Post on 31-Jan-2023
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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Truth’ and Women’s testimonio:
Literary Defiance and Political Resistance in
Latin America
MA Dissertation
Submitted to the University of Nottingham
In October 2008 as part of the degree of
MA Post-Conflict Cultures
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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Introduction
Testimonio: Fact or Fiction?
Testimonial Literature, Women and New Social
Movements
Latin American testimonio is difficult to define. Critics and readers of the genre are unsure as
to whether testimonio should be read as literature or sociological and anthropological data.
Throughout the debate on testimonio the Foucauldian notion of the construction of the ‘truth’
continually resurfaces. Do testimonistas honestly tell at least their version of the truth? Or do
they wilfully misrepresent historical facts for political reasons? Do testimonios have the
legitimacy and authority to provide factual historical information? What is the difference in
‘truth value’ between overtly literary testimonios and their more anthropological counterpart?
This dissertation will respond to these questions by assessing Latin American women’s
testimonio and outlining the ways in which the genre conforms to or exceeds fact/fiction
categorisations.
A useful definition of literary testimonio is the tripartite definition presented by Kimberly
Nance. Nance states that testimonio is a first person narrative told by someone who has
experienced injustice or been subject to some form of oppression; this person’s narration of
events is to be taken as representative of that of a larger group of people (for example of the
same socio-economic class or ethnic group); and the narrative has been created with the hope
of inspiring others to join the struggle for a more just future.1
1 Nance, Kimberly. Can Literature Promote Justice? Trauma Narrative and Social Action in Latin American
Testimonio. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. 2006. P. 2.
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In addition to literary testimonio, which employs explicit literary techniques such as
characterisation and metaphor and is written in the first person with the aim of inspiring the
reader and encouraging social change, more sociological or factual collections of testimonios
will also be assessed. Margaret Randall published possibly the most famous example of this
type. Her collection, Sandino’s Daughters,2 is comprised of interviews with women who
fought in the Nicaraguan Revolution (1979). She defines the more factual version of the
genre as “A new practice of listening and telling” which is “sometimes called oral history.”
She continues:
Sometimes it’s called testimony, or testimonial journalism. Some people refer to it
more simply as in-depth interviewing. Whatever the label, it has created a body of
voice and image, a new resource literature – much of it from the so-called Third
World and much of it from and about women.3
This dissertation will assess literary and more factual testimonios in order to raise questions
regarding the ‘truth value’ of the genre. It will be seen that overtly literary testimonios use
characterisation, narrative voice, imagery, and other literary strategies to engage and inspire
the reader whilst also imparting factual information. Sociological or more factual testimonios
might initially seem to conform more readily to preconceived ideas regarding empirical
evidence or ‘truth value’. However, on further inspection it becomes apparent that they also
employ persuasive devices such as the use of apparently objective chapter introductions,
juxtaposition and other editing techniques to influence the reader. Put simply, collections of
first-hand experiences compiled by an anthropologist or a sociologist are often thought of as
more factually reliable than their literary counterparts, but is this justified?
2 Randall , Margaret. Sandino’s Daughters. London: Zed Press. 1981.
3 Randall, Margaret. “Reclaiming Voices”. Gugelberger, Georg (Ed.). The Real Thing. Testimonial Discourse
and Latin America. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 1996. Pp. 58 – 69.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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John Beverley4 has written extensively on the genre and is well aware of the many different
forms it takes; he lists the “textual categories” of the genre as “autobiography,
autobiographical novel, oral history, memoir, confession, diary [and] interview” among
others.5 Beverley has also highlighted the significance of the “polyphonic” testimonio:
Testimonio is fundamentally democratic and egalitarian form of narrative in the sense
that it implies that any life so narrated can have a kind of representational value. Each
individual testimonio evokes an absent polyphony of other voices, other possible
lives, experiences. Thus, one common formal variation on the classic first-person
singular testimonio is the polyphonic testimonio, made up of accounts by different
participants in the same event.6
As we shall see when we come to look at Poniatowska, Hooks and Randall, the polyphonic
testimonio can powerfully re-create political events whilst also echoing their inclusive,
egalitarian nature through its very form. As Beverley points out the polyphonic testimonio,
which is more readily associated with sociological rather than literary testimonio, allows for
many different perspectives and experiences to be equally incorporated into the narration of
an event so that the form of the genre echoes the values it represents.
Beverley has also examined the ways in which cultural and literary forms of expression have
attempted historically to encapsulate the social forces contending for power. He concludes:
If the novel had a special relationship with humanism and the rise of the European
Bourgeoisie, testimonio is by contrast a new form of narrative literature in which we
can at the same time witness and be a part of the emerging culture of an international
proletariat/popular-democratic subject in its period of ascendency.7
Alberto Moreiras concurs with Beverley: “High literature is no longer effective, it would
seem, in the fight against late-capitalist globalization; instead, other cultural possibilities must
4 John Beverley is professor of Spanish and Latin American literature and cultural studies at the University of
Pittsburgh. 5 Beverley, John. “The Margin at the Centre”. Gugelberger (1996) Pp. 23 – 41.
6Beverley, John. Testimonio On the Politics of Truth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2004. P.34.
7 Ibid. P. 39.
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be investigated” testimonial literature being one of these.8 However, Moreiras also warns
against “the risk of fetishizing testimonio, in a farcically ideological gesture of willed
compensation.”9 Moreiras is right to ask “whether the attraction of testimonio for the Latin
Americanist critic is a function of Latin Americanism as an instrument of colonial
domination or a function of Latin Americanism as an obstacle to colonial domination.”10
Whenever the privileged interact with the underprivileged it is imperative that questions are
raised to prevent a repetition of relationships of domination. However, Moreiras does not take
into account gender and the testimonios assessed in this dissertation have been compiled and
produced by women often with women readers in mind. Whilst female readers, writers and
testimonistas may have come from very different socio-economic backgrounds, they share, to
some extent, experiences of a repressive patriarchal system and are therefore united in a way
in which the male critics and colonial subjects that Moreiras envisages are not.
Beverley also underscores two developments that he considers were crucial for the
international success of testimonio: firstly, the acknowledgment of the genre by Cuba’s
literary establishment as signified by the celebrated ‘Casa de Las Américas’ prize in the
category of testimonio established in 1970.11
Secondly, Beverley points to the international
popularity of key works of testimonial literature: Esteban Montejo and Miguel Barnet’s
Biografía de un cimarrón12
(The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave)13
and Che Guevara’s
Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria14
(Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War)15
both of which were published in Cuba.
8 Moreiras, Alberto. “The Aura of Testimonio”. The Exhaustion of Difference. The Politics of Latin American
Cultural Studies. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 2001. P. 213. 9 Ibid. P. 216.
10 Ibid. P. 216.
11 Beverley (2004) P. 32.
12 Barnet, Miguel. Biografía de un Cimarrón. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. 1966.
13 Barnet, Miguel. The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave. Translated by Jocasta Innes. London: Bodley Head.
1968. 14
Guevara, Che. Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria. La Habana: Unión de Artistas y Escritores de Cuba.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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Barnet describes the way in which Biografía de un cimarrón developed. As “an
anthropologist with a deep interest in Cuban history” Barnet first saw the details of the life of
Esteban Montejo in a newspaper article celebrating Cubans who were over the age of one
hundred.16
He details the way in which his subsequent interviews with Montejo were
transformed into the first-person narrative that would arguably become the first testimonio.17
Barnet contributes to the discussion regarding the ‘truth value’ of testimonio as literary and/or
historical, factual discourse. He writes “por supuesto nuestro trabajo no es histórico. La
historia aparece porque es la vida de un hombre que pasa por ella.”18
(Of course our work is
not historical. History appears because a man’s life passes through it.) This statement
suggests that while a historical account may not be the prime objective of testimonio, the
genre is nevertheless able to provide historical information, albeit as a by-product. Yet Barnet
also stresses “no intentamos nosotros crear un documento literario, una novela.”19
(We did
not try and create a literary document, a novel.) Barnet’s assertions continue to leave the
question of whether testimonio should be classified as fact or fiction unanswered, suggesting
that the genre exceeds such classifications.
Beverley stresses that urgency is another defining feature of testimonio: “The situation of
narration in testimonio has to involve an urgency to communicate, a problem of repression,
poverty, subalternity, imprisonment, struggle for survival, implicated in the act of narration
itself.”20
If testimonio is to represent a situation of “repression” and “subalternity” as
1963. 15
Guevara, Che. Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War. Translated by Victoria Ortiz. New York:
Duke University Press. 1996. 16
Nance (2006) P. 1. 17
Nance (2006) suggests that “Among Latin Americanists, the genre of the testimonio is most often traced to
Esteban Montejo and Miguel Barnet’s Biografia de un Cimarrón (Biography of a Runaway Slave).” P. 1. 18
Barnet (1966). P. 5. All translations are mine. 19
Ibid. P. 5. 20
Beverley (2004) P.32.
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Beverley suggests, then it comes as no surprise that many women have used this genre as a
way in which to communicate their particular experiences. In this dissertation women’s
testimonios will be studied exclusively in view of the particular significance of the testimonio
as a vehicle through which women, a group to whom representation has historically been
denied, have expressed their experience of oppression. Indeed, testimonio and the women’s
movement have been long connected:
A critical sociocultural coincidence [for the testimonio] was the growth of the feminist
movement in the mid to late seventies, and with it the advent of women’s studies
courses [...] First World women’s aspirations towards gender-based solidarity further
bolstered interest in women’s testimonios.21
In addition, Jean Franco has suggested that the genre of women’s testimonio “lends itself
effectively to the story of conversion and consciencización [sic] that occurs when women
transgress the boundaries of domestic space.”22
Whilst much has been written on testimonio,
an analysis of the genre which includes this explicitly woman-oriented and feminist
perspective has been largely neglected.
Beverley has been a particularly outspoken advocate of the political possibilities of the
testimonio stating that historically oppressed people can use testimonial literature “as a
weapon, as a way of fighting back”23
as it offers “a challenge and an alternative to the
patriarchal and elitist function the author plays in class and sexually and racially divided
societies.”24
Moreover:
[Testimonio] is also a way of putting on the agenda [...] the problems of poverty and
oppression, for example in rural areas that are not normally visible in the dominant
forms of representation.25
21
Nance( 2006) P. 177. 22
Franco. Jean. “Going Public: Reinhabiting the Private.” Yúdice, George, Franco, Jean (Eds.). On Edge The
Crisis of Contemporary Latin American Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1992. P. 71. 23
Beverley (2004) P.2 24
Ibid. P. 35. 25
Ibid. P. 33.
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It is clear that a genre that represents those to whom representation had previously been
denied is a genre that is politically useful for women.
As mentioned earlier, a rise in women’s participation in the field of literary production has
been matched by an increase in feminist groups and “New Social Movements.”26
In her
discussion of the growth in women’s participation in civil society Franco notes that as neo-
liberalism has spread, so has its opposition. In accordance with Beverley and Moreiras,
Franco finds that testimonio “most clearly registers the emergence of a new class of
participants in the public sphere.”27
A feminist interpretation of testimonio as a genre which
enables women and others who have traditionally been silenced by canonical versions of
history and literature to speak, will inform the investigation into the genre that follows. This
interpretation will also provide an entry point from which the discussion on truth and
testimonio will develop as it raises the question of whether this “new class of participants”
and their literary representations have successfully challenged canonical versions of history
and politics. The Rigoberta Menchú testimonio and associated ‘controversy’ provide a
compelling example of an attempt by someone from a historically oppressed group to
produce a new version of ‘truth’ which was initially exalted and then eventually (at least
partially) publicly discredited. At issue is whether women like Menchú create factual
narratives or imaginative fictions.
26
For a useful discussion on the development of New Social Movements see Mayo, Marjorie. “Social
Movements Old and New: alternatives or allies?”. Global Citizens Social Movements and the Challenge of
Globalization. London and New York: Zed Press. 2005. Pp. 73 – 92. 27
Franco (1992) P. 70.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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Chapter one of this dissertation will therefore examine Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me
nació la conciencia (1983)28
and the controversy it sparked. Chapter two will consider the
overtly literary The Little School (1986)29
by Alicia Partnoy and the polyphonic La Noche de
Tlatelolco (1971)30
by Elena Poniatowska. The literary devices used in these two works will
be examined along with an analysis of their conformity to notions such as historical truth.
Chapter three will examine the polyphonic and more supposedly factual anthropological
testimonios compiled by Margaret Hooks in Guatemalan Women Speak31
and Margaret
Randall in Sandino’s Daughters.32
The persuasive techniques used in these testimonios will
be highlighted so that any facile distinction between literary and factual testimonial literature
will be shown to be problematic.
28
Burgos, Elizabeth. Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia. Barcelona: Seix Barral. 1992. 29
Partnoy, Alicia. The Little School. Tales of Disappearance and Survival. San Francisco: Midnight Editions.
1986. 30
Poniatowska, Elena. La Noche de Tlatelolco. Testimonios de Historia Oral. México DF: Ediciones Era. 1971. 31
Hooks, Margaret. Guatemalan Women Speak. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. 1991. 32
Randall (1981).
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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Chapter One
Rigoberta Menchú: Controversy or Political
Discrepancy?
Testimonial literature has become an important genre for empowering subaltern women.
Jean Franco33
I felt obliged to point out gaps between Rigoberta’s story and that of neighbours because of
the enormous authority that so many readers have attributed to it.
David Stoll34
Sigo ocultando lo que yo considero que nadie sabe, ni siquiera un antropólogo, ni un
intelectual, por más que tenga muchos libros, no saben distinguir todos nuestros secretos. (I
carry on hiding what I think no one knows, not even an anthropologist or an intellectual, no
matter how many books they have, they don’t know all our secrets.)
Rigoberta Menchú35
Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia (1983) was translated into English
as I, Rigoberta Menchú An Indian Woman in Guatemala (1984) and is arguably the most
famous example of Latin American women’s testimonio. Transcribed and edited by the
Venezuelan anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos, the book is based on taped interviews with
Rigoberta Menchú that took place while the Guatemalan activist was travelling to Europe to
raise awareness about the inhumane military repression of indigenous peasants and suspected
political ‘subversives’ in her homeland. In keeping with Beverley’s aforementioned assertion
that testimonio is a way for the oppressed to fight back, in the prologue to Menchú’s
testimonio Burgos informs us that “Rigoberta ha elegido el arma de la palabra como medio de
33
Franco (1992) P. 71. 34
Stoll, David. “The Battle of Rigoberta.” Arias (2001) P. 393. Italics are mine. 35
Burgos, Elizabeth. Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia. Barcelona: Seix Barral. 1992. P.
271.
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lucha, y dicha palabra es lo que yo he querido ratificar por escrito” (Rigoberta has chosen the
weapon of the word as a means to fight, and this word is what I wanted to record in
writing).36
In order to demonstrate support for Menchú’s struggle, Burgos organised and edited
Menchú’s original testimony so that it is divided into thirty-three chapters, each of which deal
with a separate issue or event chronologically. Many of the early chapters detail the cultural
practices of Menchú’s indigenous ethnic group, the Quiché Mayans, providing an
“anthropological framing” for the more political narrative that follows.37
Throughout these
descriptions the conditions of poverty of the indigenous communities is constantly reiterated.
For example, Chapter VII, “Muerte del hermanito en la finca” 38
(Death of little brother on the
estate), describes the way in which two of Menchú’s brothers died whilst their parents
undertook highly exploitative agricultural work. The reader is informed that Menchú’s eldest
brother died due to the pesticides that were being used on the farms and her youngest brother
from malnutrition.
As Menchú’s testimonio develops description of governmental and military repression is
paralleled with details of the organisation of the indigenous community and the introduction
of guerrilla tactics. According to Menchú, crucial to the guerrilla struggle in her community
was the organisation entitled Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC) (Committee for Peasant
Unity) to which Menchú and many of her family members belonged. The CUC was forced to
remain a clandestine organisation due to heavy military repression which meant that Menchú
and her family had to constantly travel and remain undercover in order to avoid capture by
the military. Often referred to as the climax of the book, Chapter XXIII entitled “Tortura y
36
Ibid. P. 16. All translations are mine. 37
Gugelberger (1996) P. 114. 38
Burgos (1992). P. 59
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muerte de su hermanito quemado vivo junto con otras personas delante de los miembros de la
comunidad y de sus familiares”39
(Torture and death of her little brother burned alive along
with other people in front of members of the community and their families) recounts the
events surrounding the capture of Menchú’s brother by the Guatemalan army. According to
Menchú, the army, determined to show that it would not tolerate political “subversives”, used
torture, mass murder and indiscriminate violence to intimidate peasants and dissuade them
from joining the guerrilla forces. The chapter gives an extremely harrowing account of the
way in which Menchú’s brother and others were tortured before being burned alive, and as
such it can be difficult to read. Studies on trauma and testimony would suggest that it is likely
that Menchú faced enormous difficulty when attempting to articulate the violence her
community faced. Nevertheless, Menchú recites the event with clarity and detail, perhaps
reflecting the fact that creating a narrative about traumatic events can help to integrate
traumatic experiences into a psychological understanding of one’s life and thus aid the
recovery process.40
Menchú does not describe her personal emotional response during the ordeal preferring
instead to briefly note how “everyone” was angered by the military’s inhumane punishments,
thus reinforcing the fact that her testimonio is a representative account.41
She allows horrific
description of the prolonged torture to communicate the event without engaging in
sentimentalism. The lack of ornate description communicates the sense of shock and
dehumanisation caused by the military’s actions. In this example understatement is more
powerful than exaggeration or hyperbole.
39
Ibid. P. 198 40
For more on the “Testimony Method” see Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery from Domestic Abuse to
Political Terror. London: Pandora. 2001. P. 181. 41
After describing the anger felt by her father, Menchú adds: “Y esa cólera claro, la teníamos todos.” (And of
course we all had that anger). Burgos (1992) P. 204.
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As well as explaining the different forms of repression and discrimination that the indigenous
population of Guatemala faced, Menchú also discusses gender roles, the differences between
men and women, and the need to incorporate women into the struggle against indigenous
oppression. From the very beginning of the testimonio a strong sense of the gendered division
of labour is developed as Menchú asserts that cutting sugar is “trabajo de los hombres”42
(men’s work) and women are situated within the domestic sphere. She describes the
differences in the education of young girls and young boys: whilst young boys are given “los
instrumentos de trabajo” (work/agricultural tools) to play with, girls are given a “tablita para
lavar” (little wash board) and encouraged to “aprender cositas de la casa, a limpiar, por
ejemplo, a lavar la casa, coser el pantalón del hermanito” (learn little things about the home,
to clean, for example, to wash the house, to sew her little brothers’ trousers).43
Whilst these
gender roles are not criticised, the experience of married women, as explored in Chapter
XXIX “Enseñanzas recibidas de la madre” (Lessons received from mother) does appear to be
more critical. The chapter details the way in which “la mujer casada no tiene toda la libertad
de salir, de ir sola o visitar a los vecinos” (married women do not have the freedom to go out,
to go alone or to visit the neighbours).44
In addition, traditional gender roles are explicitly challenged by Menchú’s mother, Juana
Tum Kótoja, a midwife and medicine woman who helps people in her community. Juana
Tum Kótoja denounces “machismo” saying that “ni el hombre es culpable ni la mujer es
culpable del machismo, sino que el machismo es parte de toda la sociedad”45
(neither man
nor woman is responsible for sexism, but rather it is part of the whole of society).
42
Ibid. P. 23 43
Ibid. P. 36 44
Ibid. P. 242 45
Ibid. P. 241
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Furthermore, Menchú’s mother encouraged women to become involved in the struggle.
Menchú quotes her as saying “no te obligo a que dejes de sentirte mujer, pero tu participación
tiene que ser igual que la de tus hermanos”46
(I don’t want to make you stop feeling like a
woman but your participation must be equal to that of your brothers).
Menchú follows her mother’s advice and the following chapter is entitled “Sobre la mujer.
Rigoberta renuncia al matrimonio y a la maternidad”47
(About women. Rigoberta renounces
marriage and motherhood). Throughout the chapter Menchú talks about the importance of
women and the difficulty many “compañeros” have in accepting women into the movement
as equals, “les cuesta un poco aceptar la participación de la mujer, tanto en cosas
superficiales como en cosas profundas”48
(they find it difficult to accept the participation of
women, both in small things and profound things). She discusses the idea of women
organising separately before rejecting it because “las mujeres también trabajan y son
explotadas”49
(women are also employed and are exploited) and “hemos encontrado que
cuando discutimos la problemática de la mujer, hay necesidad de que el hombre esté presente
para que también contribuya, opine cómo se va a hacer con esa problemática. Que aprendan
también”50
(we have discovered that when we discuss women’s challenges/problems, it is
necessary for men to be present so that they contribute, give their opinion on how to
overcome the problem. They must learn as well).
Surprisingly, despite its prominence few critics have commented on the representation of
gender or traditional gender roles in Menchú’s testimony. The themes of trauma and
testifying as a means of creating a therapeutic framework within which to place traumatic
46
Ibid. P. 243 47
Ibid. P. 245 48
Ibid. P. 246 49
Ibid. P. 246 50
Ibid. P. 247
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experiences have also been largely ignored, despite the fact that the academic responses to
Menchú’s testimonio were prolific. Unsurprisingly for a politically charged text that deals
with peasant exploitation, land ownership, military repression and guerrilla warfare, critical
responses to the text have been largely affected by the political persuasion of the critics and
commentators. As we have seen one of Menchú’s most celebrated advocates on the Left is
John Beverley who has published a series of articles on the general topic of testimonio.
Throughout his work, Beverley often refers to Menchú’s testimonio as an example of the way
in which the genre allows the subaltern to speak. Beverley also suggests that Menchú’s text
was “produced out of a general revolutionary upsurge in Central America.”51
As we have
seen, Beverley echoes Burgos’ summary of Menchú’s aims, when he states that he is
interested in “how people who are marginalised and exploited, like Menchú [...] use
something like testimonio for their purposes: that is, as a weapon, a way of fighting back.”52
In 1999 David Stoll,53
a US anthropologist, published a book entitled Rigoberta Menchú and
the Story of All Poor Guatemalans which denied Menchú this “way of fighting back” by
asking “What if much of Rigoberta’s story is not true?”54
Throughout the critique that follows
this question, Stoll repeatedly asserts that he is not trying to refute the main points made in
Menchú’s testimony:
There is no doubt about the most important points: that a dictatorship massacred
thousands of indigenous peasants, that the victims included half of Rigoberta’s
immediate family, that she fled to Mexico to save her life, and that she joined a
revolutionary movement to liberate her country. On these points, Rigoberta’s account
is beyond challenge and deserves the attention it receives.55
51
Beverley (2004) P.1. 52
Ibid. P.2. 53
David Stoll works at Middlebury College as assistant professor of anthropology. 54
Stoll, David. Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Boulder: Westview Press. 1999. P.
viii 55
Ibid. P. viii.
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Nevertheless, Stoll ploughs through Menchú’s account searching for inaccuracies and
omissions, arguing that “when the future Nobel laureate told her story in 1982, she drastically
revised the pre-war experience of her village to suit the needs of the revolutionary
organization she had joined.”56
His suggested explanation is that “when a person becomes a
symbol for a cause, the complexity of a particular life is concealed in order to turn it in to
representative life.”57
Stoll’s main criticisms are that rural life in Guatemala is more complex
than Menchú portrays it and “many” Guatemalans did not support the guerrillas. He states
that Menchú did not see her brother die, that he was not burned to death but instead was shot;
that the fire in the Spanish embassy, which killed Menchú’s father, may have been started by
the protestors themselves, and that the CUC did not originate in the way Menchú claims that
it did.
As Stoll critics have since pointed out, and as he also admits, his “evidence” is potentially
just as flawed as Menchú’s account.58
The government sources to which he sometimes refers
have no reason to accurately recount the atrocities its army carried out, especially seeing as
these actions eventually began to attract international condemnation. The local people Stoll
interviewed when he visited Guatemala, decades after the event, are endowed with no greater
ability to remember accurately than Menchú. Indeed Stoll admits that “disagreements in my
Uspantán sources will become evident.”59
He continues “[w]hom are we to believe? If there
are disagreements, might not the stories I gathered be as unreliable as Rigoberta’s? Perhaps
they are even less reliable.”60
56
Ibid. P. x 57
Ibid. P. xi 58
Stoll’s most notable critics include John Beverley, Mary Louise Pratt, Danilo Rodríguez, Carolina Escobar
Sarti, Carol A. Smith and Doris Sommer. 59
Stoll (1999) P. 63. 60
Ibid. P. 63.
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Menchú was indeed selective about what she did and did not report in her testimonio, but she
was no more or less selective than Stoll. In an interview published in the Spanish daily
newspaper El País61
Menchú states of Stoll “He has already reached a conclusion ahead of
time, and he adorns everything to reach that particular conclusion.”62
In his
“Acknowledgements” Stoll highlights the fact that “not everything we heard [in Guatemala]
supports my arguments”63
but continues “what is incongruent I have reported as well, so that
readers can draw different conclusions if they wish.”64
However, not all of what was
incongruent was published, indeed “of the 120 interviews, Stoll chose only the few he
thought would be useful for his purposes and discarded many others that did not support his
argument.”65
Despite Stoll’s numerous attempts to play down his attack on Menchú’s credibility, his
ideological standpoint soon becomes apparent in the light of his previous publications. His
book, Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala (1993) attempted to challenge
Marxist explanations of peasant involvement in guerrilla struggle.66
According to Stoll,
peasants do not join revolutionary guerrilla struggles out of poverty or oppression nor do they
fight for ideological reasons. Rather, they are forced to choose to fight with either the
government army or the guerrilla army according to who comes along first or who is most
persuasive; the peasants simply chose the lesser evil, one of “two armies”. Menchú responds
to this argument with indignation:
And the most aberrant of all is that not only are we all ignorant, as Mr Stoll says, so
that both communism and liberation theology were able to manipulate our minds, and
61
Reprinted and translated into English in Arias (2001) Pp. 109 – 117. 62
Arias, Arturo. The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2001. P. 114. 63
The “we” refers to Stoll’s translator Barbara Bocek, an archaeologist from Stanford University who was in
Guatemala working as a US Peace Corps volunteer. See Stoll (1999) P. xvi. 64
Stoll (1999) P. xvi. 65
Escobar Sarti, Carolina. “A Hamburger in Rigoberta’s Black Beans.” Arias (2001) P. 127. 66
Stoll, David. Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala. New York: Columbia University Press.
1993.
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they created us and made us myths, of me in particular they made a barbarous myth, a
mysterious phantasm; he is also saying that we are liars not just ignorant and savage.67
As well as denying the possibility of Guatemalan peasants having their own political agency,
Stoll’s analysis also fails to recognise the power relationship in which the “two armies”
operate. Arguably, revolutionary guerrillas in Latin America fight against imperialism and
the oppression of peasants and indigenous people. Far right-wing military regimes, on the
other hand, more often fight in order to maintain the status quo. Stoll implies that
revolutionary guerrilla struggles and US-backed, pro-neoliberal military regimes both use
peasants for their own ends, an implication that neglects to acknowledge the material
conditions that lead to peasant insurrections and the revolutionary ideologies that develop as
a consequence. While Stoll attempts to attribute equal blame to the military and the
revolutionary guerrilla forces alike – the Comisíon para el Esclarecimiento Histórico, the
Commission for Historical Clarification or CEH, an independent organisation set up in order
to investigate the violence, “attributed blame to the Guatemalan army for 93% of the human
rights violations”. These violations included “massacres of 626 villages”68
and the murder of
up to 200, 000 Guatemalans.69
The violence perpetrated by the army against the Mayan
communities was so severe that the CEH “determined that the army had committed acts of
genocide against the Maya.”70
No such claim is made by any independent human rights
organisation against the guerrilla forces.
Once independent human rights commissions had published such findings, Stoll’s analysis of
the peasant choice between “two armies” as proposed in his 1993 book, was not well
received, a fact which some of his critics have suggested might be the reason behind his
67
Arias (2001) P. 114. 68
Ibid. P. 14. 69
Sanford, Victoria. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
2003. P. 14. 70
Ibid. P. 14. Italics are mine.
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exposé of Menchú.71
The fact that Stoll’s own account of the guerrilla war was challenged by
Menchú seems to add weight to Beverley’s suggestion that “the argument between Menchú
and Stoll is not so much about what really happened as it is about who has the authority to
narrate.”72
Taking into account their respective socio-economic backgrounds, races,
professions and genders – it is interesting that Stoll should feel his version of events
challenged by the “authority” of Menchú and her testimonio. As Carol A. Smith73
and
Beverley have argued74
(and as Stoll himself inadvertently lets slip occasionally)75
Stoll has
used Menchú’s testimony in order to voice his disapproval of guerrilla warfare and
revolutionary politics in general. If Menchú is guilty of allowing her political affiliations to
influence the construction of her arguments, then so is Stoll.
After closely reading Stoll’s attempts to blame indigenous people for their poverty Smith
concludes that Stoll “produces a polemic about Rigoberta [...] which comes less from
scholarly conviction and more from personal frustration about losing a monopoly on
authority.” 76
Indeed, that a privileged, white, US male has had some success in discrediting
an indigenous woman from a peasant village in Guatemala is not without its political
ramifications and paradoxes. In an interview Menchú was asked if the “scandal” created by
Stoll’s “exposé” hurt her. She responds:
Yes, very much because it humiliates the victims. It wasn’t enough to kill them, to
leave them dead. It wasn’t enough that my mother was killed, my father, my brothers,
but they even want to build a polemic around the dead.77
71
See Smith, Carol, A. “Why write an exposé of Rigoberta Menchú?” Arias (2001) Pp. 141 – 155. 72
Beverley (2004) P. 82. 73
Smith, Carol, A. “Why write an exposé of Rigoberta Menchú?” Arias (2001) Pp 141 – 155. 74
“Introduction”. Beverley(2004) 75
E.g. he asks “Does armed struggle protect peasants from repression and empower them, or is it a high-risk
strategy that usually ends in defeat and disillusion, after sacrificing peasants to romantic images of resistance?”
Stoll (1999). P. 10. 76
Stoll cites traditional farming methods and high birth rates as factors leading to indigenous people forcing
themselves into poverty. See Stoll (1999) P. 19. Smith (2001) responded by showing that Stoll confused cause
and effect: the factors he lists are effects of poverty, not the cause of it. For the question of loss of authority see
Smith, Carol, A. “Why write an exposé of Rigoberta Menchú? Arias (2001). P. 153. 77
Aznárez, Juan Jesus. “Rigoberta Menchú Those Who Attack me Humiliate the Victims.” Arias (2001) P. 115.
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At the heart of the controversy created by Stoll’s critique of Menchú’s testimonio is the
question of truth and authority. Whereas Menchú’s historically silenced position was
arguably overcome by the wide dissemination of her testimonio, Stoll’s critique attempted to
remove this newly acquired authority, deny her truth and thus relegate her once again to the
position of the subaltern that cannot speak (to paraphrase Gayatri C. Spivak).78
However, it is
correct to point out that Menchú herself was not entirely truthful when recounting her story, a
fact that she highlights repeatedly throughout her testimonio. Much has been made of the fact
that she repeatedly refers to her “secrets”, things she will never tell anyone because they are
too sacred to her and her culture (see for example, the tradition of the Nahual in Chapter III)79
or simply for reasons of safety (for example, references to the guerrilla organisation).
Whilst some might be willing to conclude that Stoll was right to point out the alleged
inconsistencies in Menchú’s story, many have underlined the fact that her testimonio is a
work of literature, never meant to be taken as a piece of empirical evidence. A fundamental
misunderstanding as to the nature of testimonial literature has informed Stoll’s attitude. He
states “Maybe it is time to liberate I, Rigoberta Menchú from the category of testimonio,
which by its very name will continue to arouse expectations of eyewitness truth that this
particular example cannot withstand.”80
Indeed, the definition of the genre provided by
Nance81
states that “eyewitness truth” is not a necessary component of the genre. Rather,
Nance and Beverley, as we have seen, stress that testimonio is a representation of repression,
a way for those who have not been able to enter into the canon historically to use literature to
fight back. Menchú highlights the representative nature of her testimonio throughout, most
memorably when she famously states, “Mi situación personal engloba toda la realidad de un
78
See Ashcroft, Bill et al (Ed.). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures.
New York: Routlege. 1989. 79
Burgos (1992) Pp. 39 – 42. See third epigraph heading this chapter. 80
Stoll, David. “The Battle of Rigoberta.” Arias (2001) P. 393. 81
See the Introduction to this dissertation, page 1.
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pueblo.”82
(My personal situation incorporates the reality of a people.) She explicitly states
that this “pueblo” refers to all poor Guatemalans. Menchú’s life experience is a metonymical
representation of her ethnic and social group. This notion of the metonymical expression of a
collective experience is the answer that Menchú has given to Stoll’s charges that she
fabricated parts of her testimonio.
Stoll therefore seems to have confused a genre that uses literary techniques to communicate
the impact of injustice and to represent the effects of oppression with a genre that provides
objective, factual eyewitness accounts. Throughout her testimonio, Menchú uses literary
techniques such as the repetition of the first person plural to refer to “nosotros, los
indígenas.” (we, the indigenous people).83
Where Stoll has found that Menchú lied, others
might suggest that she has employed literary techniques such as hyperbole or exaggeration or
as noted earlier, understatement, to strengthen her representative story and heighten the sense
of injustice and indignation that the reader feels on reading such accounts. Stoll has argued
that Menchú did not witness her brother’s murder but instead heard about it from her mother.
It is possible that Menchú presented her brother’s death as if she witnessed to it so as to avoid
the less empathetic reported speech and present instead the more powerful first-person
depiction of events discussed above.
It is clear that throughout these debates, the notion of truth continually resurfaces. Indeed,
despite Foucault’s famous challenge to the contrary, ideas such as universal “truth” and
scientific ‘truth’ are still sacrosanct, especially among scientists and social scientists.
However, Foucault’s discourse analysis could be applied to the “epistemes” of Stoll’s
anthropology to uncover a series of “essential objects” (such as ethnic groups), “descriptive
82
Burgos (1992) P. 21. 83
Ibid. P. 106
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statements”, the “permanence of concepts” and the “persistence of themes” that mark out the
social creation of anthropological discourse and related notions of “truth”. 84
In the context of
the controversy created by Stoll, it is important to note that Foucault’s analysis has suggested
that:
The rules of regulation of discourse are not only limits that enable the truth to be told
but also constraints. They govern what may be said, and in what mode (scientifically
or not), what is considered valid, what is considered appropriate to be circulated and
who may say what in a given setting.85
It might therefore be argued that it is Stoll’s position within anthropological institutions and
discourse that has encouraged him to challenge the authority of Menchú. Indeed, Menchú has
no authority within this particular discourse; her race, gender and socio-economic positioning
would ordinarily relegate her to the position of object not agent of anthropological research.
Lastly, was Menchú’s aim to create an empirically accurate autobiography? Or was she
hoping to describe the events in her home country to a foreign audience in an attempt to
encourage international condemnation of the violence? As an anthropologist, Stoll applied the
standards of scientific accuracy and truth pertaining to anthropological discourse to a
deliberately emotive and literary narrative. Therefore, despite the debate surrounding her
testimonio, Menchú is still able to convince many that her aim was neither to deceive nor to
produce empirical evidence for sociologists and anthropologists. Rather her objective was to
produce a persuasive and compelling first- hand narrative about indigenous peoples and the
economic exploitation and violent political repression they faced in 1980s Guatemala in order
to encourage empathy and solidarity among an international readership and especially among
women.
84
Simons, Jon. (Ed.). “Michel Foucault (1926 – 84)”. Contemporary Critical Theorists from Lacan to Said.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2006. Pp. 185 – 200. 85
Ibid. P. 187.
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Chapter Two
Partnoy and Poniatowska: Defiance of Denial
Testimonio and the political use of literary technique
“Truth” is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation,
distribution, circulation and operation of statements.
Michel Foucault86
If the intent of the represser [sic] is to silence, then speaking out is a defiance, a small victory.
Alicia Partnoy87
Memory must overcome forgetting, so that the students who died did not die in vain. This is
clearly the essence of Poniatowska’s message.
Christopher Harris88
Like the testimonio of Rigoberta Menchú, Alicia Partnoy’s testimonio The Little School.
Tales of Disappearance and Survival is a witness’s account of a brutal, politically-motivated
but undeclared war that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of civilians.89
Like the civil
war in Guatemala, the “Dirty War” in Argentina was executed by the military against so-
called political “subversives”. Approximately 30, 000 people were kidnapped, tortured,
murdered or “disappeared” during the conflict which lasted from 1976 until 1984: “Union
86
Foucault, Michel. Power The Essential Works. Faubion, J (Ed.). Translated by Hurley, Robert. New York:
New Press. 2000. P. 132. 87
Alicia Partnoy as quoted in “An interview with the author”, Taylor, Diana. Disappearing Acts. Spectacles of
Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War”. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 1997. P.
158. 88
Harris, Christopher. “Remembering 1968 in Mexico: Elena Poniatowska’s La Noche de Tlatelolco as
Documentary Narrative”. Bulletin of Latin American Research. Vol. 24, No. 4. 2005. Pp. 481 – 495. P. 492. 89
Partnoy, Alicia. The Little School. Tales of Disappearance and Survival. San Francisco: Midnight Editions.
1986.
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activists, leaders of community aid groups, even student activists who petitioned authorities
for paper and pencils for use in school, became targets.”90
That Partnoy is witness to a situation of injustice and that the text is mainly narrated by her as
the protagonist and victim of these events means that the testimonio coincides largely with
the definitions of testimonio provided by Nance and Beverley.91
However, the style and
composition of The Little School mark it out as a particularly unique and purposefully literary
example of the genre. Partnoy’s testimonio and the contribution it makes to the discussion
regarding ‘truth value’ of testimonial literature will be assessed before approaching
Poniatowska’s La Noche de Tlatelolco which also offers an insight into the notion of
testimonio as the literary expression of previously unheard or ignored truths.92
Unlike Menchú’s testimony, Partnoy’s has been crafted by the testimonista herself (as
opposed to a journalist or anthropological figure such as Burgos). The result is a compilation
of twenty short chapters recounting Partnoy’s experiences in the military detention centre to
which she was taken in order to be tortured due to her political activism. In the “Introduction”
she describes the development of her political involvement, “I was elected student
government representative and was active in the Peronist Youth Movement (Juventud
Universitaria Peronista.)”93
She goes on to describe the political tensions before the 1976
coup explaining that:
Attending school became hazardous. I had to pass between two soldiers who were
sitting with machine guns at the entrance of the building. A highly ranked officer
90
Lewis, Daniel. The History of Argentina. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2003. P. 143. The military coup
began on the 24th
of March 1976 when General Videla seized power. The coup did not end until 1983 following
Argentina’s defeat in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict and growing international condemnation. In October
1983 elections took place and Alfonsín was elected. He “promised that the question of the ‘disappeared’ would
be fully investigated and one of his moves as president was to set up the National Commission on Disappeared
People (CONADEP) whose brief was ‘to clarify the tragic events in which thousands of people disappeared.’”
See Nunca Más. A Report by Argentina’s National Commission on Disappeared People. London and Boston:
Faber and Faber. 1986. P. xv. 91
See the Introduction to this dissertation pages 1 -3. 92
Poniatowska, Elena. La Noche de Tlatelolco. Testimonios de Historia Oral. México DF: Ediciones Era. 1971. 93
Partnoy (1986) P. 12.
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would request my I.D., check it against a list of “wanted” activists and search my
belongings.94
However, increasing political violence and repression did not discourage political activism.
Rather resistance movements flourished among “human rights advocates, labor, youth,
community groups and women.”95
Indeed, Argentinean “women also campaigned for the
abolition of compulsory military service, joint child custody, reproductive rights, sex
education and legal rights for children born to unmarried mothers.”96
Similarly, far from
being silenced by military repression, Partnoy was politicized and further radicalized by the
lack of democracy under the military junta, “the coup triggered my anger and I decided to
become more militant.”97
Nor did Partnoy’s detention and subsequent torture have the desired
effect of silencing her. Instead, on being released, she set about helping those who were still
detained. Partnoy’s The Little School should be placed within this context of resistance to and
defiance of the Argentine military’s attempt to silence political activists. Further, the
testimonio can be seen as a declaration of solidarity with other victims of the “Dirty War”.
Through her testimonio Partnoy bears witness to the horrific events to which she was subject,
an act which she hopes will help bring the perpetrators of the violence to justice and prevent
the victims from being ignored and forgotten. Partnoy states, “The voices of my friends at the
Little School grew stronger in my memory. By publishing these stories I feel those voices
will not pass unheard.”98
Partnoy also informs us that the stories she had originally written were rejected by her editor
for not containing enough information about herself:
94
Ibid. P.13. 95
Keen, B. Haynes, K. A History of Latin America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2000. Pp. 331. 96
Ibid. Pp. 331 - 2. 97
Partnoy (1986) P. 13. 98
Ibid. P. 18.
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They wanted me to talk more about myself in the book. Most of the stories were about
my friends who never reappeared. But the editor told me that the reading public
would want to see me in the stories. I didn’t want the book to be about me; I wanted a
collective voice; I wanted it to be about a whole generation.99
Writing the testimonio was not the only way that Partnoy attempted to help those who
suffered and to bring the perpetrators to justice, “I also testified before the Commission
(CONAEP) [Argentine Commission for the Investigation of Disappearances] appointed to
investigate disappearance.”100
Of her “work on behalf of the remaining prisoners and the
disappeared ones”101
She explains “As a survivor, I felt my duty was to help those suffering
injustice.”102
Diana Taylor argues:
By writing literary works accessible to a general public, Partnoy hoped that the tales
of disappearance and survival would reach a wider audience that could witness and
condemn the atrocity. Her purpose was to go beyond the factual limits of human
rights reports in order to describe the experience of disappearance, the fears of
succumbing to inhumane treatment by losing one’s humanity, the tiny moments of
personal triumph in a system designed to destroy personhood.103
In order to “go beyond the factual” Partnoy uses literary techniques usually associated with
fiction to make her account more vivid and to encourage reader identification. In the
“Introduction” Julia Alvarez refers to this testimonio as a “fictionalised account” of Partnoy’s
time in prison.104
The three main literary techniques she uses in order to communicate the
experience of detention and torture are: characterisation (for example, she turns ‘Alicia
Partnoy’ into a character described by a third person narrator); changing narrative perspective
(including use of stream of consciousness), and metaphor and symbolism as we shall see
below.
99
Alicia Partnoy as quoted in Taylor (1997) P. 166. 100
Partnoy (1986) P. 17. 101
Ibid. P. 17 102
Ibid. P. 17 103
Taylor (1997) P. 166. 104
Ibid. P. 7.
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The way in which characterisation is employed in The Little School is complex. In the first
chapter, Alicia Partnoy the author becomes ‘Alicia Partnoy’ a character in The Little School.
This character is referred to as ‘she’ by a third-person narrator who is also Alicia Partnoy. It
seems as though, in keeping with the spirit of testimonio, Partnoy wanted her experiences to
be seen as representative and has emphasised this through the use of characterisation. The
‘she’ could be any female prisoner, any one of the thousands of women who were abducted
during the Dirty War. Chapter one uses the third person to describe Partnoy’s original
abduction. It begins:
That day, at noon, she was wearing her husband’s slippers; it was hot and she had not
felt like turning the closet upside down to find her own. There were enough chores to
be done in the house. When they knocked at the door, she walked down the ninety-
foot corridor, flip-flop, flip-flop. For a second she thought that perhaps she should not
open the door; they were knocking with unusual violence... but it was noon time. She
had always waited for them to come at night.105
In this example, the use of the third person distances the reader from the act of the abduction.
Indeed, it has been suggested that in this chapter Partnoy “writes around the violence, as if
writing could somehow isolate, circumvent, and neutralize atrocity.”106
The third person also
suggests a difference between a literary testimonio and a factual, first-person eyewitness
account. Partnoy gave such a factual account in The Breaking of Bodies and Minds: Torture,
Psychiatric Abuse, and the Health Professions107
in which the same events are described
quite differently:
On 12 January 1977 I was home alone with my daughter, Ruth, when I heard the
doorbell ring incessantly. It was noon. I walked down the hallway which separates the
apartment from the main door. I asked, “Who is it?” and they answered, “The
army”.108
105
Ibid. P. 25 106
Taylor (1997) P. 167. 107
Stover, Eric, Nightingale, Elena (Eds.). The Breaking of Bodies and Minds: Torture, Psychiatric Abuse and
the Health Professions. New York: W.H Freeman. 1985. 108
Quoted from Stover (1985) in Taylor (1997) P. 162.
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The way in which the The Little School focuses on details such as the slippers Partnoy was
wearing and the onomatopoeic noise the slippers made as she walked down the long corridor
suggests that Partnoy was consciously using literary techniques to create a more visual and
sensual, less bluntly factual account of what happened to her, which also has the effect of
encouraging empathy and solidarity in the reader. Partnoy therefore makes political use of
literary techniques.
Chapter ten, “A Conversation Under the Rain”, is also written in the third person and it
details the way in which, due to heavy rain, Partnoy and another prisoner were able to talk
more freely as the guards could not hear them. The third-person narrator and past tense are
used to create the sense of a distinctive atmosphere, “This day had been different: the rain
had made it different.”109
The implications of both literal and metaphorical cleansing (‘Alicia
Partnoy’ washes her hands in the rain water) and the symbolism of free flowing water
representing liberty are hard to miss: “The smell of damp earth made her come to grips with
the fact that she was still alive. She inhaled deeply and a rare memory of freedom ticked her
cheekbones.”110
The conversation the friends manage to have in the rain is eventually cut
short when one of the guards comes and takes Partnoy outside to be beaten, stripped and
humiliated. This may be another reason for the use of the third person; Partnoy may have
found it too difficult to describe this torture in the first person. Despite the humiliation of her
torture, however, ‘Alicia Partnoy’ remains defiant and calm in the knowledge that “in spite of
the blows and restraints, in spite of the filth and the torture, both women had that long and
warm conversation under the rain.”111
This ending also represents the triumph of nature,
109
Partnoy (1986) P. 67. 110
Ibid. P. 67. 111
Ibid. P. 73.
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water, purity and freedom (here associated with the feminine) over militarism, society,
brutality and enclosure (here associated with the masculine).112
The other chapters that are not narrated by Partnoy in the first person describe torture as
experienced by her husband and a heavily pregnant woman, Graciela. The chapter entitled
“Graciela: Around the table” describes a torture method used on Graciela in which she was
forced to walk around a small table for hours on end. The use of the first person narrative to
communicate Graciela’s plight has the effect of engaging the reader with her situation in a
more immediate way. For example:
The trip from Cutral-Co to Neuquén was pure hell... They knew I was pregnant. It
hadn’t occurred to me that they could torture me while we were travelling. They did it
during the whole trip: the electric prod on my abdomen because they knew about the
pregnancy... Each shock brought that terrible fear of miscarriage ... and that pain, my
pain, my baby’s pain.113
Although patriarchal gender roles are never explicitly alluded to in The Little School, the
attention paid to the plight of this woman demonstrates that Partnoy was deeply affected by
the mistreatment of pregnant women. Indeed, according to Partnoy during the “Dirty War”
the military “attacked us as mothers, in our motherhood.”114
The abuse is also mentioned in
the “Introduction” and in the final chapter entitled “Nativity” which describes giving birth in
the facility and ends with the key question, “Who knows how many children are born every
day at the Little School?”115
In her appearance before the CONADEP Partnoy adds more
detail:
Graciela, the sister of María Elena Metz who had been kidnapped in Neuquén with
her husband Raúl Metz, had a baby. The little boy came into the world without any
112
Feminine versus masculine symbolism is reiterated in a poem placed before the final chapter which describes
the “fight” between “Life: the power of childbirth” and “Death: the sound of firearms”. It would be fascinating
to explore the gendered symbolism further but unfortunately there is not space to do so here. 113
Partnoy (1986) P. 53. 114
Alicia Partnoy quoted in Taylor (1997) P. 85. 115
Partnoy (1986) P.121.
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medical help, in the torturers’ hut. One of them took him away from his mother, who
herself was taken away a few days later we don’t know where to. (Alicia Partnoy, file
No. 2266.)116
It is clear that, as a mother herself, Partnoy was furious at the torture of pregnant women and
mothers and the kidnapping of their children at the hands of the military.
The first-person narrative voice is also abandoned in the chapter “Ruth’s Father” in which the
recurring words of a nursery rhyme Partnoy’s husband used to sing to their daughter
intertwines with his experience of pain and degradation during torture. The chapter begins
with the words “Daughter, dear my tongue hurts”117
and later he repeats “my tongue is
hurting.”118
Whilst the reason for his tongue hurting is never made explicit in The Little
School in The Breaking of Bodies and Minds Partnoy describes the moment her husband was
brought to her following his torture, “they brought in my husband and told him to tell me of
his torture. He could barely speak because his mouth was sore and his tongue hurt from biting
it so often during the electric shocks.”119
Although the chapter in The Little School never goes
into such candid detail, it manages to effectively convey the feeling of dislocation associated
with torture through the fragmented, almost delirious narrative voice. The husband alternates
between thoughts of his daughter, the nursery rhyme, and description of torture:
This little poem soothed you when you cried; you went to sleep listening to it... I’ve
repeated it for a whole day but I still can’t sleep. Rib-bit rib-bit he sings on the roof...
I won’t see you again... The electric prods on my genitals...Trapped like the little
frog... but we hear him all the time.120
It is clear that throughout the chapter Ruth’s father is frantically trying to recite the nursery
rhyme in order to regain a sense of normality and remember his daughter and the happy
memories he had with her. It has also been suggested that “the intercalated nursery rhyme and
116
Nunca Más. (1986) P. 208. 117
Partnoy (1986) P. 93. 118
Ibid. P. 94. 119
Alicia Partnoy quoted in Taylor (1997) P. 163. 120
Partnoy (1986) P. 93.
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conversation with a two-year-old daughter intensify the representation of torture through
juxtaposition, causing a fresh shock to the reader every time the narrator’s pain reappears.”121
Apart from the three aforementioned chapters, The Little School is narrated in the first person,
which, as well as adhering to the traditional format of testimonio, has the effect of offering a
more intimate insight into the protagonist’s psychological state. The subtitle of the
testimonio, Tales of Disappearance and Survival, highlights the fact that the account is a
representative account about the survivors’ endurance. Through snippets of information about
the various different ways in which despite their torture the “prisoners” were able to support
each other Partnoy shows that even in the most desperate of circumstances, humanity and
solidarity triumph over brutality. In the chapter entitled “Bread” she describes the way in
which the prisoners would save pieces of the bread they were given in order to later offer it to
other prisoners:
Bread is also a means of communicating, a way of telling the person next to me: “I’m
here. I care for you. I want to share the only possession I have.” Sometimes it is easy
to convey the message: When bread distribution is over, we ask, “Sir is there any
more?” When the guard answers that there isn’t any, another prisoner will say “Sir I
have some bread left can I pass it to her?122
The same chapter reproduces part of a poem that Partnoy wrote for a friend at “The Little
School”. The poems that Partnoy writes during her incarceration often interrupt the first-
person narrative voice, communicating the human creativity which Partnoy will not allow her
torturers to quash. Indeed, in the chapter entitled “Poetry” Partnoy shares three of her poems
with new inmates as a gift of solidarity. Soon after, however, the guards’ violence makes her
regret her act of solidarity. As the guard enters their holding cell:
He discovers that the other new prisoner has a loose blindfold, and he punches him.
When I hear the muffled moan, I feel guilty. Instead of reciting poems I should have
121
Nance (2006) P. 45. 122
Partnoy (1986) Pp. 84-85.
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explained to the new prisoners ... I should have told them that at the Little School we
are beaten whenever our blindfolds are loose.123
As well as changing narrative voice to incorporate the third person and poetry, Partnoy also
experiments with style. Sometimes she provides detailed description of her quotidian
experiences at the euphemistically entitled “Little School”, for example her ability to see out
through a gap at the bottom of her blindfold or her habit of keeping in a matchbox a tooth of
hers that was knocked out by a guard. Partnoy’s ability to see out from her blindfold is also a
metaphor for her ability to see through the lies and brutal actions of the military junta’s
euphemistically named Proceso de Reorganización Social (Process of Social
Reorganisation). At other times description of these everyday physical experiences is
contrasted with more intimate memories of her daughter and thoughts of her husband as the
narrative explores the psychological effects of torture and incarceration. In the chapter
entitled “A Puzzle” she admits that she “just can’t remember [her] daughter’s face.”124
After
stating “I want to believe that she is safe”125
she recalls happy memories with her daughter.
This more intimate chapter contrasts sharply with those that detail the inhumane, physical
conditions of “The Little School.”
At times Partnoy develops a more fluid narration which enables her to re-create her
experience as stream of consciousness, as in the chapters about Graciela and her husband’s
torture. In the chapter entitled “Telepathy” she explores the desire to telepathically make
contact with her family, “to control my mind, make it travel, escape, leave.”126
She tries to
visualise her mother in her house and then repeats “I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m still
123
Ibid. P. 106. 124
Ibid. P. 77. 125
Ibid. P. 77. 126
Ibid. P.50.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
33
alive.”127
Despite exploring the notion of psychological escape, the chapter soon returns to the
physical reality of incarceration. One of the male prisoners has been forced to wear a
woman’s nightgown and Partnoy’s experiment in liberating her mind from her physical
confines is interrupted, “I couldn’t continue my telepathy exercise because of the laughter
and humiliation clinging to the air like an annoying smell. In any case, I had been unable to
get through.”128
These various literary techniques result in an intriguing testimonio that is intimately
connected to the notion of a truth. Partnoy must speak her personal truth to counter the fact
that, “[a]ccording to the junta leaders accused of human rights violations in the widely
publicized trials of 1985, these atrocities never happened.”129
If, as Beverley states,
testimonios often incorporate a sense of urgency, then Partnoy’s urgency comes from the
need to expose the reality of the “Dirty War” in order to challenge the denial and silence that
surrounded this period in Argentinean history and in so doing to raise international awareness
about the war and incorporate a realistic understanding of it into the collective cultural
memory.
Nevertheless, the way in which truth is represented in this testimonio is self-consciously
complex. Far from encouraging the simplistic dichotomization between good, truthful victim
on the one hand and evil, lying perpetrator on the other, Partnoy warns us: “Beware: in the
little schools the boundaries between story and history are so subtle that even I can hardly
find them.”130
This warning suggests that her testimonio is not to be taken as entirely factual
and that some aspects have been fictionalised. As we have seen, The Little School
127
Ibid. P.50. 128
Ibid. P. 51. 129
Taylor (1997) P. 151. 130
Partnoy (1986) P. 18.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
34
experiments with narrative voice and style in a way that would support the notion that it is at
least partially a work of fiction.
In contrast, the three appendices provided at the end of the testimonio provide a factual rather
than fictional account. The first appendix, entitled “Cases of the Disappeared at the Little
School” with the sub-heading “January- April 1977” provides a list of the names and details
of the prisoners held there. Between the appendices a map of the “Little School” is also
included. The final appendix, “Descriptions of the Guards at the Little School”, gives enough
detail of the guards’ appearances, names and nicknames to aid prosecution. The inclusion of
such detail at the end of what appears to be an essentially literary work implies that Partnoy
does wish to create a factual account of her experience in the prison despite her earlier
warning. The caution indicates that her testimonio is based on fact but that it is also a literary
piece written from memory at a time when she was under considerable traumatic stress. Some
of the details might have been shaped in keeping with the inevitable fictionalisation of a
series of past events, the limitations of human memory, the necessary psychological
distancing from traumatic experiences, the desire to elicit empathy and solidarity in the reader
and to increase the testimonios representative value. In keeping with Menchú’s stated aim and
the analysis provided by Beverley, Partnoy’s intention may not have been to produce an
account of her incarceration that conforms to dominant conceptions of historical accuracy and
satisfies scientific or empirical standards. Rather it seems Partnoy’s purpose was to represent
what had been denied, the reality of the “Dirty War” as it was personally experienced by
those who were abducted, incarcerated and tortured, especially women.
Like the testimonios of Menchú and Partnoy, Elena Poniatowska’s La Noche de Tlatelolco
(1971)is also informed by a desire to bear witness to politically motivated, violent atrocities
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
35
which were denied by the perpetrators. Translated into English as Massacre in Mexico,131
Poniatowska’s work is a clear example of polyphonic testimonio and provides a strong link
between Partnoy’s literary testimonio and the factual polyphonic versions of the genre we
shall see in Chapter three. In La Noche de Tlatelolco Poniatowska recreates the events
leading up to the shooting of protesting students in the Mexico City square of Tlatelolco at
the hands of the military and the riot police in 1968. The book is divided into two sections,
the first part is entitled “Ganar la Calle” (Win the Street) and demonstrates the beginning of
the Student Movement through the testimonios of those involved, chants, leaflets and
communiqués. The second part, La Noche de Tlatelolco (The Night of Tlatelolco), documents
the “Massacre of Tlatelolco Square” through eyewitness testimonies and newspaper reports.
As we shall see, Poniatowska uses various literary techniques in order to communicate the
intensity of the Student Movement and the shock created by its destruction. She employs
polyphony, visual props (which enhance the sense of realism), careful editing, deliberate
juxtaposition, collage, the creation of a ‘chorus’ of voices, emotive language and the strategic
creation of the sense a hopeful, progressive, successful campaign in part one, which is then
devastated in part two.
Poniatowska has been described as “Mexico’s leading practitioner of documentary fiction
and preeminent committed writer”132
and she is well known for “her hard hitting committed
journalism.”133
As a journalist, Poniatowska was interested in the Student Movement and
“was angered by the presence of the army at UNAM [Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
131
Poniatowska, Elena. Massacre in Mexico. Translated by Helen R. Lane. NewYork: Viking Press. 1975. 132
Steele, Cynthia. Politics, Gender and the Mexican Novel 1965 -1988. Austin: University of Texas Press.
1992. P. 28. For more details on documentary fiction see Foley, Barbara. Telling the Truth: The Theory and
Practice of Documentary Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1984. 133
Castro, Sara, Molloy, Silvia, Sarlo Beatriz (Eds.). Women’s Writing in Latin America. An Anthology.
Boulder: Westview Press. 1991.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
36
Mexico]”134
(National Autonomous University of Mexico). Poniatowska interviewed people
and transcribed their testimonies, carefully crafting the hundreds of testimonios collected
before, during and after the “massacre”. Of La Noche de Tlatelolco Christopher Harris has
stated “The text is a hybrid, because it combines photojournalism, authorial statements,
testimonial statements from survivors and political prisoners as well as extracts from
documentary sources such as political speeches and hospital records.”135
In keeping with the
arguments presented in this dissertation regarding the difficulty of categorising testimonio he
concludes “It defies easy classification as a work of history or fiction.”136
The sense of a
factual or objective presentation begins with the first thirty-three pages of the book which
reproduce photographs of the aftermath of the night of Tlatelolco with emotive captions. A
photograph of the corpse of an extremely young boy is presented opposite a photograph of at
least three more corpses of young people who have clearly been shot. The caption reads
“¿Quién ordenó esto? ¿Quién pudo ordenar esto? Esto es un crimen.” (Who ordered this?
Who could order this? This is a crime.)137
Placed at the beginning of the book these
photographs of the student demonstrations, the armed military response and the dead and
injured students create a visual documentary aesthetic. The effect of the photographs is such
that “with a minimum of words, Poniatowska provides a powerful reconstruction of the
Student Movement, directing her readers to feel shocked and horrified at the scale of the
government’s response against such young and unarmed protestors.”138
Following this initial photographic representation, La Noche de Tlatelolco becomes almost a
transcribed audio experience of Mexico in 1968. Voices are included along with the chants
134
Brewster, Claire. Responding to Crisis in Contemporary Mexico. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.
2005. P. 47. 135
Harris (2005) P. 484. 136
Ibid. P. 484. 137
Poniatowska (1971). Page numbers are not printed on these pages, but it is the 30th page of photographs. 138
Brewster (2005) P. 52.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
37
and slogans shouted at the student demonstrations and meetings prior to the violence in
Tlatelolco square. The first section of the book is compiled of various testimonios detailing a
variety of individual reasons for becoming involved in the Student Movement, along with
names, universities, the subject studied and other details of the testimonistas that relate them
to the Movement. The way in which the chants and slogans are also incorporated into the text
often conveys the atmosphere of energy, urgency and solidarity of the initial student protests.
The chant “DIÁ-LO-GO- DIÁ-LO-GO- DIÁ-LO-GO- DIÁ-LO-GO”139
(DI-A-LOGUE- DI-
A-LOGUE - DI-A-LOGUE ), representing the popular student demand for public discussion
of political issues, is followed by a leader of the student movement ascertaining “Los
ferrocarrileros, en 1958, estuvieron solos. Nosotros no.” (The railway workers, in 1958, were
alone. We are not.)140
This comparison of the Student Movement to other less popular strike
actions is followed by an extract from a letter to Le Monde in which Professor M. Mayagoitia
asks the question “¿Puede hablarse de sólidas tradiciones democráticas cuando de hecho no
hay más que un partido político?” (Can one speak of solid democratic traditions when there is
really no more than one political party?).141
The effect of this typographical presentation of a
wide range of media and variety of perspectives is the sense of a far-reaching, successful
movement that incorporated a variety of political issues and employed diverse practical
strategies to raise awareness about the socio-economic and political problems facing Mexico
in the late 1960s.
The first section of La Noche de Tlatelolco includes explicit references to traditional gender
roles. Firstly a female sociologist states “Ninguna mujer de la clase media se atreve a retar a
la institución mínima: la de su familia. Entonces ¿cómo van a retar a las grandes
139
Poniatowska (1971) P. 20 140
Ibid. P. 20 141
Ibid. P. 20
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
38
instituciones?”142
(No middle-class woman dares to challenge the smallest institution: that of
her family. So how are they going to challenge the big institutions?). No other testimonio in
this book makes a reference to the relationship between middle-class women and the family
so that the statement stands alone, unchallenged. The second explicit reference to gender is
pronounced by a male member of the CNH who describes the women in the Movement as
displaying “características de combatividad” (combative characteristics) and being
“verdaderas valientes” (truly brave).143
He also explains that during one of his speeches he
accidentally made what was subsequently interpreted to be a sexist comment, “No lloremos
como mujeres lo que no supimos defender como hombres” (Let’s not cry like women [about]
that which we didn’t know how to defend like men). The man describes how the following
day two women from the brigades were waiting for him, “Me pasé horas explicándoles, entre
gritos y justas reclamaciones, que era en sentido metafórico la tal cita” (I spent hours
explaining to them, between shouting and just objections, that the expression was meant in a
metaphoric sense.)144
As well as including this anecdote about how traditional concepts of gender were challenged
by women in the Student Movement, Poniatowska also includes extensive detail about female
prisoners, incarcerated because of their political involvement. The first lengthy testimonio is
that of a woman speaking from “la Cárcel de Mujeres” (the Women’s Prison) who was
imprisoned due to her work with trade unions. The aim of her political work, she explains, is
“explicar a los obreros cúales son sus derechos – siempre dentro de la legalidad – porque, si
no saben cúales son, ¿cómo van a defenderlos?” (to explain to the workers what their rights
142
Ibid. P. 96. 143
Ibid. P. 93. 144
Ibid. P. 94.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
39
are – always within the law – because, if they don’t know what they are, how are they going
to defend them?).145
The next testimonio is that of a woman from the “Comité de Lucha de la Facultad de Leyes
de la UNAM [Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México]” (Fight Committee of the Law
Faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico). She describes the atmosphere
among the newly detained women:
Nosotras teníamos un ánimo excelente porque era la primera vez que nos detenían;
nuestra preocupación eran nuestros compañeros; que a ellos no les hiciera nada” (We
had very high spirits because it was the first time they had arrested us; we were
worried about our comrades; that they didn’t harm them).146
Indeed, most women in La Noche de Tlatelolco see their struggle as intimately connected to
that of their male comrades and there is no sense of a separate, feminist struggle. A woman
from the “Facultad de Filosofía y Letras” (Department of Philosophy and Literature) states:
Cada quien abandonó su ostracismo, olvidó sus problemas personales [...] No digo
que se hayan acabado las diferencias políticas, pero los objetivos inmediatos eran los
mismos: luchar contra la represión para lograr el respeto de las libertades
democráticas”. (Each person abandoned their ostracism, forgot their personal
problems, I won’t say that political differences ended, but the immediate objectives
were the same: fight against repression to achieve respect for democratic liberties).147
While even the incarcerated women are in high spirits in the first section, the mood of the
testimonio drastically changes in the second section which documents the deplorable
occurrences of the 2nd
of October 1968. Testimonios collected by Poniatowska are positioned
alongside voices during the killings and extracts from newspapers which reported the event.
The effect is one of extreme authenticity, a persuasive reproduction of a “massacre” of young
145
Ibid. P. 72. 146
Ibid. P. 74 147
Ibid. P. 58.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
40
unarmed civilians. Poniatowska presents the unbearable truth, as seen by those in the Student
Movement who witnessed the events. For example, Dolores Verdugo de Solís, a “madre de
familia” (mother of a family), provides a short testimony “La sangre de mi hija se fue en los
zapatos de todos los muchachos que corrían por la Plaza.” (My daughter’s blood was on the
shoes of all the boys and girls who ran about the square).148
Following this, numerous voices
are quoted in quick succession, again recreating the audio experience of the panic unleashed
by the army’s fire:
¡Alto! ¡Alto el fuego! ¡Alto el fuego! ¡Alto! (Halt! Halt Fire! Halt Fire! Halt!)
Voces en la multitud (Voices in the crowd)
¡No puedo! ¡No soporto más! (I can’t! I can’t bear more!)
Voz de mujer (Woman’s voice)
¡No salgas! ¡No te muevas! (Don’t leave! Don’t you move!)
Voz de hombre (Voice of a man)
¡Estoy herido! Llamen un médico. ¡Estoy…! (I’m injured! Call a doctor! I’m...)
Una voz(A voice) 149
Perhaps the most moving part of the second section describes the death of Diana Salmerón de
Contreras’ younger brother. Salmerón de Contreras gives an extensive account of the death of
her brother but her testimonio is divided and positioned between many others so that the
development of her story takes place at an agonizingly slow, drawn-out and more lifelike
pace. In this way the story of her brother’s death is less like a story and more like a
documentary, instead of a quick and fact based narrative, the text gradually shows the reader
the various stages of his fatality. Her first testimonio, peppered with unanswered questions
and exclamations, describes her brother’s injury “¡Qué Horror! Todo el lado izquierdo de su
148
Ibid. P. 196. 149
Ibid. P. 197
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
41
cara había sido volado”150
(How awful! All the left side of his face had been blown off).
Throughout the testimonios that follow she becomes more distraught and her first-person
narrative is replaced by direct speech addressing the dead or wounded young boy “Hermanito
¿qué tienes? Hermanito, contéstame...” (Little brother, What’s wrong? Little brother, answer
me...).151
Following an extract from the press (which details the massacre) the direct dialogue
continues:
Hermanito, hábleme... ¡Una camilla, por favor! Hermanito, aquí estoy... ¡Una
camilla!... ¡Soldado, una camilla para una persona herida!... Hermanito, ¿qué te
pasa?... Hermanito, contéstame… ¡Una camilla!152
(Little brother, speak to me… A
stretcher, please! Little brother, I’m here… A stretcher… Soldier, a stretcher for an
injured person!... Little brother what’s wrong with you?... Little Brother, answer me...
A stretcher!)
Eventually, the first-person narration returns with the effect of further connecting the reader
to her plight, Diana explains “Me llevó a identificar el cadáver de Julio y firmar los papeles
necesarios.”(He took me to identify Julio’s body and to sign the necessary papers).153
She
then details the response of the “muchachos” (boys) from the Movement. They raised five
hundred pesos for the family of the deceased and when the family responded “que era mejor
usarlo para el Movimiento” (that it was better to use it for the Movement) the students
insisted that the family take the money asserting “tu hermano es el Movimiento.”(your
brother is the Movement).154
Diana’s last testimonio ends poignantly “Julio era mi único
hermano” (Julio was my only brother).155
In sharing the intimate details of the murder of Diana’s brother Poniatowska has ensured that
far from being forgotten and turned into statistics, the victims of Tlatelolco are named and
150
Ibid. P. 184 151
Ibid. P. 186. 152
Ibid. P. 186 153
Ibid. P. 189 154
Ibid P. 189 155
Ibid. P.189
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
42
described, made personal, human and remembered. The representation of the victims of
Tlatelolco goes to the heart of the philosophy informing testimonial literature in Latin
America, the notion that those who have been historically oppressed, ignored or vilified, can
now partake in the production of literature, in the publication of their own versions of history
and in so doing challenge canonical accounts and encourage solidarity from an international
audience. The fact that Poniatowska’s collection, with the subtitle “Testimonios de historia
oral” (Testimonies of oral history), provides the names and details of each person who speaks
along with newspaper extracts, photographs and a chronology would suggest that, like
Partnoy, Poniatowska is attempting to create a factual and truthful reconstruction of events.
However, like The Little School, La Noche de Tlatelolco uses literary techniques such as the
inclusion of poetry, collage, and creative composition. The second section of La Noche de
Tlatelolco begins with a poem written by Rosario Castellanos entitled “Memorial de
Tlatelolco”.156
It is an emotive poem which addresses the issue of governmental denial and
silence and reinforces the message of the book. The final stanza ends:
Recuerdo, recordemos
hasta que la justicia se sienta entre nosotros.
(I remember, let us remember
until justice sits among us.)157
The poetry and the careful composition demonstrate that: “Although Poniatowska may have
tried to diminish her presence in the book, it is clear that the materials in La Noche were not
randomly compiled. She chose which testimonies to include and the order in which they
appear.”158
Indeed, although the book follows a rough chronology, it is much more effective
than a mere factual account of events. It is an attempt to recreate the atmosphere and the
mood prior to and following Tlatelolco and the two different parts of the book reproduce two
156
Rosario Castellanos (1925 – 1974) was one of the most important Mexican poets and novelists at the time. 157
Poniatowska (1971), P. 164. 158
Brewster (2005) P. 53.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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very different moods using literary techniques. The first is one of the dynamism and
enthusiasm that can arise with a youthful political movement. The second part, in stark
contrast, communicates feelings of terror, fear and anger that arise with situations of violence
and injustice, when young people’s lives are brought to a premature end.
Both moods are produced as an alternative truth to that which was being portrayed by the
political elites in Mexico. Whereas the government tried to paint the original Student
Movement as a conspiracy by foreign communists to take over the country, Poniatowska
allows protagonists, students, professors, workers and others, to describe the reality. The truth
of the Student Movement, therefore, is presented contrary to that of the contemporary
political commentary. Similarly, the second part of La Noche de Tlatelolco, in the face of
official denial of the killing of unarmed civilians, amasses sufficient information to present a
serious challenge to the government. Like Menchú who spoke of the similarly denied
Guatemalan massacres and Partnoy who spoke of the denied horrors of the “Dirty War”,
Poniatowska has presented evidence of the violence of Tlatelolco in such a way as to
challenge the version of those in power. Poniatowska’s work was seen as a serious threat to
the government’s monopoly on information as “there were considerable efforts to prevent [La
Noche de Tlatelolco’s] publication. The publishing house, Ediciones Era, was the target of
bomb threats, but its owner refused to be intimidated.”159
The book was published in spite of
these censorship attempts.
In conclusion, the testimonios of Partnoy and Poniatowska communicate the lived experience
of the victims of politically motivated forms of state-endorsed violent oppression using a
multiplicity of different literary strategies and techniques. Many of these victims were
159
Brewster (2005) P. 51.
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women.160
Partnoy makes creative use of characterisation, narrative voice and metaphor to
communicate the experience of the ‘disappeared’ in Argentina, whilst Poniatowska use
polyphony, collage and effective editing to recreate the atmosphere of the Student Movement
and its destruction in Mexico. Playing a similarly important role in the preservation of
alternative, contestatory versions of repression and resistance to it are the “empirical”
collections of testimonios. As we shall see in the next chapter, Sandino’s Daughters (1981)
was a pivotal work that put women who participated in the Nicaraguan Revolution in the
spotlight. Guatemalan Women Speak (1991) compares well with Menchú’s testimonio as it
deals with the same subjects (poverty and civil war in Guatemala) in a totally different style
and format. These two testimonios will be compared and contrasted before their relation to
the question of ‘truth value’ is explored.
160
Thirty percent of the Argentine “Disappeared” were women according to Hollander, Nancy. “The Gendering
of Human Rights: Women and the Latin American Terrorist State”. Feminist Studies 22.1. Pp. 41 – 79. 1996.
For a detailed account of the experiences of women who have been victims of state-endorsed terror in Latin
America generally see Leslie, Helen. “Healing the Psychological Wounds of Gender-related Violence in Latin
America: A Model for Gender Sensitive Work in Post-Conflict Contexts” Gender and Development, Vol. 9, No.
3, Humanitarian Work. 2001, pp. 50-59.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
45
Chapter Three
Randall and Hooks: The Creation of ‘Truth’
‘Factual’ Testimonio and Political Persuasion
Sandino’s Daughters [...] is a different kind of history: women speaking for themselves about
their own experiences as women, and at the same time analysing the process of political
development in their country.
Margaret Randall161
This book is about the lives of Guatemalan women – women who are, on the whole, poor and
Indian; women whose voices are seldom heard.
Margaret Hooks162
In the Introduction to this dissertation a question was posed regarding the reception of
factual, as opposed to literary, testimonios; testimonios which comprise collections of first-
hand experiences put together by an anthropologist or a sociologist are often thought of as
more factually reliable than their authored, literary counterparts. But it was asked, is this
justified? To what extent do ‘sociological’ testimonios employ their own persuasive strategies
to influence readers?
The two books that will be examined in this chapter, Guatemalan Women Speak (1991) by
Margaret Hooks and Sandino’s Daughters (1981) by Margaret Randall, might initially seem
to be more factually reliable than the more literary testimonios we have seen so far. However,
it soon becomes apparent that while they do not explicitly utilise the types of literary
techniques highlighted in Chapter two, they do employ various persuasive strategies to
161
Randall , Margaret. Sandino’s Daughters. London: Zed Press. 1981.P. i. 162
Hooks, Margaret. Guatemalan Women Speak. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. 199. P.
ix.
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strengthen their own version of the truth, a version which challenges that of the male-
dominated political elites.
Hooks and Randall both present their texts as a record of the voices of the women they have
interviewed, a vehicle through which these women, historically denied a voice, can speak. In
order to convey this message, both texts present third-person introductions at the beginning of
each chapter. Randall’s are in italics and Hooks’ are in bold, separating the introductions
from the rest of the text. The third-person introductions are seemingly objective, they contrast
with the first-person testimony they present, and they impart description and assumed
historical and political facts immediately relevant to the testimony that follows. The
introductions are not signed and dated by Randall and Hooks as their function is not to
highlight the role of the authors but rather to frame the testimony that follows.
Of her introductions, Hooks states “Brief introductions to each interview are provided,
containing background information which will help the reader to place the women’s stories in
the political, social and economic context of Guatemala.”163
Here Hooks makes no mention
of the fact that this “background information” is also presented in a deliberately persuasive
way in order to encourage the reader to adopt a particular interpretation of “the political,
social and economic context of Guatemala”, one which underlines the plight of those who are
discriminated against such as women, workers, the poor and the indigenous population.
Hooks communicates an account of Guatemalan women that is in keeping with her own
Leftist and feminist opinions. In order to present her version of the truth whilst still retaining
the genre of apparently objective testimonio, Hooks makes effective use of juxtaposition. The
resulting effect is that the testimonios of poor Guatemalan women are presented in a more
favourable light than those of more privileged women.
163
Hooks (1991) P. x.
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For her part Randall explains the format she adopts in order to effectively introduce the
testimonios:
The testimonies interweave description and analysis of women’s situation in the old
and now the new Nicaragua; and accounts of the struggle itself are presented
alongside each woman’s particular life-story – her family, schooling, social activities
religious training and so on.164
Randall distances herself from the “description and analysis” she presents. But although her
statement suggests that her presentation is objective, this is not the case: it is notably
persuasive. Randall’s particular political affiliations and personal opinions influence her
analysis and editing techniques, and ultimately her testimonio, as we shall see. She uses
careful editing and framing to emphasise the message of her selected testimonios and to
encourage the reader to sympathise with her preferred account of the Nicaraguan Revolution
and its beneficial impact on the struggle for female emancipation in that country.
In the testimonios edited by Hooks and Randall, overtly literary techniques are not employed
as obviously as they were in the testimonios by Menchú, Partnoy and Poniatowska although
these also contested the privileged and official versions. Yet persuasive techniques (primarily
careful editing which was also used extensively by Poniatowska) result in a similarly
deliberate construction of a version of events which presents a challenge to canonical and
dominant political ‘truths’. Hooks, like Menchú, challenges the military government of
Guatemala and their denials of genocidal actions. She also provides a thorough account of
poverty, injustice, racism and sexism in Guatemala by allowing the victims of various forms
of discrimination to voice their experiences.
164
Randall (1981) P. vii.
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Randall’s compilation simultaneously disputes two different versions of historical truth
regarding the political developments in Nicaragua. On the one hand her collection shockingly
documents the brutal repression of the popular Revolutionary movement against Somoza
prior to the Revolution of 1979. The accounts collected by Randall describe the Somoza
government’s response to popular urban and rural discontent as disproportionate,
unnecessarily brutal and inhumane.165
As we shall see, like Poniatowska, Randall provides
the victims of this repression with the opportunity to detail their experience and in so doing
has personalised and humanised them and thus prevented them from being forgotten and
ignored. At the same time, she presents the reality of the Nicaraguan Revolution in contrast to
its official portrayal by the government of the United States. In keeping with the idea that one
of the defining characteristics of testimonio is urgency, the “Preface” to Sandino’s Daughters
highlights the urgency of the situation in Nicaragua thus:
This book is being published at a time when the Nicaraguan Revolution is facing a
serious threat from the “destabilization” policies being promoted and financed by the
Reagan administration. Since the overthrow of Somoza in July 1979, there has been
constant military activity on the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, and Somoza’s son has
maintained an army base with the remnants of the National Guard. [...] These
occurrences signal the urgent need for developing a broad international movement to
oppose any foreign intervention in Nicaragua.166
Despite the way in which Randall and many others vehemently opposed military intervention
in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration continued to fund the devastating “Contra War”.
Reagan spent billions of dollars on the so-called “low intensity” war against Nicaraguan
civilians.167
By the early 1980s, the Counter-revolutionaries or Contras were well trained in
165
For example, one of the testimonios describes Somoza’s repression thus “We had outright political
assassinations of children eight, nine, ten years old”. Randall responds in a footnote which details the life of a
nine year old FSLN member, Luis Alfonso Velázquez, who was shot “by one of Somoza’s henchmen.” Randall
(1981) Pp. 13 – 14. 166
Randall (1981) P. i. 167
Between 1981 and 1985 the US government (via the CIA) gave 80 million dollars to the Contras. See
“Epilogue”. Harris, R.L Nicaragua: A Revolution Under Siege. New York: Zed Books. 1985. P. 237
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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economic sabotage and terrorism aimed specifically at unarmed civilians.168
With this
campaign “the Reagan administration had not sought a Contra military victory. The
administration’s support for the Contras aimed to sustain a ‘low intensity conflict’ designed
to wear down the Nicaraguan government and economy” with the long-term objective of
destabilising the Revolution and undermining its achievements.169
Whilst Sandino’s Daughters may not have successfully challenged the aggressive attitude
adopted by the government of the United States, it does disprove the justifications given for
this ‘covert’ invasion. According to Randall’s account the Revolution did not pose a threat to
the security of the United States and was not part of a communist plot to over throw the
hegemony of the United States in Latin America. Rather it was the national response to the
repression and economic exploitation faced under the Somoza dictatorship.170
Sandino’s
Daughters is able to morally challenge US intervention retrospectively by showing the social
and cultural advancements of the Revolution and the positive impact the Revolution had on
numerous Nicaraguan women’s lives.171
In order to challenge the falsehoods disseminated about the political situations in Nicaragua
and Guatemala and to create the impression of a more factual, objective account, both Hooks
and Randall make extensive use of photographs. In Guatemalan Women Speak the
photographs are presented without captions and are only found at the beginning of the
different parts or sections. The thirty-four short chapters of Guatemalan Women Speak are
organised into four parts. Part one, “Earning a Living”, documents the various forms of 168
Isbester, Katherine. Still Fighting the Nicaraguan Women’s Movement, 1977 – 2000. University of
Pittsburgh Press. 2001 169
Keen (2000) P. 478. 170
See Harris (1985). It is also important to note that contrary to claims made by Washington, the Revolution
developed a mixed economy, the majority of wealth and land remained in private hands and much of the
Nicaraguan bourgeoisie were allied with the Sandinistas. 171
The most famous cultural progress is that of the literary brigades which almost eradicated illiteracy in
Nicaragua. Social progress came in the form of health brigades, the building of schools, hospitals and crèches.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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employment of Guatemalan women.172
The photograph that accompanies this section shows a
woman working at a sewing machine with two small children behind her. The last section,
“Fighting Back”, details the different political positions occupied by Guatemalan women,
from those who fought with the “Guerrilla Army of the Poor” to those who support the
political parties of the far-right.173
The photograph here presents an indigenous woman in
traditional dress holding up a banner which demands an end to the violence and the release of
student political prisoners. As stated, the photographs are not captioned and it is not clear
whether the women photographed are the testimonistas or other Guatemalan women. In this
way the photographs are presented as a form of documentary evidence and are representative
of Guatemalan women generally instead of presenting the testimonistas specifically.
The photographs in Sandino’s Daughters on the other hand are mostly of the testimonistas
and often complement a written description of the women. The photographs interrupt the
narrative and are accompanied by short captions, the woman’s name or a brief description of
the scene being presented. The end result of these photographs is the creation of the sense of
a factual, objective, account and importantly individuals from the ‘pueblo’ or people are
given a name and an identity so that the reader can empathise with them on a personal level
instead of being confronted with mere statistical data.174
The first chapter in Guatemalan Women Speak, “On the Finca” provides information similar
to that in Menchú’s testimonio on the subject of life on the plantations. The squalid
conditions of the indigenous workers are highlighted through Margarita’s testimonio and the
use of poisonous chemicals or “fumigation” is also reiterated: “They never warned us
172
Hooks (1991) P. 1. 173
Ibid. P. 85. 174
Unfortunately, a more detailed discussion into the function of photographs falls beyond the scope of this
dissertation. For a useful introduction to the issues surrounding pictures and photographs see Berger, John. Ways
of Seeing. London: Penguin Books. 1972.
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beforehand, they would just cover the food. But the smell of the poison was very, very strong
– dreadful- and when the planes passed over head it fell on us, leaving marks on our
hands.”175
The combination of the introduction to the chapter, which describes the “virtually
subhuman conditions” and extremely low wages, and the first-person account is extremely
effective.176
The reader finishes the chapter with a vivid image of the horrid work conditions
and their effect on individual women as well as a good understanding of the socio-economic
context in which this work takes place.
This harrowing account of life for indigenous peasants on coffee plantations is then
juxtaposed with the testimonio of a “Lady of the Coffee Plantation,” Amparo.177
Amparo’s
account of the workers’ good conditions is not only undermined by the previous testimonio
but also by the objectively presented introduction provided by Hooks, where she highlights
the fact that “a handful of families control about 80 per cent of Guatemala’s main export crop
[coffee].”178
As well as emphasising unequal land distribution, the introduction also stresses
the sinister allegations of violence and corruption that have been made against the
landowning classes to which Amparo belongs:
Traditionally resistant to change, the coffee producers have rejected, often violently,
any attempt to bring about even minor agrarian reform. Many of them have found
both representation and voice in the self-proclaimed ‘party of organised violence’, the
ultra-right National Liberation Movement, linked to the notorious Guatemalan death
squads.179
Following such an introduction and the indigenous peasant’s testimonio, the landowning
woman’s account is cast under considerable doubt. Hooks does not directly challenge
Amparo’s version, in keeping with the apparently factual nature of the testimonio, the effect
175
Ibid. P. 4. 176
Ibid. P. 2. 177
Ibid. P. 6. 178
Ibid. P. 6. 179
Ibid. P. 6.
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of the juxtaposition is instead rather subtle. However, Hooks has deliberately presented the
worker’s account first and then includes facts about land distribution immediately before
Amparo’s account. The result is extremely persuasive. Amparo states “We don’t have any
labor problems, the Finca has electricity and very good machinery. People have their little
houses, and they live well.”180
But the reader has already heard a very different description of
life on the “Finca” and is therefore less likely to accept the landowner’s account and more
likely to conclude that the landowner is intentionally misrepresenting the reality of her
workers’ conditions.
A similar deliberate editing strategy takes place with the following two testimonies. The
chapter “In the Market Place” describes the many hardships faced by Guatemala women who
work in the informal market economy. The introduction states that “Most food traders are
women” and that “Market women are traditionally vocal in Central America and often play a
key role in social protest.”181
The market trader’s account of the poverty she is forced to live
in due to economic problems and the restrictions placed on her by local authorities is striking:
“We try to live on this tiny income, but there are seven of us and we can’t survive on it.”182
The sharp contrast with the following testimony is clear. The chapter “I Sell Beauty” details
the attitude of an upper-class woman, Yvette, who sells make-up. The wife of a successful
businessman, Yvette states “I believe that any woman can excel regardless of her social
status. She only has to want to.”183
Subtly, the reader is encouraged to compare this
statement to the lived experience of the market trader in the previous chapter. The market
trader also wants to “excel” but is preventing from doing so by the “municipal authorities”
and by an unjust economic system that discourages social mobility. In order to encourage the
180
Ibid. P. 7. 181
Ibid. P. 10. 182
Ibid. P. 12. 183
Ibid. P. 16.
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reader to acknowledge economic inequality, Hooks immediately follows the account of the
optimistic make-up seller with a chapter that begins thus: “Health care is a luxury in this
nation where, in a single day, 115 children under the age of five die as a result of preventable
diseases.”184
The comparison is obvious; whereas Yvette is successful selling make-up, an
unnecessary consumer item, to those who can afford it, many other women in Guatemala
cannot afford the medication or foodstuffs that would prevent their children from prematurely
dying.
As well as highlighting the problem of endemic poverty in Guatemala, Guatemalan Women
Speak also refers to the political violence of which Menchú also speaks. In the preface,
Hooks explains:
Parts of Guatemala are still in a state of war, albeit a war forgotten or ignored by
outsiders, and most women’s lives have been affected by it. Nearly all of the women
in this book have experienced the violence of war firsthand and talk about the effect
on their lives.185
Indeed, many of the women who Hooks interviewed talk about male relatives who have
“disappeared.”186
However, in spite of the desperate and depressing nature of the all
pervasive violence faced by Guatemalan society, Guatemalan Women Speak concludes
optimistically. The final chapter, “Widows fight for dignity and unity”, is recounted by
Manuela, a member of the executive committee of the National Co-ordinating Committee of
Guatemalan Widows (Conavigua). Manuela describes her life including the development of
her political consciousness along with information regarding the formation and structure of
the organisation. It is a poignant final chapter that contains much hope for the future of
Guatemala as Manuela explains that “organisation is the only way” that the victims of the
violence can overcome their experiences and begin the process of constructing a new, more
184
Ibid. P. 18. 185
Ibid. P. ix. 186
Ibid. P. 43.
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just Guatemala.187
Manuela also explains how women who have taken part in organising have
begun to overcome machismo, “When women start to get involved and go to meetings we
have been able to defend ourselves against sexual abuse and that’s what a lot of men don’t
like.”188
This uplifting, arguably feminist, testimonio, has been placed at the end, to inspire
and compel the reader towards adopting an attitude of solidarity and compassion towards the
women presented in Guatemalan Women Speak.
Compassion is also encouraged through the harrowing detail with which Guatemalan political
violence is recounted. A particularly emotive account of the violence appears in the chapter
“Exiled from my Quiché home” in which a woman, Juana, who was widowed by the army
describes the death of her husband, torture of her father, and murder of her eldest brother.189
In an account which arguably supports Menchú and challenges Stoll, Juana insists:
People have to work for the army, some patrolling in the day and some at night. Those
who don’t comply with patrol duty are taken away and beaten or just ‘disappeared’.
The patrols have to watch out for guerrillas and make sure that they don’t enter the
village, because they are ‘bad people, who kill you and carry out massacres’. This is
not true, it’s all lies. It’s the army that does these things.[...] We are the witnesses, and
we can confirm that it is the army that does these things, not the guerrillas.190
This analysis of the conflict is subtly endorsed and reinforced by Hooks who, in the
introduction to a later chapter, “Fighting in the Guerrilla Army of the Poor”, states:
Hundreds of campesinos flocked to join guerrilla organisations in an attempt to
defend themselves against the army’s onslaught. These organisations, they hoped,
would be instrumental in forging a new, more just society in which poor people would
no longer be marginalised.191
187
Hooks (1991) P. 128 188
Ibid. P. 126. 189
Ibid. Pp. 61 – 66. Unlike Menchú, Juana engages in sentimentality while describing her ordeal. Of her
husband’s death she states “when I heard, I became terribly distressed and desperate. I felt that I couldn’t live
without him.” P. 62. 190
Ibid. Pp. 64 - 65. 191
Ibid. P. 92.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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Needless to say, this is a representation of guerrilla involvement that contrasts sharply with
Stoll’s aforementioned account of the peasants having to decide “between two armies”.
Another correlation between Menchú’s testimonio and those collected by Hooks can be found
in the chapter “Weavers of the future” in which an indigenous woman, Elena, documents her
involvement in an embassy occupation as a member of the Committee for Peasant Unity
(UCU), the very same organisation to which Menchú and her family belonged. After
describing the difficulties faced by women who engage in political activism, Elena reaches an
interesting conclusion about the gendering of testimonial writing:
Presenting women as ‘victims’ goes hand-in-hand with discrimination. Unfortunately,
this still goes on practically everywhere. The woman gives testimony and the man
gives analysis. From our point of view, this cannot continue. We can continue to give
testimony, but we can also provide analysis and even write books. We must become
protagonists in our own struggle.192
Elena’s testimony also explores the relationship between feminism and the issues facing
indigenous women. Like Menchú, she rejects the notion of a separate feminist struggle:
The Indian woman suffers from a triple exploitation by virtue of being a woman,
being Indian and being poor. We have to find a way of combating these three
problems simultaneously [...] If we were to carry on a separate fight for women’s
liberation, we wouldn’t resolve anything, we’d be wasting our time.193
Whereas Menchú talks about the need to educate male compañeros about women’s right to
contribute, Elena notes that during guerrilla warfare in the mountains, “All tasks were
distributed equally between squads of men and women; one squad would go for firewood and
another would grind corn or fetch water. Men cooked as well.”194
Indeed, in her extensive
investigation into the subject of female guerrilla fighters, Karen Kampwirth has found that in
192
Ibid. P. 74. 193
Ibid. P. 72. 194
Ibid. P. 94.
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the case of Nicaragua “once the FSLN admitted women as equals, the traditional gender
divisions of labour often broke down, under the non-traditional conditions of guerrilla
life.”195
The change in gender roles brought about by guerrilla warfare is also widely
documented by Randall in her numerous interviews with Nicaraguan women. One of these,
Nora Astorga, states:
It was interesting experience being a woman on the Southern Front [...] in most cases
you weren’t even thought of as a woman or a man – you were simply one comrade
among many. Most of us, particularly the women, had never had that experience
before. I think women were accepted and appreciated as comrades by everyone. In
training, the same was expected from us as from the men. And yet, in the normal
everyday tasks – hauling water, for example – the men always helped. 196
Randall’s book, Sandino’s Daughters. Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle, is
divided into ten chapters, each of which presents a different aspect or protagonist of the
‘struggle’. Like Hooks, Randall begins every chapter with a description of the woman whose
testimonio is reproduced therein. However, whereas Hooks uses her chapter introductions to
place each woman’s testimony in the wider political, socio-economic context of Guatemala,
Randall focuses quite noticeably on the physical appearances of the individual women and
their specific roles within the Revolution. The women’s background is also always
highlighted and testimonies start with a description of the testimonista’s family. The result is
an extremely personal insight into these women’s lives including their political involvement
and personal development. Five of the ten chapters each focus on one Nicaraguan woman and
her experiences before and during her involvement with the FSLN.197
The effect of having an
entire chapter dedicated to the life of one woman is that her experiences are foregrounded for 195
Kampwirth, Karen. Women and Guerrilla Movements Nicaraguaa, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba.
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2002. P. 33. 196
Randall (1981) P. 125. 197
FSLN, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or Sandinista National Liberation Front, is the organisation
that came to power following the 1979 Revolution. Chapter three is dedicated to Amada Pineda a member of
FLSN, chapter four to Daisy Zamora the Vice-Minister of Culture, chapter five to Nora Astorga the Special
Attorney General, chapter seven to Sister Martha and chapter eight to Gladys Baez a member of AMPRONAC.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
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the reader. The remaining protagonists of Sandino’s Daughters are introduced to the reader
not only as guerrilla fighters but as individuals with particular political standpoints and socio-
economic environments. Above all Randall presents her protagonists as women, women with
children, husbands and mothers, women who have experienced sexism and overcome it,
women who, in short, have been politicised and emancipated by their involvement in the
revolutionary process.198
As we have seen, seven of the ten chapters of Sandino’s Daughters open with an introduction
by Randall. The three that do not begin with Randall, open instead with a first-person account
from the testimonista.199
Chapter three begins with a detailed, harrowing, first-person account
of the rape and torture endured by Amada which is only then followed by Randall’s
introduction. The result of this rearrangement is extremely effective. Instead of beginning
with an overview of the violence the chapter begins with the much more immediate and
engaging account:
That night, several of them came to where they were holding me. They raped me. I
struggled and they began to beat me and that’s when they did all those horrible things
to me. My legs were black and blue, my thighs my arms. I had bruises all over me.200
Like Poniatowska’s presentation of the death of Diana Salmerón de Contreras’ young brother
(see Chapter two of this dissertation) the naming and personal introduction of Amada as a
victim of such cruelty strengthens the impact of the representation of the violence. Historians
have recorded the fact that the general strikes and other forms of FSLN resistance were
“followed by a house-to-house search in a genocidal ‘Operation Clean up’ with a death toll of
198
Many of the women discuss the effect of their activism on their children. A chapter is dedicated to the
relationship between Sandinista women and their mothers, “Mothers and Daughters”. Randall ( 1981) Pp. 184 –
203. 199
Chapter three begins with Amada Pineada, chapter six “Women in Olive Green” with Ana Julia Guido’s
description of joining the Sandinistas and chapter eight with Gladys Baez’s depiction of life as a guerrilla. 200
Ibid. P. 80.
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some five thousand persons”201
but Randall’s book brings home the full force of the
“genocidal” actions by allowing the mothers who have lost sons, and the women who have
been repeatedly raped to speak in detail about their horrific experiences.
In the same way that Diana’s account as presented by Poniatowska ends with an act of
solidarity (the “muchachos” from the Student Movement raise money for the family of the
deceased), Amada’s account of violent repression ends optimistically. After discussing the
effects of the rape of politically active women on their marriages, Amada concludes:
The wives and husbands continued living together and afterwards they fought on with
even more courage. The National Guard thought that by torturing people they would
force us to abandon the struggle. They thought the peasants would go home and not
take part anymore. It wasn’t true. All that we suffered made us fight with more
determination. When they burned houses – often with children inside – we fought all
the harder.202
The way in which Randall has edited Amada’s story so that the chapter begins with a
disturbing account of rape but then defiantly pronounces that this violence has only made its
victims stronger can be seen as an attempt by Randall to persuade the reader that Amada’s
account is representative of the strength and resilience of the Nicaraguan people as a whole.
Like Partnoy, Randall demonstrates the strength of those who have survived such torture and
suffering in order to encourage empathy and solidarity and inspire compassion in the reader.
The chapters in Sandino’s Daughters that are entirely dedicated to a single female protagonist
reinforce the notion that some individuals, such as Amada, embody or personify the
resistance to the Somoza regime and the Revolutionary triumph of 1979.
Amada’s testimony also includes reference to “machismo” and resistance to it. Amada
explains: “My father always asked why I had to get mixed up in all this?” Attempting to
201
Keen (2000) P. 474. 202
Randall (1981) P. 89.
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maintain traditional gender roles and believing that only men should be educated Amada’s
father “said that one day we’d be married and have children and devote ourselves to our
homes, so why did we need to know anything else?”203
Amada contradicts her father’s
conventional view:
Now all that’s different. We women have shown that we have a right to take part.
Sometimes more right than the men. We proved ourselves during the insurrection. [...]
We’ve always been discriminated against and now more than ever we’re rebelling
against the old roles.204
Whilst there is no denying that Nicaraguan women were indeed empowered by their
experiences during the Nicaraguan Revolution, as a feminist and supporter of the Sandinista
Revolution, Randall has edited the testimonios in such a way as to emphasise women’s
positive experiences in an attempt to encourage the reader to sympathise with the Revolution
and to conclude that women will only be liberated through involvement in a revolutionary
process. Unlike Hooks, Randall does not include views of political life in Nicaragua that
differ from her own. In the “Preface” to Sandino’s Daughters she reiterates the feminist
maxim ‘the personal is political’: “What is perhaps most striking about the voices recorded
here is that they force us to stretch the notion of what is political so as to include issues
usually hidden and dismissed as personal.”205
Most of the testimonies, therefore, include a
reference to the oppression of women, either in private or public life, and the successful fight
against it as undertaken by the FSLN and the affiliated women’s organisations. In the chapter
entitled “Gladyz Baez”, Gladyz explains how politics influenced her marriage:
The problem was sexism. My husband never really wanted me to get involved in
anything beyond union work, and that political difference between us caused
problems in our relationship. He kept pressuring me to stay home where I could be a
proper wife and mother. My excommunication from the church, regular political
203
Ibid. P. 91. 204
Ibid. P. 91. 205
Ibid. P. i.
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involvement, and initiative around the hospital campaign made our situation worse.
Finally everything was just too much for my husband and we separated.206
By including the testimonies of women who have found their political life and their personal
relationships intimately related and sometimes at odds, Randall illustrates the artificial nature
of the patriarchal division between the personal and the political, the public and the private or
domestic. Randall has arguably used testimonio as a vehicle through which she
communicates her Western feminist political views. Critics such as Alberto Moreiras have
argued that Western critics can “feitishize” testimonio and Western creators of testimonios
can appropriate the plight of those from the so-called “third world” in order to endorse their
own political opinions.207
However, in the case of the publication of Sandino’s Daughters,
Randall’s favourable account of the Revolution and her call to defend the Revolution from
US-sponsored attacks surely benefitted the women of Nicaragua just as much as it re-
enforced Randall’s own political convictions.
Randall’s presence is felt throughout Sandino’s Daughters in a more direct way than Hooks’
as her introductions are longer and sometimes interrupt the testimonial itself. Whereas Hooks
mostly contextualises the testimonio by providing historical and political facts, Randall gives
her own opinions along with her analysis and description. The introduction to the final
chapter, “Profound Changes” states “Revolution is the only force capable of transforming the
structure of society.”208
In her pronouncements on the subject Randall is explicit in her view
that testimonial literature is a crucial tool in the fight against oppression, in the struggle to
allow the voices of the historically disenfranchised to be heard. Randall also sees testimonial
literature as inextricably linked to feminism, as she explains: “As women revaluating our
206
Ibid. P. 175. 207
Moreiras (2001) P. 217. 208
Ibid. P. 204.
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present we began to realise we had a past, a history hidden or distorted.” She continues “We
began to understand that our collective as well as our individual memories have been invaded
raped, erased.”209
Randall’s collection of women’s testimonies is inclusive and can therefore
be seen as an attempt to retrace and record women’s past and present experiences globally in
order to restore the versions which patriarchy had erased. Randall does not pretend to be
objective in her views. In her second book on the subject of Nicaraguan women, Sandino’s
Daughters Revisited. Feminism in Nicaragua (1994) she states “I have never been an
impartial observer. I make no claim to neutrality. I am with these women in their efforts to
make the liberation of their gender an integral part of the Nicaraguan people’s struggle for
dignity and freedom.”210
It is therefore clear that Randall’s political opinions intertwine with
and inform the creation of her collections of testimonies. This subjective influence in
Randall’s work is at odds with the claimed objective presentation of Sandino’s Daughters.
Like Poniatowska, Randall includes letters and poems alongside the testimonies. Chapter one
of Sandino’s Daughters contains a letter written by Lea Gudio, one of the founding members
of AMPRONAC, outlining the aims of the organisation, and chapter nine, “Mothers and
Daughters”, includes a letter written by a mother who was killed by the National Guard to her
daughter shortly before she died. The letter is emotive and also political as the mother
encourages her daughter to become involved in the struggle, “My greatest desire is that one
day you will become a true woman with a great love of humanity. And that you’ll know how
to defend justice, always defend it against whatever and whomever [sic] should trample it.”211
By including this real letter as a first-source historical document Randall has further
developed the insight into mother/daughter relationships during the Revolution provided by
the chapter “Mothers and Daughters” whilst again underscoring the futility of the division
209
Randall, Margaret. “Reclaiming Voices”. Gugelberger (1996) Pp. 58 – 69. 210
Randall (1994) P. xiii. 211
Randall (1981) P. 202.
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between political and personal – many mothers and daughters were brought into a political
struggle due to personal, familial relationships. Continuing the collage effect, chapter four,
“Daisy Zamora”, includes six of Daisy’s poems all of which are on the subject of the
Revolution, some commemorate those who have died while others, such as the “Song of
Hope”, capture the optimism of the beginning of the revolutionary movement.212
This mix of
written and visual media increases the sense of polyphony and enhances the vivid
representation of the women; their views and experiences are not only represented through
the transcribed interviews but also their inner thoughts and feelings are revealed to the reader
through poetry and personal letters.
Although the testimonios of Randall and Hooks might initially seem more objective that
those of Menchú, Partnoy and Poniatowska, these ostensibly factual testimonies have been
carefully ordered and crafted so that the reader is encouraged not only to engage with the
issues being presented, but also to engage with them on the terms and from the perspective
that Hooks and Randall intended. It would be difficult for a reader to finish Guatemalan
Women Speak and to side with landowners or the military government. Similarly, a reader
would struggle to finish Sandino’s Daughters and support US aggression against that
country.
In conclusion, whilst differing formats and styles may initially encourage readers to
categorise testimonios into literary on the one hand and factual on the other, as we have seen
this is an artificial separation; so-called literary testimonio can provide a wealth of factual
information and factual accounts can employ deliberate techniques to influence the reader.
The apparently factual, polyphonic testimonios assessed in this chapter have made very
212
Ibid. P. 98.
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careful use of photographs, editing and selection. They have employed techniques such as
reordering, contrast, personification and the use of third-person, supposedly objective,
chapter introductions to encourage the reader to reject mainstream or official versions of
politics and history such as those put forward by the Guatemalan and United States
governments, and to adopt instead a position which expresses solidarity with poor and
indigenous women in Guatemala and revolutionary, feminist women in Nicaragua.
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Conclusion
Testimonio: Defying Literary Classification,
Resisting Political Repression and Economic
Exploitation
Testimonial writing, as the word indicates, promotes the expression of personal
experience. That personal experience, of course, is the collective struggle against
oppression from oligarchy, military, and transnational capital.
George Yúdice213
Learning to listen to subalterns is an ethical and political imperative.
Doris Sommer214
This dissertation explored the ways in which testimonio is difficult to categorise. The genre
has apparently blurred the lines between truth and fiction, factual presentation and literature.
As Moreiras asserts “The literary status of testimonio is a hotly debated issue.”215
The
exploration of testimonios presented here demonstrated that the genre largely resists and
exceeds neat classifications. So-called literary testimonios communicate factual information
and anthropological or sociological testimonios deliberately persuade and influence the reader
using literary techniques. It is fitting that a genre that set out to challenge dominant
conceptions of politics, history and literature eludes classification according to entrenched
Western cultural criteria.
213
Yúdice, George. “Testimonio and Postmodernism”. Gugelberger (1996) P. 54. 214
Sommer, Doris. “No Secrets.” Gugelberger (1996) Pp. 133-4. 215
Moreiras (2001) P. 215.
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As the investigation into the testimonios published by Menchú, Partnoy, Poniatowska, Hooks
and Randall has shown, these women have succeed in using their own and other women’s
testimonio to challenge mainstream, patriarchal versions of history and politics and to
propagate the sense of urgency that their respective situations demanded. In short, the
testimonios of historically subaltern women have been employed to express their versions of
the truth, to communicate the experiences of those who have been ignored and marginalised
and in so doing have provided an alternative to the male-dominated historical canon. Further,
testimonio endows women with the means with which to communicate their relatively recent
engagement with the public, political sphere. These women’s testimonios demonstrate
involvement in movements of courageous resistance to acts of state-endorsed violence. In the
context of resistance to political repression, testimonial women’s literature is particularly
important because:
Women who have dared to move beyond the narrow confines of the dominant
cultures’ acceptable notions of femininity – especially women who have been
political activists on behalf of oppositional movement for radical social change –
become particularly vulnerable to the reactionary political discourse of the terrorist
state.216
Testimonio developed as an alternative to Western canonical conceptions of literature that
favour the author as an individual. Instead of the singular, omniscient author, who in keeping
with societal power relations has historically tended to be male, privileged and white,
testimonial literature disseminates a collective representation of the historically oppressed,
the majority of whom are under-privileged and female. As a genre which coincides with the
emergence of New Social Movements that have sprung up in opposition to enforced Neo-
liberal restructuring and the poverty and inequality that increase as a consequence, testimonio
216
Hollander, Nancy. “The Gendering of Human Rights: Women and the Latin American Terrorist State”.
Feminist Studies 22.1. Pages 41 – 79. 1996.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
66
has not conformed to entrenched literary and disciplinary categorisations as developed in
Western institutions.
Therefore, Latin American women’s testimonial literature should not be judged according to
the empirical standards of Western anthropologists or sociologists. Nor should it be
categorised according to canonical notions of fact and fiction. Rather, testimonio should be
seen on its own terms, as a distinctive literary movement of resistance and solidarity which
endows women, indigenous people and other historically oppressed groups with the authority
to narrate their own history in their own words and in so doing offers them the possibility to
elicit solidarity and support and to fight back against centuries of political repression,
economic exploitation and cultural misrepresentation.
WORD COUNT (including footnotes and bibliography): 20, 845.
MA Dissertation Sofia Mason
67
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