Truth’ and Women’s testimonio: Literary Defiance and Political Resistance in Latin America

MA Dissertation Sofia Mason

1

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


2

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.


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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.


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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.


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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).


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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.


18

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.


19

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.


20

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.


21

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


22

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 firsthand 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.


23

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.


24

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.


25

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.


26

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.


27

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.


28

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.


29

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.


30

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.


31

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.


32

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.


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.


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


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.


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.


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


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.


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.


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


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


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



43

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



44

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.


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.


46

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.


47

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.


48

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


49

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.


50

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.


51

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.


52

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.


53

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.


54

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.


55

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.


56

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.


57

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.


58

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.


59

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.


60

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.


61

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.


62

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.


63

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.


64

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.


65

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.


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.


67

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Truth’ and Women’s testimonio: Literary Defiance and Political Resistance in Latin America

Documents

Transcript of Truth’ and Women’s testimonio: Literary Defiance and Political Resistance in Latin America