I, Rigoberta Menchu, Liar

Perhaps the most salient of Stoll's findings is the way in which Rigoberta has distorted the sociology of her family situation, and that of the Mayans in the region of Uspantan. Rigoberta had no brother who starved to death, at least none that her own family could remember. The ladinos were not a ruling caste in Rigoberta's town or district, in which there were no large estates or fincas as she claims. The Menchus, moreover, were not poor in the way Rigoberta describes them. Vicente Menchu had title to 2,753 hectares of land. The 22-year land dispute described by Rigoberta, which is the central event in the book leading to the rebellion and the tragedies that followed was, in fact, over a tiny 151 hectare parcel of land. Most importantly, Vicente Menchu's "heroic struggle against the landowners who wanted to take our land" was in fact not a dispute with representatives of a European-descended conquistador class but with his own Mayan relatives, the Tum family, headed by his wife's uncle.

David Horowitz