October 21, 2026

Keep Your Own Secrets

I'm still keeping secret what I think no-one should know. Not even anthropologists or sociologists can find out all our secrets.

These are the closing words of Rigoberta Menchú's testimonio, dictated in 1982 to anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray while Menchú lived in exile from Guatemala, where soldiers had already tortured and killed her father, mother, and brother during the army's campaign against the Maya people. She had just spent an entire book handing over the worst losses of her life to a stranger's tape recorder, yet she ends by refusing to hand over everything. That refusal is its own form of release: she does not owe the world a complete account of her suffering in order to be believed or allowed to keep living. Forgiveness, for her, starts with letting go of the demand, from others and from herself, that every wound be fully explained before she is allowed to move forward.