Rigoberta Menchú
Encyclopedia
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is an indigenous Guatemala
n, of the K'iche' ethnic group. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the plight of Guatemala's indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War
(1960–1996), and to promoting indigenous rights
in the country. She received the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize
and Prince of Asturias Award in 1998. She is the subject of the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983) and the author of the autobiographical work, Crossing Borders. Later, American anthropologist David Stoll
visited Guatemala made claims that some facts in Menchú's Nobel Prize-winning testimonial were inaccurate or false.
Menchú is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador
. She has also become a figure in indigenous political parties and ran for President of Guatemala in 2007.
violations committed by the Guatemalan armed forces during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996.
Her father, Vicente Menchú was a member of the guerrilla movement Guerrilla Army of the Poor
and died in 1980 during the Burning of the Spanish Embassy
. In 1981, Rigoberta Menchú escaped to Mexico. In 1982, she narrated a book about her life to Venezuelan author and anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos
, "Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia" (My Name is Rigoberta Menchu and this is how my Conscience was Born), which was translated into five other languages including English and French. The book made her an international icon at the time of the ongoing conflict in Guatemala.
Since the Guatemalan Civil War
ended, Menchú has campaigned to have members of the Guatemalan political and military establishment tried in Spanish courts. In 1999 she filed a complaint before a court in Spain because prosecutions of crimes committed during the civil war are practically impossible in Guatemala. These attempts stalled as the Spanish courts determined that the plaintiffs had not yet exhausted all possibility of seeking justice through the legal system of Guatemala. On 23 December 2006, Spain called for the extradition
from Guatemala of seven former members of Guatemala's government on charges of genocide
and torture
. These include former military rulers Efraín Ríos Montt
and Óscar Mejía
. Spain's highest court ruled that cases of genocide committed abroad could be judged in Spain, even if no Spanish citizens have been involved. In addition to the deaths of Spanish citizens, the most serious charges include genocide against the Mayan people of Guatemala.
Menchú has become involved in the Mexican pharmaceutical industry as president of the company Salud para Todos ("Health for All") and the company "Farmacias Similares", with the goal of offering low-cost generic medicines. She served as presidential goodwill ambassador for the 1996 peace accords.
In 2006, Menchú was one of the founders of the Nobel Women's Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams
, Shirin Ebadi
, Wangari Maathai
, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. Six women representing North America and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa decided to bring together their experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality. It is the goal of the Nobel Women's Initiative to help strengthen work being done in support of women's rights
around the world.
Rigoberta is also a member of PeaceJam, an organization whose mission is "to create young leaders committed to positive change in themselves, their communities and the world through the inspiration of Nobel Peace Laureates who pass on the spirit, skills, and wisdom they embody.". She travels around the world speaking to youth through PeaceJam conferences.
and that she would stand in the 2007 presidential election
. Had she been elected, she would have become Latin America's fourth indigenous president after Mexico's Benito Juárez
, Peru's Alejandro Toledo
and Bolivia's Evo Morales
.
In the election, Menchú was defeated in the first round, receiving three percent of the vote. Several candidates of her party were threatened and two of them were killed. After the elections Rigoberta Menchu gave a message of peace on television.
In 2009 she was involved in the newly founded party Winaq
.
Menchú was a candidate for the 2011 presidential election
but lost in the first round.
carried out an investigation of Menchú's story, researching government documents, reports, and land claims (many filed by Menchú's own family), and interviewing former neighbors, locals, friends, enemies, and others for his 1999 book Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Stoll claimed that Menchú changed some elements of her life, family and village to meet the publicity needs of the guerrilla movement, which she joined as a political cadre after her parents were assassinated. The controversy caused by Stoll's book received widespread coverage in the US press of the time.http://www.thenation.com/article/154582/it-was-heaven-they-burned?page=0,3
Historian Greg Grandin
, in his 2010 article in the US periodical The Nation
, generally rebukes Stoll, writing that Stoll's research on the Guatemalan revolution is mostly wrong, but conceding that "two of Stoll's charges concerning Menchú's life do have merit. First, he documents that she received some education, contradicting a claim that her father refused to send her to school because he did not want her to lose her cultural identity. Second, Stoll presents evidence that Menchú falsely placed herself at the scene of her 16-year-old brother's murder." According to Grandin, Stoll in a later interview agreed to the "essential factuality of Menchú's account of how her brother and mother died".http://www.thenation.com/article/154582/it-was-heaven-they-burned?page=0,3 Grandin also quotes the opinion of novelist and journalist Francisco Goldman
about Stoll's book as "What rankles is the whiff of ideological obsession and zealotry, the odor of unfairness and meanness, the making of a mountain out of a molehill." US conservative writer David Horowitz
used Stoll's book to launch a campaign to discredit Rigoberta as a "Marxist terrorist," and "one of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century," and to call for the revocation of her Nobel Prize.
In response to Stoll's findings, Menchú initially accused him of defending the Guatemalan military and seeking to discredit all victims of the violence, but later she acknowledged making certain changes in her story. The Nobel Committee has dismissed calls to revoke her Nobel prize because of the reported falsifications; however, Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the Committee, said her prize "was not based exclusively or primarily on the autobiography". According to the Nobel Committee, "Stoll approves of her Nobel prize and has no question about the picture of army atrocities which she presents. He says that her purpose in telling her story the way she did 'enabled her to focus international condemnation on an institution that deserved it, the Guatemalan army.'"
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
n, of the K'iche' ethnic group. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the plight of Guatemala's indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War
Guatemalan Civil War
The Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1960-1996. The thirty-six-year civil war began as a grassroots, popular response to the rightist and military usurpation of civil government , and the President's disrespect for the human and civil rights of the majority of the population...
(1960–1996), and to promoting indigenous rights
Indigenous rights
Indigenous rights are those rights that exist in recognition of the specific condition of the indigenous peoples. This includes not only the most basic human rights of physical survival and integrity, but also the preservation of their land, language, religion and other elements of cultural...
in the country. She received the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
and Prince of Asturias Award in 1998. She is the subject of the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983) and the author of the autobiographical work, Crossing Borders. Later, American anthropologist David Stoll
David Stoll
David Stoll is an American anthropologist. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology from the University of Michigan and completed his Master's and Ph.D. at Stanford University. He spent much of the nineteen-eighties and nineties in Latin American countries such as Colombia and Guatemala,...
visited Guatemala made claims that some facts in Menchú's Nobel Prize-winning testimonial were inaccurate or false.
Menchú is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador
UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador
UNESCO Goodwill Ambassadors are celebrity advocates of UNESCO who use their talent or fame to spread the UNESCO ideals, especially attracting media attention...
. She has also become a figure in indigenous political parties and ran for President of Guatemala in 2007.
Career
Menchú received a primary-school education as a student at several Catholic boarding schools. After leaving school, she worked as an activist campaigning against human rightsHuman rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
violations committed by the Guatemalan armed forces during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996.
Her father, Vicente Menchú was a member of the guerrilla movement Guerrilla Army of the Poor
Guerrilla Army of the Poor
The Guerrilla Army Of The Poor was Guatemalan guerrilla movement, one of the four organizations comprising the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity that negotiated and signed the Peace accords in Guatemala with the Government and the Army of Guatemala.Initially, the guerrilla...
and died in 1980 during the Burning of the Spanish Embassy
Burning of the Spanish Embassy
The Burning of the Spanish Embassy refers to the January 31, 1980 occupation of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City, Guatemala, by indigenous peasants and their allies and the subsequent police raid that resulted in a fire which destroyed the embassy and left 36 people dead...
. In 1981, Rigoberta Menchú escaped to Mexico. In 1982, she narrated a book about her life to Venezuelan author and anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos
Elizabeth Burgos
Venezuelan anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, wife of the French philosopher Régis Debray, was the editor of Rigoberta Menchú's controversial autobiography I, Rigoberta Menchú. However, since Rigoberta told Burgos her life in a series of interviews, Burgos became in fact more than just the...
, "Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia" (My Name is Rigoberta Menchu and this is how my Conscience was Born), which was translated into five other languages including English and French. The book made her an international icon at the time of the ongoing conflict in Guatemala.
Since the Guatemalan Civil War
Guatemalan Civil War
The Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1960-1996. The thirty-six-year civil war began as a grassroots, popular response to the rightist and military usurpation of civil government , and the President's disrespect for the human and civil rights of the majority of the population...
ended, Menchú has campaigned to have members of the Guatemalan political and military establishment tried in Spanish courts. In 1999 she filed a complaint before a court in Spain because prosecutions of crimes committed during the civil war are practically impossible in Guatemala. These attempts stalled as the Spanish courts determined that the plaintiffs had not yet exhausted all possibility of seeking justice through the legal system of Guatemala. On 23 December 2006, Spain called for the extradition
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
from Guatemala of seven former members of Guatemala's government on charges of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
and torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
. These include former military rulers Efraín Ríos Montt
Efraín Ríos Montt
José Efraín Ríos Montt is a former de facto President of Guatemala, dictator, army general, and former president of Congress. In the 2003 presidential elections, he unsuccessfully ran as the candidate of the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front .Huehuetenango-born Ríos Montt remains one of the most...
and Óscar Mejía
Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores
Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores was the 27th President of Guatemala from 8 August 1983 to 14 January 1986. A member of the military, he was President of Guatemala during a time of increased repression and death squad activity...
. Spain's highest court ruled that cases of genocide committed abroad could be judged in Spain, even if no Spanish citizens have been involved. In addition to the deaths of Spanish citizens, the most serious charges include genocide against the Mayan people of Guatemala.
Menchú has become involved in the Mexican pharmaceutical industry as president of the company Salud para Todos ("Health for All") and the company "Farmacias Similares", with the goal of offering low-cost generic medicines. She served as presidential goodwill ambassador for the 1996 peace accords.
In 2006, Menchú was one of the founders of the Nobel Women's Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams
Jody Williams
Jody Williams is an American teacher and aid worker who received the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the campaign she worked for, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines...
, Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, a former judge and human rights activist and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. On 10 October 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially women's,...
, Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai
Wangari Muta Mary Jo Maathai was a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya...
, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. Six women representing North America and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa decided to bring together their experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality. It is the goal of the Nobel Women's Initiative to help strengthen work being done in support of women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
around the world.
Rigoberta is also a member of PeaceJam, an organization whose mission is "to create young leaders committed to positive change in themselves, their communities and the world through the inspiration of Nobel Peace Laureates who pass on the spirit, skills, and wisdom they embody.". She travels around the world speaking to youth through PeaceJam conferences.
Politics
On 12 February 2007, Menchú announced that she would form an indigenous political party called Encuentro por GuatemalaEncuentro por Guatemala
Encuentro por Guatemala – a Spanish name variously translated as "Encounter for Guatemala" , or as "Together for Guatemala" –...
and that she would stand in the 2007 presidential election
Guatemalan general election, 2007
A general election was held in Guatemala in two rounds on 9 September and 4 November 2007. Voters went to the polls to elect a new President and Vice President of the Republic, 158 congressional deputies, and 332 mayors.-Results:...
. Had she been elected, she would have become Latin America's fourth indigenous president after Mexico's Benito Juárez
Benito Juárez
Benito Juárez born Benito Pablo Juárez García, was a Mexican lawyer and politician of Zapotec origin from Oaxaca who served five terms as president of Mexico: 1858–1861 as interim, 1861–1865, 1865–1867, 1867–1871 and 1871–1872...
, Peru's Alejandro Toledo
Alejandro Toledo
Alejandro Celestino Toledo Manrique is a politician who was President of Peru from 2001 to 2006. He was elected in April 2001, defeating former President Alan García...
and Bolivia's Evo Morales
Evo Morales
Juan Evo Morales Ayma , popularly known as Evo , is a Bolivian politician and activist, currently serving as the 80th President of Bolivia, a position that he has held since 2006. He is also the leader of both the Movement for Socialism party and the cocalero trade union...
.
In the election, Menchú was defeated in the first round, receiving three percent of the vote. Several candidates of her party were threatened and two of them were killed. After the elections Rigoberta Menchu gave a message of peace on television.
In 2009 she was involved in the newly founded party Winaq
Winaq
Winaq is a political party in Guatemala whose most notable member is Rigoberta Menchú, who is ethnically K'iche'. Its name comes from the K'iche'ean word for "people", "winaq". It is a party whose roots are in the indigenous communities of Guatemala. It hopes to present a candidate for the 2011...
.
Menchú was a candidate for the 2011 presidential election
Guatemalan general election, 2011
Elections were held on 11 September, 2011 in Guatemala for the offices of President and Vice President; as well as members of Congress by national list and districts, members to the Central American Parliament, and the Mayor and council for all the Municipalities. All positions were elected for a...
but lost in the first round.
Controversies about her testimony
More than a decade after the publication of I, Rigoberta Menchú, anthropologist David StollDavid Stoll
David Stoll is an American anthropologist. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology from the University of Michigan and completed his Master's and Ph.D. at Stanford University. He spent much of the nineteen-eighties and nineties in Latin American countries such as Colombia and Guatemala,...
carried out an investigation of Menchú's story, researching government documents, reports, and land claims (many filed by Menchú's own family), and interviewing former neighbors, locals, friends, enemies, and others for his 1999 book Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Stoll claimed that Menchú changed some elements of her life, family and village to meet the publicity needs of the guerrilla movement, which she joined as a political cadre after her parents were assassinated. The controversy caused by Stoll's book received widespread coverage in the US press of the time.http://www.thenation.com/article/154582/it-was-heaven-they-burned?page=0,3
Historian Greg Grandin
Greg Grandin
Greg Grandin is an American historian, and professor of history at New York University. He is author of a number of books, including Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History, as well as for the National Book Award...
, in his 2010 article in the US periodical The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, generally rebukes Stoll, writing that Stoll's research on the Guatemalan revolution is mostly wrong, but conceding that "two of Stoll's charges concerning Menchú's life do have merit. First, he documents that she received some education, contradicting a claim that her father refused to send her to school because he did not want her to lose her cultural identity. Second, Stoll presents evidence that Menchú falsely placed herself at the scene of her 16-year-old brother's murder." According to Grandin, Stoll in a later interview agreed to the "essential factuality of Menchú's account of how her brother and mother died".http://www.thenation.com/article/154582/it-was-heaven-they-burned?page=0,3 Grandin also quotes the opinion of novelist and journalist Francisco Goldman
Francisco Goldman
Francisco Goldman is an American novelist, journalist, and Allen K. Smith Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, Trinity College. He is workshop director at , the journalism school for Latin-America created by Gabriel García Márquez...
about Stoll's book as "What rankles is the whiff of ideological obsession and zealotry, the odor of unfairness and meanness, the making of a mountain out of a molehill." US conservative writer David Horowitz
David Horowitz
David Joel Horowitz is an American conservative writer and policy advocate. Horowitz was raised by parents who were both members of the American Communist Party. Between 1956 and 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the New Left before rejecting Marxism completely...
used Stoll's book to launch a campaign to discredit Rigoberta as a "Marxist terrorist," and "one of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century," and to call for the revocation of her Nobel Prize.
In response to Stoll's findings, Menchú initially accused him of defending the Guatemalan military and seeking to discredit all victims of the violence, but later she acknowledged making certain changes in her story. The Nobel Committee has dismissed calls to revoke her Nobel prize because of the reported falsifications; however, Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the Committee, said her prize "was not based exclusively or primarily on the autobiography". According to the Nobel Committee, "Stoll approves of her Nobel prize and has no question about the picture of army atrocities which she presents. He says that her purpose in telling her story the way she did 'enabled her to focus international condemnation on an institution that deserved it, the Guatemalan army.'"
External links
- Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation
- Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation (Spanish language)
- Biography at the official Nobel site
- Nobel Peace Prize lecture
- Salon.comSalon.comSalon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
: Rigoberta Menchú meets the press - "Peace Prize Winner Admits Discrepancies", APAssociated PressThe Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
story in New York Times, 12 February 1999 (subscription only) - "Spain may judge Guatemala abuses", BBC NewsBBC NewsBBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
, 5 October 2005 - "Liar, Rigoberta Menchu" by Dinesh D'Souza, Boundless webzine, 1999
- "Anthropologist Challenges Veracity of Multicultural Icon" – The Chronicle of Higher Education
- Rigoberta Menchu at UMass Boston
- Examination of claims by Stoll and responses by Menchu
- Sound recording of Elizabeth Burgos-Debray interviewing Rigoberta Menchu