatemalas civil war to
  Elisabeth Burgos Debray
• David Stoll critique Menchú could not have been
  eye-witness, account is unreliable

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• 1992 Menchú awarded Nobel Peace Prize (500th
  anniversary of Columbus arrival to the Americas)
• Activism towards recognition of indigenous rights
  throughout the Americas
• Presidential candidate in 2007

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Ethnic Identity Markers in Guatemala

• Language
• not easily learned or assumed
• generally requires intense interaction with
  native speakers
• Dress
• Marker of ethnicity marks one as indigenous
  (traje) or ladino (Western clothing)
• more fluid than language
• Religion, surnames, phenotype

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huipil (pot) blousecorte (uq)skirtfaja
(ximbal) belt
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Dress

• Dress and fluidity of identity can emphasize
  and present different aspects of identity
• Place specific traje associated with ethnic
  group and with specific towns
• Traje also indicates wealth, age, religion,
  worldliness of wearer

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Elaborate Traje
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Cultural Significance of Weaving

• Connects modern women to pre-Conquest ancestors
• Symbolic of Maya womens work in the household

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Weaving on a Backstrap Loom
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Mens Traje

• Tecpan region white pants, blue or white shirt,
  dark wool jacket, hat, sandals
• Use of traje disappearing among men
• Greater participation in non-Maya world

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Declining Use of Traje

• Kaqchikel girls not learning how to weave because
  spend more time on schoolwork
• Globalization
• Influence of television that gives status to
  Western clothing (shorts, miniskirts, jeans)
• Ropa americana (second-hand clothing from US sold
  cheaply in Latin America)

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Maya Revitalization

• Mixing of traje
• Solidarity
• Status
• Admire beauty of clothing
• Mens bomber jackets symbolic of participation in
  Maya movement in 1990s

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Maya Movement

• Cultural revitalization encourage women to use
  traje and learn to weave
• Why dont men return to using traje?
• Male participation in non-Maya world
• Impossibility to hide ones identity in traje
• Did not grow up wearing traje