SOURCE: Lane, Charles. “Deceiving is Believing.” New Republic (8 March 1999): 38.

In the following review, Lane discusses the accusations of deception that David Stoll brought against Menchú in his book Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans.

In the emblematic year of the Columbus quincentennial, Menchú struck the Nobel Committee in Norway as the perfect embodiment of the downside of the Discovery. In the intervening years, not surprisingly, the tiny, earnest figure of Menchú has become a forceful political presence in her native country and elsewhere. She has traveled the world as a United Nations-sponsored advocate for the indigenous peoples of the world, using her prestige to help advance peace talks between the Guatemalan government and the remnants of its Marxist guerrilla forces, and on behalf of such causes as the campaign in 1995 to urge Starbucks to support higher wages for Guatemalan coffee pickers. “Menchú herself worked in...