The Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu.
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1991
Demonstration by Indians against the Hispanic colonization. (Photo by Jason Bleibtreu)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1992
Paris, France
R.Menchu, Nobel Prize of Peace in Paris, France on November 23, 1992. (Photo by Chip Hires)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1992
Paris, France
R.Menchu, Nobel Prize of Peace in Paris, France on November 23, 1992. (Photo by Chip Hires)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu speaks during a press conference at Tsukiji Honganji Temple on September 20, 1993, in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu speaks during a press conference at Tsukiji Honganji Temple on September 20, 1993, in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu speaks during the Asahi Shimbun interview on September 17, 1993, in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1993
Tokyo, Japan
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu is seen at Meiji Gakuin University on September 17, 1993, in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1996
37 Quai Branly, 75007 Paris, France
Victor-Hugo Cardenas, bolivian vice-president and Rigoberta Menchu , peace Nobel prize with Jacques Chirac. (Photo by Chip Hires)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1996
37 Quai Branly, 75007 Paris, France
Rigoberta Menchu at Elysee Palace (Photo by Chip Hires)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1996
37 Quai Branly, 75007 Paris, France
Rigoberta Menchu at Elysee Palace (Photo by Chip Hires)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1998
Paris, France
Rigoberta Menchu at French Senate in Paris, France on December 09, 1998. (Photo by Antonio Ribeiro)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1998
Rigoberta Menchu
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1998
Rigoberta Menchu, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. (Photo by Micheline Pelletier)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1998
Rigoberta Menchu, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. (Photo by Micheline Pelletier)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1998
Paris, France
The Nobel Peace Prize winners, Dalai Lama, 1989, and Rigoberta Menchu, 1992, attend the 50th-anniversary ceremony of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Unesco House on December 8, 1998, in Paris, France. (Photo by Jean-Pierre Rey)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1998
Paris, France
The Nobel Peace Prize winners, Dalai Lama, 1989, and Rigoberta Menchu, 1992, attend the 50th-anniversary ceremony of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Unesco House on December 8, 1998, in Paris, France. (Photo by Jean-Pierre Rey)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1999
Modena, Italia
Rigoberta Menchu in Modena, Italia on June 1, 1999. (Photo by Eric Vandeville)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
1999
Vatican City, Vatican
Pope John Paul II receives seven Nobel Peace Prize Winners Mikhail Gorbachev and Raisa Gorbachova, Rigoberta Menchu, Shimon Peres, Betty Williams, Claude Joseph Rotblat, David Trimble, and Frederick de Klerk and Mayor of Rome Francesco Rutelli at his private library in the Apostolic Palace on April 22, 1999, in Vatican City, Vatican. (Photo by Vatican Pool)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2001
Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium On June 12Th, 2001 In Oslo, Norway. Rigoberta Menchu Tum (Nobel Prize In 1992) Opening Of The 2001 Nobel Symposium At Holmenkollen park hotel. (Photo by Alexis Duclos)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2001
Oslo, Norway
Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium On June 12Th, 2001 in Oslo, Norway. Rigoberta Menchu Tum Opening Of The 2001 Nobel Symposium at Holmenkollen park hotel. (Photo by Alexis Duclos)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2006
37 Quai Branly, 75007 Paris, France
Rigoberta Menchú on inauguration of the Quai Branly Museum In France on June 20, 2006.
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2006
37 Quai Branly, 75007 Paris, France
Inauguration of the Quai Branly Museum In France On June 20, 2006. President Jacques Chirac inaugurated the Quai Branly museum dedicated to the arts, rather than testimony to the diversity of cultures and invitation has a different perspective on the genius of non-European peoples. Jacques Chirac, Rigoberta Menchu, and Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2007
Guatemala City, Guatemala
Author Rigoberta Menchu, Nobel Peace Prize winner, smiles during an interview in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007. (Photo by Susana Gonzalez)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2008
New York City, New York, United States
Cody Williams, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, and Shirin Ebadi attend Glamour Women of the Year Awards at Carnegie Hall on November 10, 2008, in New York City. (Photo by Zach Hyman)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2014
Av Juárez 976, Col Americana, Americana, 44160 Guadalajara, Jal., Mexico
Rigoberta Menchu gives a message of peace and non-discrimination at the University of Guadalajara on February 12, 2014, in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Photo by Servando Gomez Camarillo)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2016
Monte-Carlo, Monaco
Rigoberta Menchu attends "Peace Jam" Photocall as part of the 56th Monte Carlo Tv Festival at the Grimaldi Forum on June 13, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barso)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2016
Monte-Carlo, Monaco
Rigoberta Menchu arrives at the 56th Monte Carlo TV Festival Opening Ceremony at the Grimaldi Forum on June 12, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2016
Monte-Carlo, Monaco
Rigoberta Menchu attends "Peace Jam" Photocall as part of the 56th Monte Carlo Tv Festival at the Grimaldi Forum on June 13, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2016
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Guatemalan political and human rights activist, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, Rigoberta Menchu poses during an exclusive portrait session at a conference on August 28, 2016, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photo by Ricardo Ceppi)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2016
Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
Nobel Peace Prize Rigoberta Menchu speaks during her intervention at the 1st International Conference for Successful Women at Hard Rock Hotel on November 05, 2016, in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. (Photo by Santiago Vidal)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2016
Monte-Carlo, Monaco
Rigoberta Menchu attends "Peace Jam" Photocall as part of the 56th Monte Carlo TV Festival at the Grimaldi Forum on June 13, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2016
Monte-Carlo, Monaco
Rigoberta Menchu attends "Peace Jam" Photocall as part of the 56th Monte Carlo Tv Festival at the Grimaldi Forum on June 13, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2016
Monte-Carlo, Monaco
Rigoberta Menchu arrives at the 56th Monte Carlo TV Festival Opening Ceremony at the Grimaldi Forum on June 12, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Gallery of Rigoberta Menchú
2017
. Holanda n.1, 2775-405 Carcavelos, Portugal
Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Human Rights Activist and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate leaves at the end of her press conference after having participated in a debate on "Nobel Laureates on Global Poverty: The Most Significant Crime Against Humanity?" during the last day of Estoril Conferences 2019 dealing with "Empowering Humanity: From Local to Global Justice", in NOVA School of Economics campus on May 29, 2017, in Carcavelos, Portugal. (Photo by Horacio Villalobos
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu shakes hands with Tatsujiro Kuzuno during the welcome ceremony by Ainu People on September 21, 1993, in Shizunai, Hokkaido, Japan. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun)
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu speaks during a press conference at Tsukiji Honganji Temple on September 20, 1993, in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun)
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu speaks during a press conference at Tsukiji Honganji Temple on September 20, 1993, in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun)
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu speaks during the Asahi Shimbun interview on September 17, 1993, in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun)
The Nobel Peace Prize winners, Dalai Lama, 1989, and Rigoberta Menchu, 1992, attend the 50th-anniversary ceremony of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Unesco House on December 8, 1998, in Paris, France. (Photo by Jean-Pierre Rey)
The Nobel Peace Prize winners, Dalai Lama, 1989, and Rigoberta Menchu, 1992, attend the 50th-anniversary ceremony of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Unesco House on December 8, 1998, in Paris, France. (Photo by Jean-Pierre Rey)
Pope John Paul II receives seven Nobel Peace Prize Winners Mikhail Gorbachev and Raisa Gorbachova, Rigoberta Menchu, Shimon Peres, Betty Williams, Claude Joseph Rotblat, David Trimble, and Frederick de Klerk and Mayor of Rome Francesco Rutelli at his private library in the Apostolic Palace on April 22, 1999, in Vatican City, Vatican. (Photo by Vatican Pool)
Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium On June 12Th, 2001 In Oslo, Norway. Rigoberta Menchu Tum (Nobel Prize In 1992) Opening Of The 2001 Nobel Symposium At Holmenkollen park hotel. (Photo by Alexis Duclos)
Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium On June 12Th, 2001 in Oslo, Norway. Rigoberta Menchu Tum Opening Of The 2001 Nobel Symposium at Holmenkollen park hotel. (Photo by Alexis Duclos)
Inauguration of the Quai Branly Museum In France On June 20, 2006. President Jacques Chirac inaugurated the Quai Branly museum dedicated to the arts, rather than testimony to the diversity of cultures and invitation has a different perspective on the genius of non-European peoples. Jacques Chirac, Rigoberta Menchu, and Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
Author Rigoberta Menchu, Nobel Peace Prize winner, smiles during an interview in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007. (Photo by Susana Gonzalez)
Cody Williams, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, and Shirin Ebadi attend Glamour Women of the Year Awards at Carnegie Hall on November 10, 2008, in New York City. (Photo by Zach Hyman)
Av Juárez 976, Col Americana, Americana, 44160 Guadalajara, Jal., Mexico
Rigoberta Menchu gives a message of peace and non-discrimination at the University of Guadalajara on February 12, 2014, in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Photo by Servando Gomez Camarillo)
Rigoberta Menchu attends "Peace Jam" Photocall as part of the 56th Monte Carlo Tv Festival at the Grimaldi Forum on June 13, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barso)
Rigoberta Menchu arrives at the 56th Monte Carlo TV Festival Opening Ceremony at the Grimaldi Forum on June 12, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Rigoberta Menchu attends "Peace Jam" Photocall as part of the 56th Monte Carlo Tv Festival at the Grimaldi Forum on June 13, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Guatemalan political and human rights activist, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, Rigoberta Menchu poses during an exclusive portrait session at a conference on August 28, 2016, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photo by Ricardo Ceppi)
Nobel Peace Prize Rigoberta Menchu speaks during her intervention at the 1st International Conference for Successful Women at Hard Rock Hotel on November 05, 2016, in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. (Photo by Santiago Vidal)
Rigoberta Menchu attends "Peace Jam" Photocall as part of the 56th Monte Carlo TV Festival at the Grimaldi Forum on June 13, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Rigoberta Menchu attends "Peace Jam" Photocall as part of the 56th Monte Carlo Tv Festival at the Grimaldi Forum on June 13, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Rigoberta Menchu arrives at the 56th Monte Carlo TV Festival Opening Ceremony at the Grimaldi Forum on June 12, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Rigoberta Menchu attends "Peace Jam" Photocall as part of the 56th Monte Carlo Tv Festival at the Grimaldi Forum on June 13, 2016, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Tony Barson)
Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Human Rights Activist and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate leaves at the end of her press conference after having participated in a debate on "Nobel Laureates on Global Poverty: The Most Significant Crime Against Humanity?" during the last day of Estoril Conferences 2019 dealing with "Empowering Humanity: From Local to Global Justice", in NOVA School of Economics campus on May 29, 2017, in Carcavelos, Portugal. (Photo by Horacio Villalobos
(Now a global bestseller, the remarkable life of Rigoberta...)
Now a global bestseller, the remarkable life of Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan peasant woman, reflects on the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America. Menchú suffered gross injustice and hardship in her early life: her brother, father, and mother were murdered by the Guatemalan military. She learned Spanish and turned to catechistic work as an expression of political revolt as well as religious commitment. Menchú vividly conveys the traditional beliefs of her community and her personal response to feminist and socialist ideas. Above all, these pages are illuminated by the enduring courage and passionate sense of justice of an extraordinary woman.
(The second installment of the life of the Nobel Peace pri...)
The second installment of the life of the Nobel Peace prize-winning activist. Rigoberta Menchu is a worldwide symbol of courage in the continuing fight of indigenous peoples for justice.
(The Honey Jar retells the ancient stories Rigoberta Mench...)
The Honey Jar retells the ancient stories Rigoberta Menchú's grandparents told her when she was a little girl, and we can imagine her listening to them by the fire at night. These Mayan tales include natural phenomena narratives and animal stories.
Rigoberta Menchú was a Guatemalan Indian-rights activist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992.
Background
Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959, in Chimel, a village in the Quichéprovince in the northwest highlands of Guatemala. Her mother, whose surname was Tum, was a midwife and traditional healer, and her father, Vicente, was a day laborer, catechist, and community leader. Both her parents belonged to one of the many indigenous groups of Guatemala, the Quiché Maya, and spoke little Spanish. Young Menchú herself spoke only Quiché (one of over twenty different languages spoken in her country) until she was 19.
Education
Menchú's difficult childhood is an example of how hundreds of thousands of Indian children grow up in Guatemala. Every year she followed her parents to the southern coastal plantations, fincas, where they spent months picking cotton and coffee. During the rest of the year the family, back in the highlands, collected wicker in the mountains and grew maize, beans, and potatoes to supplement their diet. Menchústarted working when she was only eight; two of her brothers died on the plantations, one was poisoned by insecticides and the other - only two years old - from malnutrition. At age 13 she had her first prolonged direct experience with people of Spanish culture (and with discrimination) when she worked as a maid for a wealthy family in Guatemala City. Soon thereafter, her father was imprisoned for his efforts to save land from seizure by large landowners.
Career
As a young woman, Rigoberta Menchú became an activist in the local women’s rights movement and joined with the Catholic church to advocate for social reform. The activism of Menchú and her family led to persecution by Guatemala’s military government. When a guerrilla organization became active in their region, her father, a leader of a peasant organization opposed to the government, was accused of guerrilla activities. During Guatemala’s ensuing civil war, he died in a fire while protesting human rights abuses by the military. Menchú’s younger brother was kidnapped, tortured, and killed by a military death squad in 1979, and her mother was kidnapped, raped, mutilated, and murdered by soldiers the following year.
Life in Guatemala was too dangerous for her and Menchú fled to Mexico in 1981. In exile, she began an international crusade to explain the plight of the Guatemalan Indians and joined the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.
In 1983, during a trip to Paris to promote her cause, she dictated her autobiography to a Venezuelan anthropologist, Elizabeth Burgos. The result of their collaboration was the widely read book, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, which was translated into more than a dozen languages. It brought her to the attention of the rest of the world and helped her to become the foremost spokesperson for indigenous peoples.
Although her first attempt to return to Guatemala in 1988 ended badly (she was threatened and put in jail), she later visited her country for short periods of time. It was during one such visit in October of 1992 that she learned the Nobel Peace Prize would be given to her "in recognition of her work for social justice and ethnocultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples." She was only 33.
With the $1.2 million from the prize, she set up a foundation named after her father. She was active in the continent's Five Hundred Years of Resistance Campaign and in the United Nations International Indian Treaty Council. In June of 1993, during a political crisis in Guatemala, Menchúplayed an instrumental role in the events that brought to power a new president, Ramiro de León Carpio, a human rights advocate. Growing international pressure also helped force the government to ease up on military repression, and in 1995 many refugees who fled to Mexico to escape torture began to return.
Menchúremained an advocate for indigenous peoples, and in June, 1996 was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for a Culture of Peace by the Director-General of UNESCO. Later the same year she went to Norway to watch Guatemalan government and rebel leaders sign a cease-fire agreement for the 42-year conflict - Latin America's longest civil war - that she and her family fought so hard to end.
Menchú created the Indian-led political movement Winaq (Mayan: “The Wholeness of the Human Being”) in February 2007. That September, as the candidate of a coalition between Winaq and the left-wing Encounter for Guatemala party, she ran for president of Guatemala but earned less than 3 percent of the vote. Her 2011 presidential bid was also unsuccessful.
(The second installment of the life of the Nobel Peace pri...)
1998
Religion
Rigoberta Menchú was a Roman Catholic. She said:
"To be a light to others you will need a good dose of spiritual life. Because as my mother used to say, if you are in a good place, then you can help others; but if you're not well, then go look for somebody who is in a good place who can help you."
Politics
Menchú became politically active, inspired by her family's involvement and by her religious beliefs. Like many others in Central America, she was influenced by Liberation Theology, a movement that believes that the Bible should be read through the eyes of the poor and that Jesus Christ had a special message of liberation for poor people. In an interview she described how peasants "felt everything the Bible said was coming to pass, with Christ crucified, Christ attacked with stones, Christ dragged along the ground. One felt the pain of that Christ, and identified with it."
Another important influence was her father, Vicente, who was active in the Peasant Unity Committee, a group that fought for peasant land rights. She joined the committee in 1979 and was asked to organize the country's 22 Indian groups, each with its own culture and language, against exploitation. A few months later her 16-year-old brother, Petrocinio, was tortured and then killed by the army. The following year she lost her father in an event that received widespread coverage in the international press. Vicente Menchú, along with other representatives of indigenous groups, occupied the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City to press their demands. The army attacked the embassy and burned it, killing 39 people, including Menchú's father, who burned to death.
Views
Menchú's activism was controversial. Conservative commentators accused her of being associated with communist guerrillas, but she defended herself by saying that if she were a revolutionary she would be fighting in the mountains. She summarized her views in an interview published in 1993: "I believe that in Guatemala the solution is not a confrontation between indigenous people and latinos [people of Spanish culture]. Rather, we need a country where we can live together with mutual respect."
Quotations:
"The priests say the new dawn will be like the rain that fertilizes the soil before we begin to plant our corn. It will renew the natural cycle of life. The Mayan people will once again flourish. I believe in this very strongly. The holy men say we are entering a period of clarity. We are rediscovering our Mayan values."
"Let there be freedom for the Indians, wherever they may be in the American Continent or elsewhere in the world because while they are alive, a glow of hope will be alive as well as a true concept of life."
"It is not possible to conceive a democratic Guatemala, free and independent, without the indigenous identity shaping its character into all aspects of national existence."
"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."
"We can only love a person who eats what we eat."
"Together we can build the people's Church, a true Church. Not just a hierarchy, or a building, but a real change inside people."
"I wasn't the only orphan in Guatemala. There are many others, and it's not my grief alone, it's the grief of a whole people."
"Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets."
"I am like a drop of water on a rock. After drip, drip, dripping in the same place, I begin to leave a mark, and I leave my mark in many people's hearts."
"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."
"There is not one world for man and one for animals, they are part of the same one and lead parallel lives."
"This is why Indians are thought to be stupid. They can't think, they don't know anything, they say. But we have hidden our identity because we needed to resist, we wanted to protect what governments have wanted to take away from us."
"The people are the only ones capable of transforming society."
"I think that nonviolence is one way of saying that there are other ways to solve problems, not only through weapons and war. Nonviolence also means the recognition that the person on one side of the trench and the person on the other side of the trench are both human beings, with the same faculties. At some point, they have to begin to understand one another."
"No less characteristic in a democracy is social justice. This demands a solution to the frightening indexes of infant mortality, of malnutrition, lack of education illiteracy, wages not sufficient to sustain life"
"I wish that a conscious sense of peace and a feeling of human solidarity would develop in all peoples..."
Membership
Menchú was a member of different organizations. Among them are Guatemalan Opposition in Exile, National Committee for Reconciliation, founder, 1987; American Continent's 500 Years of Resistance Campaign Against 500th Anniversary of Arrival of Columbus in Americas, coordinator, 1992; UNESCO, Goodwill Ambassador, since 1993; United Nations International Indian Treaty Council; Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation, founder.
Connections
Rigoberta Menchú married Ángel Canil in 1995. The couple had one child, who died soon after was born, and later they adopted a son Mash Nahual J’a.