Guatemalan Passage Post

I, Rigoberta Menchu and La United Fruit Company, are two passages that discuss, through personal experience, the life of a Guatemalan. The first passage, I, Rigoberta Menchu, is written by the young, Quiche, Indian girl Rigoberta Menchu, whose first hand experience of life in Guatemala is a testimony of how poorly the indigenous Guatemalan people were treated during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996).

Reading these texts, I found it very difficult to fully grasp the idea of how these people lived during this time. Coming from a nice, suburban home, the biggest problem I had to deal with was not wanting to walk two blocks to school. My ability to empathize with these people is severely hindered by this fact. After really thinking about the issues they faced, and are still facing, on a daily basis, I've really started to appreciate what I have. I may have to walk for twenty minutes to my classes now that my car has died on me, but that is nothing compared to the walk into town Rigoberta had to endure. It really changes your perspective.

In La United Fruit Company, the last paragraph really sums up, in good detail, the point of this poem;





Meanwhile the Indians fall 
into the sugared chasms 

of the harbors, wrapped 

for burial in the mist of the dawn: 

a body rolls, a thing 

that has no name, a fallen cipher, 
a cluster of dead fruit 

thrown down on the dump.