-Caveat Lector-
Background: According to Lyndon LaRouche (no I'm definitely not
a "LaRouchie"), Rigoberta Menchu belongs to some sort of
Maoist group, connected with drug-financed "revolutionary"
armies in Central and South America. In light of this earlier
claim by LaRouche, the AP story below is interesting. (BTW,
I read Menchu's book in the early 1990s, and it is an
interesting read. I now wonder though how true it was.)
Brian Redman | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
Editor-in-Chief | ---------------Phone: 217-356-4418----------------
Conspiracy Nation | "The perfect slave thinks he's free."
Nobel Winner's Story Challenged
NEW YORK (AP) -- A new book by an American anthropologist claims key
details of an autobiography written by Rigoberta Menchu, the 1992
Nobel Peace Prize winner, are untrue, The New York Times reported
today.
``I, Rigoberta Menchu,'' first published in 1983, describes the
author's painful history growing up as an uneducated and oppressed
member of the Quiche people in Guatemala.
Ms. Menchu became an internationally acclaimed spokeswoman for the
rights of indigenous peoples, based largely on the best-selling
account.
But anthropologist David Stoll concludes that Ms. Menchu's book
``cannot be the eyewitness account it purports to be'' because she
repeatedly describes ``experiences she never had herself.''
Stoll's book, ``Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor
Guatemalans,'' is based on archival research and nearly a decade of
interviews with more than 120 people, the newspaper said.
In September, Ms. Menchu refused to address Stoll's criticisms,
dismissing them as part of a racist political agenda intended to gain
publicity.
A reporter from the Times, using contacts provided by Stoll as well as
others found independently, also conducted interviews in Guatemala
that contradicted Ms. Menchu's account, the newspaper said.
Some of Ms. Menchu's relatives, neighbors, friends and former
classmates said main episodes of her book had been fabricated or
exaggerated.
A land dispute, central to the book, was a family quarrel, they said,
not a fight against rich landowners of European descent. A younger
brother who Ms. Menchu said starved to death never existed, they said.
And Ms. Menchu, who claimed she never went to school, attended two
private boarding schools on scholarships, they said.
Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told the
Times that he was aware of Stoll's work, but ``there is no question of
revoking the prize.'' He said the award was not based exclusively on
the book.
AP-NY-12-15-98 0612EST
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