Although Sra Menchu's story takes place in the last century, echoes of that war still abound. A Providence man who entered the US illegally in 1992 was just arrested for atrocities committed in the Guatemalan civil war. See "Long Reach of Justice" by Amanda Milkovits, which appeared in the Providence Journal Bulletin this past Saturday.
The author details life from her earliest memories as a child working on the finca (coffee plantation) - impressing with the harsh treatment by ladinos (owners/soldiers/politicians) who showed no mercy to the Mayan who first lived on the land. Rigoberta's mother had to briefly leave her work on the plantation in order to find a place to bury her young son who'd died of malnutrition, only to return to find she'd been fired for being away from her labors for 2-3 days. Beatings, torture, death were all too common, usually resulting when Mayans tried to form some kind of working association to improve their working conditions. Rigoberta decides to learn Spanish to be a go-between for her people and helps bring the seriousness of their plight to the world stage, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.
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