I, Rigoberta Menchu Read online

  The little boy died early in the morning. We didn’t know what to do. Our two neighbours were anxious to help my mother but they didn’t know what to do either–how to bury him or anything. Then the caporal told my mother she could bury my brother in the finca but she had to pay a tax to keep him buried there. My mother said: ‘I have no money at all.’ He told her: ‘Yes, and you already owe a lot of money for medicine and other things, so take his body and leave.’ We didn’t know what to do. It was impossible to take his body back to the Altiplano. It was already starting to smell because of the humidity, the heat, on the coast. None of the people living in our galera wanted my brother’s body to stay there, of course, because it was upsetting. So my mother decided that, even if she had to work for a month without earning, she would pay the tax to the landowner, or the overseer, to bury my brother in the finca. Out of real kindness and a desire to help one of the men brought a little box, a bit like a suitcase. We put my brother in it and took him to be buried. We lost practically a whole day’s work over mourning my brother. We were all so very sad for him. That night the overseer told us: ‘Leave here tomorrow.’ ‘Why?’ asked my mother. ‘Because you missed a day’s work. You’re to leave at once and you won’t get any pay. So tomorrow I don’t want to see you round here.’ It was terrible for my mother, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to find my father because he was working somewhere else. When they throw people out of the finca, they don’t take them back home as they usually do. Usually when the time comes to go back to the Altiplano, the same contracting agents take us back to our village, so we don’t have to worry about how we’re getting back, or about any transport, or even where we are. We didn’t know our whereabouts, we didn’t know where we were or anything. My mother didn’t even know the name of the town we were in. But we knew we had to leave so my mother began getting our things together. So our neighbours said: ‘We’ll go with you even though it means losing everything we worked for too.’ One of them lent my mother some money to pay for the burial since she’d been in the finca for about four months and had saved a little money. The fifteen days we had worked we weren’t paid. Not only my mother and I, but my brother had worked fifteen days and wasn’t paid either. The overseer said: ‘No, it’s because you owe a lot to the pharmacy. So, go on, out of here. I don’t want to see you around here again.’ But my mother knew that she hadn’t been able to buy medicine for her son and that’s why he’d died. The trouble is that we couldn’t speak Spanish and the overseer spoke our language because he came from our region. He threw us out and said he didn’t want to see us round there again. The boss’s orders. So we had to leave.

  We arrived back at our house in the Altiplano. My mother was very sad, so was my brother who was with us. My father didn’t know his son had died, nor did my other brothers and sisters because they were working on other fincas. Fifteen days later, they all arrived home to be greeted by the news that the little boy had died and that we owed a lot of money. My father and my brothers and sisters had been earning in the other fincas and had enough money to settle up with our neighbour. The neighbour also gave what he felt he should to the dead child. That’s how they helped us–the community, everyone–once we’d got home.

  From that moment, I was both angry with life and afraid of it, because I told myself: ‘This is the life I will lead too; having many children, and having them die.’ It’s not easy for a mother to watch her child die, and have nothing to cure him with or help him live. Those fifteen days working in the finca was one of my earliest experiences and I remember it with enormous hatred. That hatred has stayed with me until today.

  We went down to the finca again. Christmas is the last month we spend in the finca. In January we start working our land in the Altiplano. January and February are the months we sow our crops. In March we go back down to the coast to earn money to spend on the maize fields, and when the first work on the maize is over, we return to the finca to carry on earning for food.

  When I was ten, they raised my pay because by then I was picking forty pounds of coffee. For picking cotton I still got very little because it was a lot in quantity but not in weight. There’s an office in every finca where all the work you deliver is taken. It’s weighed and noted down for their accounts. Towards the end, my brothers (who are not stupid) managed to figure out the ways in which they fiddled the amounts weighed. They have tricks to make it weigh less, when the real amount is much more. That happens everywhere. It’s a special trick of the men in charge of weighing the workers’ loads; that’s when they steal many pounds of coffee. They put large amounts on one side so that they can deliver more and get paid more. It’s part of a long process which starts the moment the agents contract the workers in their villages and load them into the lorries like animals. It’s one long process of robbing them of their pay. They’re charged for absolutely everything, even for the loading of the lorry. Then, in the finca, the overseers steal from the workers from the very first day. The cantina steals from them too. It continues until the last day. It’s so bad that we have had the bad experience of getting home again without a centavo. Coffee is measured by the workload set but cotton is measured by a different method. If you pick sixty-five pounds of cotton per day, you’re paid according to the weight. But with coffee, you have to pick a quintal per day and if you don’t it’s added on and the next day you have to finish that quintal before starting another one. In my case, when I started work I had to do a third of what an adult’s task would be. That was thirty-five pounds. But some days I could only do twenty-eight pounds so the next day I had to carry on with the same one. This way you fall further and further behind until you have to spend two days just making up the amount you’re missing. With cotton, the situation is different but it’s very difficult too. The worst work is when it’s second ‘hand’. First ‘hand’ is when the flowers are nicely grouped together, but second hand is when you have to pick between the branches the cotton which has been left behind the first time. That’s much harder work but the pay is the same.

  VIII

  LIFE IN THE ALTIPLANO. RIGOBERTA’S TENTH BIRTHDAY

  ‘We Indians never do anything which goes against the laws of our ancestors.’

  —Rigoberta Menchú

  Back in the Altiplano, we all set to work with our hoes. I remember from the age of nine going off to the fields with my hoe to help my father. I was like a boy, chopping wood with an axe, or with a machete. There was very little water near our village. We had to walk about four kilometres to fetch our water, and that added to our work a lot. But we were happy because that was the time of year we sowed our bit of maize and it was sometimes enough for us to live on. At times, we managed to scrape a living in the Altiplano and didn’t go down to the fincas. When the fields were full of plants and we had a bit of maize and a few tortillas, we were very happy up there. The land was fertile and I remember my mother giving us different types of beans like ayote, chilacayote and others that grew up there. But we didn’t eat a lot of beans because most of what my mother grew was taken to market to buy soap, or some chile. That’s what we ate–chile. And if we wanted to, we could pick plants in the fields. So, with chile, plants and tortillas, we ate very well. That was our menu most of the time.

  It’s not the custom among our people to use a mill to grind the maize to make dough. We use a grinding stone; that is, an ancient stone passed down from our ancestors. We don’t use ovens either. We only use wood fires to cook our tortillas. First we get up at three in the morning and start grinding and washing the nixtamal, turning it into dough by using the grinding stone. We all have different chores in the morning. Some of us wash the nixtamal, others make the fire to heat water for the coffee or whatever. In our house there were a lot of us–my elder sister, my mother, myself, and my sister-in-law, my elder brother’s wife. So there were four women working in the house. Each of us had her job to do and we all had to get up at a certain time, our time was three in the morning. The men get up at tha
t time too because they have to sharpen their hoes, machetes and axes before going off to work. So they get up at the same time. There are no lights in our village so at night we see by the light of ocotes. An ocote is a piece cut from a pine tree. It lights up immediately as if petrol had been poured on it. It burns easily. You can light it with matches and it flames up. That’s what we use for light to move about the house. It burns slowly and if you put a bunch of ocote somewhere, it lights everything up.

  Whoever gets up first, lights the fire. She makes the fire, gets the wood hot and prepares everything for making tortillas. She heats the water. The one who gets up next washes the nixtamal outside, and the third one up washes the grinding stone, gets the water ready and prepares everything needed for grinding the maize. In our house, I made the food for the dogs. My father had a lot of dogs because of the animals which came down from the mountain. These dogs guarded our animals. It was my job to make food for them. Their food was the hard core of the maize, the cob. We had a little place just outside the house, a sort of little hollow, where we’d throw the cob when we’d taken the grains of corn off. With time, the cobs rot and go soft, and are cooked with lime. Then it’s all ground up for the dogs’ food. Lime makes our dogs strong, otherwise they’d all die. They don’t eat our food, which is maize, but sometimes, when there’s no maize, we eat the dogs’ food.* We make it into tortillas, just as we do with the maize dough. Anyway, it was my job to make the dogs’ food. I’d get up, wash the stone and things I needed and start grinding the dogs’ food. I started doing this when I was seven. When the fire is made and the nixtamal washed, everyone starts grinding. One person grinds the maize, another grinds it a second time with a stone to make it finer, and another makes it into little balls for the tortilla. When that’s all ready, we all start making tortillas. We have a flat earthenware pan big enough to hold all the tortillas. Then the men–my brothers and my father–all come and get their tortillas from the pan and start eating. In the mornings, we sometimes drink coffee or sometimes only water. We usually make pinol; that is, maize toasted and ground. This is drunk instead of coffee because coffee is too expensive for my parents to buy. Sometimes my parents haven’t enough money for panela either; we don’t use sugar but panela which comes straight from the sugar cane. When there’s no panela in the house, we can’t drink pinol or coffee. So we drink water. In the mornings, we usually have a big plate of chile, and all of us have a good meal of tortilla and chile before going off to work. Our dogs are used to being with people, they enjoy the natural world as well and like going off to work with the men. So we have to feed the dogs before the workers leave, as the dogs always go with them. If the men are going to work a long way off, we have to make tortillas for them to take with them, but if they’re working nearby, one of the women stays at home and makes the midday meal for them.

  Our men usually leave around five or half past every morning. They go and tend the maize or cultivate the ground. Some of the women go with them because we sow the beans and, when the plant starts sprouting, we stick in little branches for it to wind itself around, so that it doesn’t damage the maize. So, yes, at times we’re working alongside the men all day. What we used to do, was that my sister-in-law stayed at home because she had a baby. She stayed at home, looked after the animals, made the food and brought it to us at midday. She’d bring atol, tortillas, and if she saw anything she could use in the fields, she’d prepare that too and bring it along for us to eat. Atol is the maize dough. We use it for a drink, as refreshment. It’s dissolved in water, boiled, and it thickens, according to how you want to drink it. Of course, sometimes we take it in turns to stay home because my sister-in-law grew up on the fincas and in the Altiplano too, so she gets bored in the house because the food only takes a minute to make and the rest of the time she has to herself. She uses the time to do a lot of weaving. She makes mats, cloth, huipiles, blouses, or other things like that. But she often gets bored and wants to work in the fields, even though she’s carrying her baby on her back. So we take it in turns, my sister, my mother and I.

  In our village we have the habit of talking very loudly because we haven’t really any close neighbours. When the workers leave in the morning, they call out to all their neighbours because the neighbours’ maize fields are all near each other, so they all go together. We all get together like one family. Our maize fields aren’t in the village itself. They’re a short distance away, towards the mountain, so we call all our neighbours and we all go together–twenty or thirty people going off to work together with our dogs. We eat at midday or whenever we feel hungry. We usually go home again at six in the evening. Six o’clock is when our men come home, hungry and thirsty, and the woman who stays at home has to make food again. That’s when we do all the extra chores in the house. The men tie up the dogs in the corrales where the animals are and the women fetch water to wash the nixtamal and washing pots, chop wood and prepare the torches for the night. We prepare all our things for the next day to save time in the morning. When nights falls, we’re still working. Afterwards, we sing a bit; songs we Indians have in our own language. I don’t know how, but my brothers got hold of an accordion, and we’d sing until our parents told us off because we were very tired and they sent us to bed. We usually go to bed at ten or half past because we have to get up so early and since our house is very small, when one person gets up, we all have to get up.

  Our house measures about eight varas. It’s not made of wood but of cane; straight sticks of it we find in the fields and fasten together with agave fibres. Any tree will do to make a house, but (I think this is part of our culture) only if it’s cut at full moon. We say the wood lasts longer if it’s cut when the moon is young. When we build a house, we make the roof from a sort of palm tree found near the foot of the mountains. We call it pamac. For us, the most elegant houses are made with cane leaves, because you have to go a long way to get them. You have to have men to go and get them to make the house. We were poor and had neither money to buy cane leaves nor anyone to go and get them. They’re only found down in the fincas on the coast and they’re very expensive. The landowners charge by the bunch–seventy-five centavos the bunch–and it takes fifty bunches for a house. We didn’t have the means to buy cane leaves, so what we did was go to the mountains and collect this leaf called pamac. The mature leaves last about two years and after that you have to start again. So we all went to cut the mature leaves. Between us–men, women and children–we could build a house in fifteen days. We had a very big family, and we were able to use sticks, although many people used maize stalks. After the maize is harvested, people cut the stalks and use them for walls. But our house was made of sticks of cane: that lasts longer. The houses are not very high because, if there’s a lot of wind, it can lift the house and carry it all away. That’s why we make them small and put sticks all round. The sticks are stuck in the ground and tied together with agave fibres. There are no nails in our houses–you won’t find a single nail. Even the roof props, the corners, or anything supporting the house, comes from trees.

  We all sleep in there together. The house has two floors; one above, where the corn cobs are stored (we call it the tapanco) and another below where we all live. But at the times of the year when there’s no maize, many of us go up and sleep in the tapanco. When the cobs are stored there, we have to sleep on the ground floor. We don’t usually have beds with mattresses or anything like that. We just have our own few clothes and we’re used to being cold, because the roof doesn’t give much protection. The wind comes in as if we were out on the mountain. As for sex, that’s something we Indians know about because most of the family sees everything that goes on. Couples sleep together but don’t have a separate place for themselves. Even the children realize most of the time, but sometimes they don’t, because I think married couples don’t have enough time to enjoy their life together and, anyway, we’re all in there together. Of course, when we sleep, we sleep like logs, we’re so tired. We often get home so tired we
don’t want to eat anything, or do anything. We just want to sleep. So we sleep. Perhaps that’s when the others take the opportunity to have sexual relations, but there’s hardly any room. Often just the children go down to the finca and the parents stay at home and look after the animals. That’s when they have a bit more time to themselves. But most of the time my father goes to one finca and my mother takes the children to another finca so they’re apart for three months. Or we all go together to one finca but there it’s even worse for sleeping than at home, because we’re with people we don’t even know and there are hundreds of people and animals sleeping together. It is really difficult there. We’re piled up in one place, almost on top of one another. I’m sure the children notice a lot of things. In our case, all the brothers and sisters in our family slept together in one row. My older brother, who’d been married for some time, slept with his compañera, but the ones who weren’t married (my other two older brothers, my sister, myself, and my three younger brothers who were alive then), we all slept together in a row. We put all the women’s cortes together and used them for blankets. My parents slept in another corner quite near us. We each had a mat to sleep on and a little cover over us. We slept in the same clothes we worked in. That’s why society rejects us. Me, I felt this rejection very personally, deep inside me. They say we Indians are dirty, but it’s our circumstances which force us to be like that. For example, if we have time, we go to the river every week, every Sunday, and wash our clothes. These clothes have to last us all week because we haven’t any other time for washing and we haven’t any soap either. That’s how it is. We sleep in our clothes, we get up next day, we tidy ourselves up a bit and off to work, just like that.