David Stoll teaches anthropology at Middlebury College. His other books include Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? (1982), Is Latin America Turning Protestant? (1990), and (with Virginia Garrard Burnett) Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America (1993).Many people have asked whether I am surprised by the furor over my book. The answer is no, not really-except for the reaction from some of my colleagues in Latin American studies. I am surprised that, 17 years after Rigoberta told her story and 2 years after the Guatemalan peace agreement was signed, Carol Smith, Victoria Sanford, Norma Chinchilla, and Georg Gugelberger object to my reexamination of I, Rigoberta Menchú. Ordinarily a Nobel peace laureate is subject to scrutiny much earlier in her career. In Rigoberta's case, she expects to run for president of her country. Truth commissions, exhumations, and the declassification of state documents are providing courtroom-quality evidence about the violence that turned her into an international figure. When it comes to the army's crimes, my critics welcome the search for facts. But they have doubts about interrogating the single most widely read book about Central America. While they expect Guatemalan army officers to consent to being tried for mass murder, they do not think Rigoberta should have to face the fact that she went to middle school.On second thought, there is no reason to be surprised. After returning from a year of fieldwork in northern Quiché Department in 1989, I was full of what violence survivors had told me so many times. They wanted the war to end.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.