The Point

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Queremos paz


DOES JUSTICE MATTER? I'VE BEEN WONDERING LATELY. IS it important that a person's rights as a human being be respected? Are we all entitled to the same rights?

One of the more unfortunate controversies here in Canada recently is the issue of multiple citizenship. Because so many Canadians trying to evacuate Lebanon in the past few weeks have been living there for extended periods of time (sometimes years), some are questioning what Canada's responsibilities are to them as citizens. Should our government be obligated to provide a safe means of evacuation from war zones for citizens who haven't been in the country for a number of years? What defines a citizen? And what rights are those citizens entitled to?

I just happen to know of a woman who has not just been considering these questions, she has been living out her loud and resonant answer to them for the past few decades. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala is Rigoberta Menchú Tum's bold, arresting testimony of her life as a Quiché Indian woman in Guatemala, as told to anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debay, and first published in Spanish in 1983 under the title Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia. Menchú's life story is as passionate an appeal for the urgent need for recognition of all peoples as equally deserving of basic human rights and freedoms as you will find. I guarantee you that reading her account of the culture and history of her people, and their struggles with the Guatemalan government, will change the way you think about politics and freedom.

I, Rigoberta Menchú is alternately about Menchú's experiences growing up, the culture and history of her people, her family's struggles in their mountain village in the Guatemalan Altiplano, and her gradual embrace of the part she has come to play in fighting for her people's recognition and rights. The book loosely follows her journey from childhood, growing up in her family's village and harvesting corn and other crops down on fincas, to her eventual role as an outspoken advocate for human rights in Guatemala, and passionate work for social reform and workers' rights in her country. Members of her family were arrested and tortured on suspicion of connection with the mostly leftist guerilla rebel groups then engaged in what would be the 36-year battle with the government, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives before it finally came to an end in 1996. Among those arrested were her father, Vicente Menchú, a well-known community leader who helped found organisations fighting on behalf of the rights of poor peasants, and her brother, who was brutally murdered by the Guatemalan army. The book is not a condemnation of Spanish-speaking ladinos, who are only one of the country's twenty-three main ethnocultural groups, and who seem to her as a child to be wholly oppressors and exploiters of her people, but rather a continuous unfolding of layers to reveal the fundamental humanity that binds all people.

One of the most powerful moments in the book for me was when Menchú realised that it was not only Indians who, like her family, had to journey to the coast every year to harvest crops for miserable wages in inhuman conditions; ladinos too, she realised, could be poor. When she sees this for the first time, it transforms how she sees herself and her community in relation to other people living in poverty and powerlessness within in the Guatemalan state. The sense of injustice she feels on behalf of her people for having to migrate to the mountains when rich families take over their land, for the needless death of her two older brothers to malnutrition, for the ignorance of their existence by so many in the upper classes until their clothes become fashionable... it becomes transformed, through a reasonable alchemy, into a sense of injustice on behalf of all oppressed peoples, indigenous or otherwise, and a realisation of her part to play in fighting for their voices to be heard on an equal playing field.

I say this idea, of the need to recognise all peoples' rights to be fairly represented and to fully benefit from their society, is especially pertinent this week because for the first time in over 40 years, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly known as Zaire, has just conducted a national election. Despite claims by some candidates and media that voting irregularities have occurred, incumbent president Joseph Kabila and main rival (and former rebel leader) Jean-Pierre Bemba have so far not been critical of the conduct of the election. It is, to say the least, an encouraging sign in a country where a five-year civil war that ended in 2003 has left millions dead and may yet erupt again; the fighting in the DRC, it should be noted, is connected to a number of regional conflicts, including those in Uganda and Rwanda. This year's election, called by Kabila to establish a democratic mandate for the country's government and replace the interim administration, which includes a number of former rebel leaders, with a fully-democratically elected one, is a landmark in the country's history, and politicians and foreign officials in the region have suggested it could, if successful, set a precedent for the entire continent.

Why does it matter if people have a say in their representation in government? Why bother conducting an election in this vast central African country with a population of around 60 million and an electorate of 25.6 million? Kabila, the successor to his late father Laurent Kabila, who was killed in 2001, certainly could have chosen to hold firmly onto his post, as so many of the country's dictators have done since the DRC's independence in 1960. The country has had a brutal and bloody history in the past few centuries, so why is it worth bothering to strengthen the peace process between the government and former rebels, and give the people of the DRC the ability to choose their leaders?

Rigoberta Menchú Tum's father, Vicente, was the elected leader of their community until the family became closely entangled in the violence spreading throughout the country. Not like a king, she notes, but rather a respected member of the community with influence and guidance in decision making (and a role along with his wife as abuelos, or grandparents, to the entire village). The distinction is important, and though she has a great amount of respect for Catholic traditions and beliefs, and comes to study the catechism to obtain an education, she is critical of Catholic leaders who condemn their level of trust and commitment to these chosen representatives. Their way of cooking, of eating, every tradition their people hold sacred, 'the elected fathers of our community explain to us that all these things come down to us from our grandfathers and we must conserve them,' she explains. 'This is the main purpose of our elected leader -- to embody all the values handed down from our ancestors. He is the leader of the community, a father for all of our children, and he must lead an exemplary life. Above all, he has a commitment to the whole community.'

For Menchú's family, these are luxuries not afforded by the government. Barely growing enough to eat in the Altiplano, they are forced, like many of their friends and neighbours, to make the long journey to work the more fertile fields on the coast for rich landowners in order to make a living, however meagre. I don't mean to romanticise their lives, but Menchú's description of the pain she sees her mother go through as she is forced to watch her children starve to death despite their back-breaking labour is... well, it's difficult to read, let alone swallow. And yet, the government of Guatemala, Menchú shows us, is unsympathetic to the struggles of their people throughout her formative years; the long arm of the law favours educated Spanish speakers (and must be greased with heavy bribes), land seizures by wealthy families are common and turned a blind eye to, and grievous abuses of workers' health and dignity are frequently ignored, if not quietly sanctioned.

It is with an eye to this complete lack of representation that a number of Indians and poor in Guatemala at the time began to take up arms. Vicente and a number of other protestors stormed the Spanish embassy in 1980 to draw international attention to their situation and pressure the army to move out of the heavily-repressed town of El Quiché. 'I am a Christian,' he tells her, 'and the duty of a Christian is to fight all the injustices committed against our people. It is not right that our people give their blood, their pure lives, for the few who are in power.'

Peasants, students, workers, and unions from all over the country joined together to march in the capital and demonstrate against the increasingly militant repression of unions and rebel groups by the government. Every single one of the 'compañeros' who occupied the embassy died when it went up in a fierce fire whose source is still unknown. Having known her father was willing to lay down his life fighting for their rights, she is not stunned so much by his death as by the deaths of so many compañeros in their struggle at once. 'All they wanted was enough to live on, enough to meet their people's needs,' she reflects. The event hardens her conviction to continue to fight for the rights of those in her country who don't own vast cotton farms or hold government posts.

Does Menchú's story matter? Is freedom, real freedom, worth the cost of a life, of a father, of a brother? We have reasonably free federal, provincial and municipal elections on a regular basis in Canada, and many people I've spoken too seem to think the political process is irrelevant, that participation in a democracy isn't worth the effort, that politics are something that happens to other people, and what goes on the in the news has only the most tenuous connection to everyday life. Why then, after 40 years of dictatorships, bloody fighting over resources, plundering of gold and cobalt by domestic and foreign corporations and militias and a humanitarian crisis that perhaps dwarfs even that in Darfur, does it matter that by the end of this month, 25 million people in the DRC will have had their chance to have a say in which direction their country is going? If our participation in the political process is really so irrelevant, why has Kabila bothered?

I admit, I'm not as familiar with Joseph Kabila's attitudes as I am with, say, Peter Mackay's. But a part of me hopes, and earnestly believes, that this election is being conducted not just so a bunch of military commanders and career politicians can validate a sense of entitlement to the run of their country. A part of me believes this election is really being called in the interests of the people who may be able to move the peace process in the DRC forward and have their voices heard in their national assembly. I don't think I'm crazy.

Since Rigoberta Menchú Tum won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, controversies have arisen over alleged factual inaccuracies in the account of events in I, Rigboberta Menchú. In response to these claims, the Nobel Committee dismissed calls to revoke the award, noting that it was not given solely, nor even predominantly, on the basis of the book. It is worth noting the controversy, however, and recognising that the testimony is just that, and as she says, 'The important thing is that what has happened to me has happened to many other people too: My story is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.' So while some events deviate from strict biographical observance of what really happened, the book is primarily important in its account of the history and story of an entire people, and in that sense, it is one of the clearest calls for justice, for everyone, that I have ever read.

There are some things worth fighting for, and I don't mean with an AK-47. Justice, I think we can fairly say, is one of them.

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posted by Christopher at 11:20 p.m.

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