In 1992 I attended a meeting in London titled '500 years of Resistance', addressed by Rigoberta Menchu through a translator. The meeting was exceptionally well-heeled even by the standards of the British left and chaired by our radical playwright-in-chief, Harold Pinter. At the front Rigoberta Menchu, less than five foot high, recounted tales of the persecution of her people and her family to the translator, and through her to us. She was dressed - rather over-dressed - in traditional indigenous Guatemalan clothes, and while she modelled them at the front the enterprising organisers of the meeting were selling shawls and dresses at the back. The women of Hampstead were thrilled not only to hear Rigoberta's heart-rending story, but also to take home a little part of Guatemalan peasant chic.
After the main talk had finished, Harold Pinter addressed us. Pinter, rising up from London's East End has always had a rather aristocratic manner. When he was an actor his stage name was David Baron, and at his local pub the landlord kept a special pewter mug for his ale so that he wouldn't have to drink from the plebian pint glasses. In his plummiest actor voice, he said 'Isn't she maarvellous?' and proceeded to patronise Ms Menchu at great length. The message of her suffering he told us (on the anniversary of Columbus landing in America) is that Europeans have brought nothing but suffering to the indigenous people of the Americas, and the 'discovery' was a human disaster.
I protested at this point and asked Rigoberta Menchu whether she agreed with Pinter. 'Are you really saying that it would have been better if our two worlds had never met, and all of the social and technological progress that has been made should not have happened? If it was up to you would you prefer that Columbus had never made that trip?' I asked.
Clearly there was some trouble translating my question and her answer, but she was forthright in saying NO, she did not want to see the clock turned back to 1492, and then used an expression that defeated the translator, who reported 'Pylons and popular power are what I want'. I think she was quoting Lenin 'Soviet power plus electrification equals socialism'. Certainly the terms in which she continued, for the further development of industry under popular control, suggested a familiarity with Marx. At this point of course the good people of Hampstead were shuffling in their seats, appalled that their little Indian doll had turned out to be a red revolutionary.
In December 1998, the memoir I, Rigoberta Menchu was exposed as a heavily propagandistic fake, her dead brother Nicholas turning up alive and well, and her tales of involvement in the Guatemalan Peasant movement incommensurate with her age.
-- Jim heartfield