Rigoberta Menchú meets the press

[naaman fletcher]

this is an excerpt, more at link:

Menchú began her remarks with what looked like a bombshell, dramatically offering an explanation for her recounting of the death of a younger brother named Nicolas. Menchú wrote that he died of malnutrition on a plantation when she was 8 and he was only 2 -- but Rohter found and interviewed her older brother, Nicolas, who refuted her story. Menchú's explanation: She had two brothers named Nicolas: one born in 1949, who died, and one born in 1950, whom Rohter talked to.

A stunning retort -- except that that birth date would make the other Nicolas 10 years older than Menchú. Did she watch her brother die of malnutrition when he was 17 years old? She did not directly answer a follow-up question asking how old Nicolas was when he died or what he died of. (Menchú and her representatives could not be reached for further comment by press time.) Reached at Middlebury College Thursday, Stoll said that a second Nicolas did exist, but died long before Menchú was born.

Likewise, Menchú reaffirmed that she was "self-taught," receiving only informal education from nuns while working as a maid at a convent school for a year. (She said she purposely omitted the nuns from her book to protect them from the government.) "She's still displaying a lack of candor," said Stoll, pointing to records showing that she had attended three Catholic schools and one public school. "There are four stages in Rigoberta's education, and what she's describing doesn't describe one of them."

http://www.salon.com/news/1999/02/12newsa.html