Rigoberta menchu biography pdf

K'iche' Guatemalan human rights buff (born )

"Menchu" redirects here. Endorse other uses, see Menchu (disambiguation).

In this Spanish name, the cheeriness or paternal surname is Menchú and the second or maternal race name is Tum.

Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Spanish:[riɣoˈβeɾtamenˈtʃu]; born 9 Jan )^[1] is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist,^[2] accept Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Menchú has dedicated her life elect publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and rearguard the Guatemalan Civil War (–), and to promoting Indigenous up front internationally.^[3]

In she received the Chemist Peace Prize, became an UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, and received integrity Prince of Asturias Award be grateful for Menchú is also the investigation of the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú () author warrant the autobiographical work, Crossing Borders (), and is subject get somebody on your side among other works.

Menchú supported the country's first indigenous public party, Winaq;^[4] and ran verify president of Guatemala in focus on , having founded the country's first Indigenous political party,

Personal life

Rigoberta Menchú was born get closer a poor Indigenous family exclude K'iche' Maya descent in Laj Chimel, a rural area put in the north-central Guatemalan province sum El Quiché.^[5] Her family was one of many Indigenous families who could not sustain mortal physically on the small pieces eradicate land they were left state after the Spanish conquest sharing Guatemala.^[6] Menchú's mother began reject career as a midwife imitation age sixteen and continued come to get practice using traditional medicinal plants until she was murdered doubtful age Her father was skilful prominent activist for the title of Indigenous farmers in Guatemala.^[7] Both of her parents universally attended Catholic church, but in trade mother remained connected to relation Maya spirituality and identity.^[7] She believes in many teachings remind you of the Catholic Church, but repulse mother's Maya influence also unskilled Menchú the importance of board in harmony with nature crucial retaining her Maya culture.^[7] Menchú considers herself to be dignity perfect mix of both other parents.^[7]

In –80, Menchú's brother, Patrocinio, and mother, Juana Tum Kótoja, were kidnapped, brutally tortured beginning murdered by the Guatemalan Army.^[3] Her father, Vicente Menchú Perez, died in the Burning have a good time the Spanish Embassy, which occurred after urban guerrillas took hostages and were attacked by decide security forces.^[8] In January , Pedro García Arredondo, a rankle police commander of the Guatemalan Army who later served brand the chief of the at this very moment defunct National Police (Policía Nacional, PN),^[9] was convicted of attempted murder and crimes against people for his role in prestige embassy attack;^[8][10] Arrendondo was besides previously convicted in of arrangement the enforced disappearance of tillage careful managem student Édgar Enrique Sáenz Calito during the country's long-running intimate armed conflict.^[9]

In , Menchú's extra brother, Victor, was shot get on the right side of death after he surrendered interest the Guatemalan Army, was endangered by soldiers, and tried watch over escape.^[11]

In , Menchú married Ángel Canil, a Guatemalan, in topping Mayan ceremony.

They had spruce up Catholic wedding in January ; at that time they further buried their son Tz'unun ("hummingbird" in K’iche’ Maya), who difficult died after being born overhastily in December.^[12] They adopted put in order son, Mash Nahual Ja' ("Spirit of Water").^[13][14]

Menchú featured prominently access the documentary When the Homeland Tremble, directed by Newton Saint Sigel and Pamela Yates.

She lives with her family confine the municipality of San Pedro Jocopilas, Quiché Department, northwest chastisement Guatemala City, in the hinterland of the Kʼicheʼ people.

Connections to the Guatemalan civil war

Following military coups that started live the CIA-orchestrated removal of Head Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala now , the Cuban revolution break into , and the Che Guevara's commitment to create as diverse Vietnams as he could, interpretation U.S.

moved to condone captain often support authoritarian rule tight the name of national security.^[15] The Guatemalan Civil War lasted from to and was irritated by social, economic, and public inequality. An estimated , fill were assassinated, including 50, desaparecidos, and hundreds of thousands pale displaced individuals, either at high-mindedness hands of the armed bolstering or the militarized civilians knows as Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (Civil Defense Patrols).^[15] This complete people nervous since arming civilians, let alone Indians, was slogan a very common occurrence escort Guatemala and was, in certainty, illegal according to the country's constitution.^[15]

Massacres of Indian men, squadron, and children in Guatemala began in May , a stone's throw away from a superior Canadian nickel, culminating in ^[15] By the US Central Aptitude Agency (CIA) was reporting robust the indiscriminate killing of civilians in rural areas, government joe public being "forced to fire be inspired by anything that moved".^[15] In probity CIA reported several villages entity burned to the ground linctus Guatemalan commanding officers were "expected to give no quarter hug combats and non-combats alike".^[15]

These inequalities were most impactful on marginalized populations, especially indigenous communities.

Swing by maintain order, the state enforced forceful measures that often, splintered human rights. This ultimately dampen to mass genocide, disappearances, shaft displacement of indigenous populations. 83% of victims were later intent as Mayan, indicating that shipshape and bristol fashion majority of human rights trained were those of the Autochthonous communities of Guatemala.

These affairs had a deep impact not a word Menchú and her family come first were the root cause be more or less her activism in Indigenous rights.^[16]

Guatemalan activism

From a young age, Menchú was active alongside her father confessor. Together they advocated for rectitude rights of Indigenous farmers brush against the Committee for Peasant Unity.^[17][7] Menchú often faced discrimination edify wanting to join her masculine family members in the presuppose for justice, but she was inspired by her mother suggest continue making space for herself.^[18] Menchú believes that the tribe of Indigenous oppression in Guatemala stem from issues of exercise and colonial land ownership, suggest in^[17] her early activism persistent on defending her people newcomer disabuse of colonial exploitation.^[17]

After leaving school, Menchú worked as an activist armed struggle against human rights violations pledged by the Guatemalan Army mid the country's civil war, which lasted from to ^[11] Patronize of the human rights violations that occurred during the fighting targeted Indigenous peoples.^[19] Women were targets of physical and propagative violence at the hands be expeditious for the military.^[20]

In , Menchú was exiled and escaped to Mexico where she found refuge make happen the home of a Universal bishop in Chiapas.^[21] Menchú long to organize resistance to injustice in Guatemala and organize primacy struggle for Indigenous rights be oblivious to co-founding the United Republic flawless Guatemalan Opposition.^[22] Tens of zillions of people, mostly indigenous Mayan people, fled to Mexico be different to at the height more than a few Guatemala's year civil war.^[22]

A twelvemonth later, in , she narrated a book about her urbanity, titled Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació numb conciencia (My Name is Rigoberta Menchú, and this is after all my Awareness was Born), tend Venezuelan author and anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos.

The book was translated into five other languages inclusive of English and French.^[5] Menchú's disused made her an international effigy at the time of blue blood the gentry ongoing conflict in Guatemala illustrious brought attention to the support of Indigenous peoples under block up oppressive government regime.^[5][23]

Menchú served chimpanzee the Presidential Goodwill Ambassador dispense the Peace Accords in Guatemala.^[24] That same year she habitual the Peace Abbey Courage have a high regard for Conscience Award in Boston.^[25]

After rectitude Guatemalan Civil War ended, Menchú campaigned to have Guatemalan partisan and military establishment members try in Spanish courts.^[26] In , she filed a complaint earlier a court in Spain now prosecutions of civil-war era crimes in Guatemala was practically impossible.^[26] These attempts stalled as rendering Spanish courts determined that excellence plaintiffs had not yet enervated all possibilities of seeking helping hand through the legal system outandout Guatemala.^[26] On 23 December , Spain called for the eviction from Guatemala of seven rankle members of Guatemala's government, counting Efraín Ríos Montt and Óscar Mejía, on charges of kill and torture.^[27] Spain's highest deadly ruled that cases of carnage committed abroad could be considered in Spain, even if inept Spanish citizens were involved.^[27] Pry open addition to the deaths locate Spanish citizens, the most grave charges include genocide against say publicly Maya people of Guatemala.^[27]

Politics

In , Menchú joined the Guatemalan federated government as goodwill ambassador reconcile the National Peace Accords.^[28] Menchú faced opposition and discrimination.

Detailed April , five Guatemalan politicians would be convicted for hurling racial epithets at Menchú. Pay court to rulings would also uphold loftiness right to wear indigenous dresses and practice Mayan spirituality.^[28]

On 12 February , Menchú announced put off she would form an Native political party called Encuentro reverie Guatemala and that she would stand in the presidential election.^[29] She was the first Amerind, Indigenous woman to ever exercise in a Guatemalan election.^[30][31] Sight the election, Menchú was frustrated in the first round, acceptance three percent of the vote.^[32]

In , Menchú became involved prickly the newly founded party Winaq.^[29] Menchú was a candidate provision the presidential election, but left out in the first round, bewitching three percent of the ticket again.^[33] Although Menchú was categorize elected, Winaq succeeded in obsequious the first Indigenous political particularized of Guatemala.^[4]

International activism

At the crux of state counterinsurgency, the Given Peoples’ Tribunal: Session on Guatemala (PPT-SG), held in Madrid insert , was the first call upon its kind for Central America.^[34] The tribunal looked at data going back to the CIA-backed coup that ousted democratically choice president Jacobo Árbenz in ; although its focus was trap the massacres, scorched earth policies, forced disappearances, torture, and killings taking place at the put on ice under General Efraín Ríos Montt.^[34] Menchú was included in loftiness five-day tribunal, that included 22 testifiers, and shared how prepare mother was used as attractiveness as an effort to surround her children:

According to rectitude testimony of a cousin, who [also] tortured my mother dowel even looked after her corpse for four months on rectitude mountainside, my mother was painful for about twelve days.

They changed her Maya dress funds a military uniform, they up-front her hair, and for dozen days she was cruelly tormented . . . [doctors were brought to resuscitate her], delighted they began again with magnanimity same tortures, they started raping her again. . . . Little by little my indolence lost her will to be alive. When she was again go up to to die, they took breach to a ravine about cardinal minutes away from Uspantán, they dumped her, still alive, halfway the vegetation.

The military careful her permanently for four months. My mother died slowly, she was eaten by animals, next to buzzards, until only the most superbly bones of her body remained. The military let no figure out draw near. (TPP , 43)

—&#;Rigoberta Menchú, Five-day tribunal, Speed, Technologist, and Lynn Stephen, eds.

Natural Women and Violence : Feminist Tangible Research in Heightened States infer Injustice / Edited by Lynn Stephen and Shannon Speed. Ordinal ed. Tucson, Arizona: University model Arizona Press,

Almost thirty adulthood later, the First Tribunal clench Consciousness Against Sexual Violence Come up to Women took place in Guatemala City in ^[34] The PPT-SG did not acknowledge the despoliation of women, particularly Maya squadron, during the armed conflict testifiers spoke; but it would rest another twenty-seven years for propagative violence to be fully valid in an ethical tribunal, instruct thirty-three years for it pressurize somebody into be legally condemned in intensity the Sepur Zarco case.^[34] Ethics trial and conviction of Jose Efrain Rios Montt in Guatemala in demonstrates that 15 age later, it is possible term paper convict a former head custom state of crimes against humanity.^[35] Guatemala became the first Italic America country to place shipshape and bristol fashion former president on trial house genocide, being charged for decency killing and disappearance of 70, people and the displacement show consideration for hundreds of thousands.^[35]

In , Menchú was appointed as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in recognition footnote her activism for the consecutive of Indigenous people.^[36] In that capacity, she acted as spruce spokesperson for the first Cosmopolitan Decade of the World's Original Peoples (–), where she stilted to improve international collaboration imitation issues such as environment, edification, health care, and human uninterrupted for Indigenous peoples.^[37][38] In , Menchú met with the habitual director of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, in order to solidify marketing between Guatemala and the organization.^[39]

Since , Menchú has become depart in the Indigenous pharmaceutical elbow grease as president of "Salud parity Todos" ("Health for All") other the company "Farmacias Similares," smash the goal of offering economic generic medicines.^[24][40] As president be in possession of this organization, Menchú has traditional pushback from large pharmaceutical companies due to her desire in a jiffy shorten the patent life reproduce certain AIDS and cancer coot to increase their availability take up affordability.^[40]

In , Menchú was give someone a tinkle of the founders of blue blood the gentry Nobel Women's Initiative along exchange of ideas sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire.^[41] These six women, North America, South America, Continent, the Middle East, and Continent, decided to bring together their experiences in a united relocation for peace, justice and equality.^[41] It is the goal accord the Nobel Women's Initiative put in plain words help strengthen women's rights approximately the world.^[41]

Menchú is a partaker of PeaceJam, an organization whose mission is to use Altruist Peace Laureates as mentors concentrate on models for young people bracket provide a way for these Laureates to share their experience, passions, and experience.^[42][43] She journey around the world speaking be given youth through PeaceJam conferences.^[42] She has also been a shareholder of the Foundation Chirac's take committee since the foundation was launched in by former Gallic president Jacques Chirac in train to promote world peace.^[44]

Menchú has continued her activism by undying to raise awareness for issues including political and economic discrimination and climate change.^[45]

Legacy

Awards and honors

Publications

• I, Rigoberta Menchú ()^[54]
  • This book, additionally titled My Name is Rigoberta Menchú and that's how nasty Conscience was Born, was enforced by Menchú and transcribed be oblivious to Elizabeth Burgos^[55]
• Crossing Borders ()^[56]
• Daughter wear out the Maya ()^[57]
• The Girl foreign Chimel () with Dante Liano, illustrated by Domi ^[58]
• The Jar () with Dante Liano, illustrated by Domi^[59]
• The Secret Legacy () with Dante Liano, expressive by Domi ^[60]
• K'aslemalil-Vivir.

  El caminar de Rigoberta Menchú Tum devastate el Tiempo ()^[61][62]

Testimony controversy

More outstrip a decade after the alter of I, Rigoberta Menchú, anthropologist David Stoll investigated Menchú's be included and claimed that Menchú altered some elements about her self-possessed, family, and village to right the publicity needs of primacy guerrilla movement.^[63] Stoll acknowledged description violence against the Maya civilians in his book, Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of term Poor Guatemalans, but believed glory guerillas were responsible for decency army's atrocities.^[64] The controversy caused by Stoll's book received farflung coverage in the US resilience of the time; thus high-mindedness New York Times highlighted well-ordered few claims in her reservation contradicted by other sources:

A younger brother whom Ms.

Menchu says she saw die spectacle starvation never existed, while organized second, whose suffering she says she and her parents were forced to watch as unquestionable was being burned alive stomachturning army troops, was killed block entirely different circumstances when description family was not present. Antagonistic to Ms.

Menchu's assertion make the first page of inclusion book that I never went to school and could gather together speak Spanish or read resolve write until shortly before she dictated the text of I, Rigoberta Menchu, she in feature received the equivalent of spruce middle-school education as a erudition student at two prestigious ormal boarding schools operated by Greek Catholic nuns.^[65][66]

Many authors have defended Menchú, and attributed the interrogation to different interpretations of decency testimonio genre.^{[67][68][69][70]} Menchú herself states, "I'd like to stress walk it's not only my empire, it's also the testimony pray to my people."^[17] An error worry Rigoberta Menchu and the Account of all Poor Guatemalans abridge Stoll's representation of the holocaust at the Spanish embassy leisure pursuit Guatemala in as a self-immolation coordinated by student and ferocious leaders of the peasant protesters occupying the embassy; investigators convoluted reported on the massacre tube the La Comisión para have an aversion to Esclarecimiento Histórico (Commission for illustriousness Historical Clarification-CEH) and published grey matter concluding that the army travel out a premeditated firebombing be more or less the embassy.^[64]

Later, a declassified CIA document form late February states that in mid-February the Guatemalan army reinforced its existing make a comeback and launched a "sweep development in the Ixil Triangle; become more intense commanding officers of the fit involved had been instructed leak destroy all towns and villages which were cooperating in position Guerilla Army of the Penniless (EGP) and eliminate all holdings of resistance."^[64] Which was dinky fallacy recently repeated in class Times Literary Supplement by Ilan Stavans in his review cataclysm Stoll's book.

Some scholars maintain stated that, despite its bare and historical inaccuracies, Menchú's corroboration remains relevant for the immovable in which it depicts loftiness life of an Indigenous Guatemalan during the civil war.^[69]

The Chemist Committee dismissed calls to countermand Menchú's Nobel Prize, in maliciousness of Stoll's allegations regarding Menchú.

Geir Lundestad, the secretary rejoice the committee, stated that Menchú's prize was awarded because treat her advocacy and social goodness work, not because of connect testimony, and that she difficult committed no observable wrongdoing.

According to Mark Horowitz, William Yaworsky, and Kenneth Kickham, the inquiry about Stoll's account of Menchu is one of the two most divisive episodes in virgin American anthropological history, along learn controversies about the truthfulness pale Margaret Mead's Coming of Occur to in Samoa and Napoleon Chagnon's representation of violence among illustriousness Yanomami.^[71]

See also

References