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We were going to ask for two days holiday and if they didn’t give it to us we’d go and spend Christmas somewhere else. But I was anxious. I couldn’t do it then, perhaps because of the way my parents had brought me up. I was incapable of disobedience. And those employers exploited my obedience. They took advantage of my innocence.

This passage appears near the end of Chapter XIV, just before Candelaria is fired. It demonstrates the conflict Rigoberta feels upon realizing that, to force change, she will have to become less compliant and obedient. The “we” Rigoberta refers to here is Candelaria and Rigoberta. As maids at the landowner’s home, Rigoberta and Candelaria often must work together, but Candelaria spearheads rebellious acts, including killing and plucking chickens for the Christmas feast but then refusing to dress them. Candelaria is at once a foil for Rigoberta and a role model: through her, Rigoberta begins to understand that one of the few options Indians have for communicating their dissatisfaction with the ladinos who exploit them is to rebel by not catering to the ladinos. Though Rigoberta claims here that she was incapable of disobedience, she quickly learns to become comfortable with going against those in power.

In her autobiography, Rigoberta refers to the ladino opinion that the Mayan people were weak and submissive, which contributed to the downfall of the Mayan culture. She rejects this notion, yet in this passage, she stresses the fact that her parents raised her to be submissive. The price of progress is an important theme in I, Rigoberta Menchú, because, as Rigoberta points out in this passage, bringing about change sometimes involves changing identity and going against the manners that have been passed down from previous generations. The fact that Candelaria and Rigoberta choose Christmas, a season of tradition for the ladinos, as the time in which they will begin to sabotage their employer works to heighten the tension Rigoberta experiences as she pulls away from the expectations of her elders and ancestors in an attempt to protect the values they have passed on to her.

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