In my first semester of college, I read I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala for my Introduction to Latin American Cultures class. It was a class where we explored the cultures of Latin Americans and the effects it had on the heritage and tradition within Latin America. One element of Latin America, of course, are indigenous people. In Menchú’s testimonio, she discusses the issues of the forced assimilation towards the indigenous people of Guatemala and the struggle to fight against it. Menchú states how even with the ladinos, a Spanish-speaking white person in Central America, taking control of their country, her people were still able to preserve their traditional culture. For instance, during Menchu’s sister’s wedding, their grandparents honored their ancestors and their own struggles by mentioning how a lot of it came due to the ladinos. However, the Quiché people were able to fight the assimilation, but because of it, they are forced to live in poverty and work in gruesome environments by the ladinos.

Menchú’s fight is an important part of Latin America since it displays the way many other tribes too have been imperialised and forced to assimilate to European culture, thus losing their native history. It has been continuously shown through history that if a certain group of people do not assimilate to their conqueror’s ideas, they will be ostracized from that society and will be looked down upon. These ideas have affected Latin American culture since this caused society today to often forget about indigenous people, and the fact that they still very much exist. It is a constant battle for indigenous groups to continue living their way in today’s world since they are overshadowed and dehumanized by many just for not conforming to modernization. Until indigenous people can live on their own without some sort of assimilation, they will never be able to live in peace.

We talk about how difficult it is for Latinx people in America, but we also forget that the same discrimination we face is the same discrimination indigenous people face in our homelands. We know that there is a preference for Eurocentric features on people and try to fight against it, but we forget that we tend to have the same preferences in Latin America. In Mexico, the women in magazines don't even look like a majority of the actual women as they mainly display women with light skin color. 65% of Mexico’s population identifies as moreno, which means dark skinned (brown or black) in Spanish. This includes 15.7 million indigenous people. How can we say we care about our homeland, when we don’t care about the natives of that same homeland?

The act of conquering and taking away indigenous peoples already set lifestyle completely changed their world, and the following generations to come. Although colonization led to the creation of a new set of blood, the mestizo race, the confliction led an impact that resulted in communities losing their identity, who they were, their ancestry, and heritage. The natives lost everything as the result of colonization, and not just at the hands of murder and genocide they had to go through. And it is not just an act of the past since it is still happening today.

So many indigenous tribes are struggling to survive and struggling to keep their culture. They refuse to conform to modernization, but for some reason, are then treated as lesser than human beings. The rest of the world dehumanizes them and sees them as objects, rather than actual people. Although the majority of the stories were written about the past, it should be remembered that this is still present now and in the future. The fight for equality of the indigenous people is still occurring today, and everyone should be paying attention. With this in mind, people of mestizo blood should not forget the battles part of their ancestors had to go through. It is easy to leave behind the pains of the past, especially if they did not personally go through it, but it is something their family of the past had to go through, which means there is a possibility it can happen once again. There has already been small instances of it occurring through gentrification in recent times, so yet again, the fight is still not over. #IndigenousRights