Rigoberta Menchu 1959 - Leo R. Sandy

Rigoberta Menchu Rigoberta Menchú has been a passionate spokesperson for the rights of indigenous peoples—people who belong to an ethnic group that is native to a region, such as the Mayan peoples of Central America. She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work on behalf of the indigenous groups indigenous group of Guatamela, her native country. However, her work has made her a leading voice for the rights of indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Menchu cont’d Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959, in Chimel, a village in the Quiché province in the mountainous northwest region of Guatemala. Her mother was a midwife and traditional healer. Her father, Vicente, was a day laborer and community leader Menchú's difficult childhood is an example of how hundreds of thousands of Indian (indigenous) children grow up in Guatemala. Every year she followed her parents to the southern coastal plantations where they spent months as laborers picking cotton and coffee

Menchu cont’d Two of her brothers died on the plantations, one after being poisoned by pesticides and the other because of malnutrition Menchú started working on the plantations when she was only eight, and at age thirteen she experienced her first close contact with people of Spanish culture when she worked as a maid for a wealthy family in Guatemala City Menchú also experienced discrimination against Indians practiced by Latinos (people of Spanish culture). Her employers made her sleep on the floor on a mat next to the family dog—which, she later recalled, was treated better than she. In 1954, a left-wing civilian president was removed from power by a coup d'état (the overthrow of a government by a small group of people who have held positions of power) that was supported by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Menchu cont’d After this coup, the country was ruled by military officers. They ruled the country harshly, tolerating little protest or disagreement. Political violence began again in the 1970s, when government pressure was applied so widely and harshly that U.S. president Jimmy Carter (1924–) halted economic aid to Guatemala after repeated warnings to the government to stop human rights violations Guatemala's Indians, who made up 60 percent of the population, were forced to move into "model villages" and to serve in the military. In this environment, movements to benefit the conditions of Indians were viewed as part of a communist plot by the government (Any person who spoke for human rights and democracy was labeled a communist).

Menchu cont’d Menchú became politically active, inspired in part by her religious beliefs. Like many others in Central America, she was influenced by Liberation Theology, a movement that believes the Bible should be read through the eyes of the poor and that Jesus Christ had a special message of freedom for poor people. Another important influence was Menchú's father, Vicente, who was active in the Peasant Unity Committee, a group that fought to obtain land for peasants and to protect the land they held from being seized by wealthy landowners. Rigoberta Menchú joined the committee in 1979, and was asked to organize the country's twenty-two Indian groups against exploitation. Later that year her teenage brother was tortured and then killed by the army.

Menchu cont’d The following year she lost her father when Vicente Menchú, along with other representatives of indigenous groups, occupied the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City as part of a protest activity. The army attacked the embassy and burned it, killing thirty-nine people, including Menchú's father. The next year Menchú's mother was kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the Guatemalan army, and two of her sisters joined the guerrillas. Life in Guatemala had become too dangerous, and Menchú fled to Mexico in 1981 where she began an international crusade to represent the hardships of the Guatemalan Indians and joined the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

Menchu cont’d In 1988 she wrote I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, which was translated into more than a dozen languages. It brought her worldwide attention and helped her to become the foremost spokesperson for indigenous peoples. In 1988, Menchú's first attempt to return to Guatemala ended badly when she was threatened and put in jail. On another visit in October of 1992 that she learned she would be given the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of the rights of indigenous peoples. She was only thirty-three. In June 1993, during a political crisis in Guatemala, Menchú played a key role in the events that brought to power a new president, Ramiro de León Carpio, a human rights advocate.

Menchu cont’d International pressure also helped force the government to ease up on military violence and violation of people's rights, and in 1995 many refugees who had fled from Guatemala to Mexico began to return. The following year, the Guatemalan government and rebel leaders signed a cease-fire agreement to end their forty-two-year conflict, Latin America's longest civil war. It was a war that Menchú and her family had fought hard to end. n 2000 she filed charges in a Spanish court against several officials in Guatemala's former military governments, accusing them of genocide, torture, and state terrorism against some two hundred thousand people who had been killed in her country during the 1980s.

Menchu cont’d Menchú has also been a vocal opponent of the effects of globalization, or the increasing dominance of multinational corporations in the world's economy.

Quotes When you are convinced your cause is just, you fight for it. The indigenous peoples never had, and still do not have, the place that they should have occupied in the progress and benefits of science and technology, although they represented an important basis for this development. Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples. The people are the only ones capable of transforming society.

Video Rigoberta Menchu Interview

References Roberta Menchu Biography. Retrieved from http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ma-Mo/Mench-Rigoberta.html Rigoberta Menchu Interview. Retrieved from https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-mozilla- 001&hsimp=yhs- 001&hspart=mozilla&p=rigoberta+menchu+TED+Talk#id=9&vid=fc5 05239e3069ec668e65d0f41c16c9b&action=view