I believe that Schwartz, like many of the looniest on the right, was once a sectarian leftist of some sort.
seth ackerman
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Henwood [SMTP:dhenwood at panix.com]
> Sent: Monday, December 28, 1998 10:49 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: WSJ hit on Menchu
>
> The latest hit on Rigoberta Menchu comes from that notorious bastion
> of
> truth-telling, the Wall Street Journal editorial page. This screed's
> ingenious innovation: her "lies" might provide a pretext for violence!
> Anyone know who this Schwartz character is, and what the source of his
> expertise on "the Hispanic world" is?
>
> Doug
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
>
> WALL STREET JOURNAL - December 28, 1998
>
> Commentary
>
> A Nobel Prize for Lying
> By Stephen Schwartz, who writes frequently on politics and culture in
> the
> Hispanic world.
>
> Rigoberta Menchú, 1992 Nobel Laureate for Peace and a world-famous
> advocate
> for the rights of Central American Indians, has been exposed as a liar
> in
> her 1983 book, "I, Rigoberta Menchú."
>
> Since its publication, Ms. Menchú's "autobiography" has been accorded
> such
> acclaim that it appears in the literature, political science and
> anthropology curricula of many U.S. universities. Ms. Menchú's story
> has
> also inspired at least four children's books, in which she is
> presented as
> a role model.
>
> The hoax was laid bare by David Stoll, an anthropologist and expert on
> Mayan Indian culture. In a new book, "Rigoberta Menchú and the Story
> of All
> Poor Guatemalans," Mr. Stoll shows that while Ms. Menchú described
> herself
> as a child agricultural laborer who couldn't speak or write Spanish
> until
> adulthood, she actually attended two private Catholic boarding
> schools.
> Whereas she claimed her family had been dispossessed from its land by
> white
> oppressors, the property was actually lost in a quarrel with her
> father's
> Indian in-laws. A younger brother who died of starvation was
> imaginary, as
> was the burning alive of another brother at the hands of the
> Guatemalan
> military.
>
> Mr. Stoll's book has received wide attention, including front-page
> coverage
> in the New York Times. Yet the fakery involved in Ms. Menchú's book
> is, for
> some, old news. In "Illiberal Education," published in 1991, Dinesh
> D'Souza
> argued that the vocabulary of the volume was not that of Ms. Menchú
> herself, but rather represented the feminist and ultraleftist
> fantasies of
> her ghostwriter, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. Ms. Debray is the ex-wife of
> Regis Debray, groupie of Che Guevara and one of France's most
> notorious
> left-wing intellectual tourists.
>
> Still, it took most of the world seven years to learn the truth, and
> even
> with the imposture out in the open (Ms. Menchú herself has not
> disputed Mr.
> Stoll's allegations, except to tag her critics as "racist"), some of
> her
> advocates are anxious to give her a break. Her promoters view her tale
> as a
> morality play about the genocide of indigenous peoples at the hands of
> white invaders. They take the position that the "higher truths" they
> believe in are ultimately more important than the facts. In an
> editorial on
> Thursday, the New York Times explained that Ms. Menchú's lies were
> ultimately of small account next to the "criminal oppression of
> indigenous
> peoples in Guatemala." Geir Lundestad of the Norwegian Nobel committee
> also
> dismissed the story, stating that "all autobiographies embellish to a
> greater or lesser extent."
>
> Yet the hypocrisy of Ms. Menchú's liberal apologists goes far beyond a
> willingness to overlook her mendacity. They also overlook the
> substance of
> her politics. Miss Menchú was a functioning leader of the URNG, the
> Marxist
> guerrilla movement that wreaked havoc on Guatemala for decades.
> Insisting
> on a policy of unconditional victory, she declined to enter peace
> negotiations, even after she had received her peace prize (which she
> celebrated as a house guest of former Sandinista secret-police boss
> Tomas
> Borge).
>
> To be sure, Ms. Menchú's is not the only recent case of the
> counterfeiting
> of memoirs. A similar controversy recently erupted about an alleged
> memoir
> of the Holocaust, "Fragments," by Binjamin Wilkomirski. Like Ms.
> Menchú,
> Mr. Wilkomirski reputedly fabricated details of his life, turning
> himself
> from the illegitimate child of a Swiss Protestant woman into a Jewish
> native of Latvia, and claiming to have witnessed various atrocities.
>
> But such other cases lack the most troubling feature of Ms. Menchú's
> misadventure: the deliberate use of lies to advance the agenda of the
> militant left. The worst aspect of such deception is that it obscures
> the
> real history of societies like Guatemala. The transformation of a
> squalid
> dispute between family members over a parcel of land into a drama of
> indigenous victims and evil invaders involves much more than the
> benign
> recycling of apocrypha into slogans. Instead, it feeds dangerous
> illusions
> and creates easy pretexts for violence.
>
> Of course, the aspect of the Menchú controversy most relevant for
> Americans
> is the continued use of her book in schools. Exposed as chicanery,
> will it
> now be withdrawn from required reading lists? Probably not. Seated
> comfortably as they are, on U.S. university campuses and the boards of
> Scandinavian academies, Ms. Menchú's acolytes aren't likely to hold
> themselves accountable for their complicity in her deceit.
>
>
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