Abstract :
Rigoberta Mench´ u has become an icon for the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and
self-determination. For many academics and activists around the world, the accusations of
lying made against Ms. Mench´ u by David Stoll brought into sharp focus the politics of “truthmaking”
and the absolutist categories of fact and fiction. In this attempt to discredit Ms.
Mench´u, and through her, the Mayan experience of genocide by the Guatemalan military
and its U.S. sponsors, important questions have been raised about how and when Third
World women can speak, the conditions under which they will be heard, and the strategies
used to silence them. In this paper, the author draws upon some of the lessons of the
Rigoberta Mench´u case to examine the politics of truth making in Canada in a recent
controversy regarding a speech she made criticizing American foreign policy and urging the
women’s movement to mobilize against America’s War on Terrorism. The highly
personalized nature of the attacks on the author by political and media elites sought to
accomplish a closing down of public space for informed debate about the realities of U.S.
foreign policy and to silence dissent. Repeatedly emphasizing her status as an immigrant
outsider, this controversy also contributed to the (ongoing) racialization of people of color
as a treacherous “enemy” within the nation’s geographical borders, against whom
“Canadians” had to be mobilized.
