“Rigoberta's Listener”: The Significance of Sound inTestimonio

Abstract

“[LOS INDIOS SON] LOS VENCIDOS POR LA CONQUISTA ESPAÑOLA, LOS QUE SE EXPRESAN HOY EN LA VOZ DE RIGOBERTA-MENCHÚ” (“THE voice of Rigoberta Menchú allows the defeated to speak”; Burgos-Debray, Prólogo 8; Introduction xi). This statement introduces thetestimoniorecorded on cassette tapes and then edited into print by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray:Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y asi me nació la conciencia(My Name is Rigoberta Menchú and This Is How My Consciousness Was Born), published in English asI, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala.In order to hear that voice from January 1982, and to consider the important role of aurality in the text's production and later uptakes, one now has to visit the Hoover Institution, on the campus of Stanford University. Given that Menchú'stestimonio, a genre defined by the work of personal witnessing on behalf of a collective struggling against injustice, tells the story of her community's socialist fight against exploitative labor practices and government-sponsored genocide, it might seem odd that her voice has been preserved in the archives of a right-wing think tank in the United States, some of whose fellows provided support for the government Menchú spoke against. However, the Hoover Institution has long dedicated itself to an archival counterrevolutionary practice, collecting the voices, newspapers, personal correspondence, and other documents associated with the ideological enemies of the institution's current and former fellows. Moreover, the location of Menchú's tapes makes some historical sense. Many today will recall that Stanford University, the Hoover Institution, and Menchú were at the center of what has since been called the Rigoberta Menchú controversy (Arias), in which the text galvanized culture war debates when progressive faculty members includedI, Rigoberta Menchúon syllabi to diversify the curriculum. Right-wing pundits railed against the inclusion as an example of “affirmative action for books” (Dinesh D'Souza qtd. in Strauss) and denounced Menchú'stestimonioafter the Stanford PhD and anthropologist David Stoll revealed that it included several inaccurate statements.