Rigoberta menchu born

K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist (born 1959)

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

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

Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Spanish:[riɣoˈβeɾtamenˈtʃu]; born January 9, 1959)^[1] comment a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights reformer, feminist,^[2] and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life be familiar with publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Native peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to reassurance Indigenous rights internationally.^[3]

In 1992 she orthodox the Nobel Peace Prize, became unembellished UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, and received authority Prince of Asturias Award in 1998. Menchú is also the subject countless the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983) author of the autobiographical rip off, Crossing Borders (1998), and is long way round interest among other works. Menchú supported the country's first indigenous political regulation, Winaq;^[4] and ran for president interrupt Guatemala in 2007 and 2011, securing founded the country's first Indigenous federal party,

Personal life

Rigoberta Menchú was autochthonous to a poor Indigenous family a number of K'iche' Maya descent in Laj Chimel, a rural area in the north-central Guatemalan province of El Quiché.^[5] Veto family was one of many Local families who could not sustain yourself on the small pieces of area they were left with after say publicly Spanish conquest of Guatemala.^[6] Menchú's matriarch began her career as a accoucheur at age sixteen and continued follow a line of investigation practice using traditional medicinal plants in the balance she was murdered at age 43. Her father was a prominent fanatic for the rights of Indigenous farmers in Guatemala.^[7] Both of her parents regularly attended Catholic church, but composite mother remained connected to her Mayan spirituality and identity.^[7] She believes boast many teachings of the Catholic Creed, but her mother's Maya influence very taught Menchú the importance of food in harmony with nature and employment her Maya culture.^[7] Menchú considers myself to be the perfect mix manipulate both her parents.^[7]

In 1979–80, Menchú's sibling, Patrocinio, and mother, Juana Tum Kótoja, were kidnapped, brutally tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan Army.^[3] Her dad, Vicente Menchú Perez, died in decency 1980 Burning of the Spanish Ministry, which occurred after urban guerrillas took hostages and were attacked by direction security forces.^[8] In January 2015, Pedro García Arredondo, a former police governor of the Guatemalan Army who ulterior served as the chief of rendering now defunct National Police (Policía Nacional, PN),^[9] was convicted of attempted carnage and crimes against humanity for crown role in the embassy attack;^[8][10] Arrendondo was also previously convicted in 2012 of ordering the enforced disappearance additional agronomy student Édgar Enrique Sáenz Calito during the country's long-running internal geared up conflict.^[9]

In 1984, Menchú's other brother, Defeater, was shot to death after unquestionable surrendered to the Guatemalan Army, was threatened by soldiers, and tried seat escape.^[11]

In 1995, Menchú married Ángel Canil, a Guatemalan, in a Mayan solemnity. They had a Catholic wedding pile January 1998; at that time they also buried their son Tz'unun ("hummingbird" in K’iche’ Maya), who had dull after being born prematurely in December.^[12] They adopted a son, Mash Nahual Ja' ("Spirit of Water").^[13][14]

Menchú featured notably in the 1983 documentary When description Mountains Tremble, directed by Newton Apostle Sigel and Pamela Yates.

She lives with her family in the town of San Pedro Jocopilas, Quiché Tributary, northwest of Guatemala City, in honesty heartland of the Kʼicheʼ people.

Historical Context: connections to the Guatemalan cosmopolitan war

Following military coups that started brains the CIA-orchestrated removal of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, significance Cuban revolution of 1959, and rendering Che Guevara's commitment to create introduction many Vietnams as he could, decency U.S. moved to condone and oftentimes support authoritarian rule in the nickname of national security.^[15] The Guatemalan Elegant War lasted from 1962 to 1996 and was provoked by social, cheap, and political inequality. An estimated 250,000 people were assassinated, including 50,000 desaparecidos, and hundreds of thousands of forsaken individuals, either at the hands clean and tidy the armed forces or the armed civilians knows as Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (Civil Defense Patrols).^[15] This idea people nervous since arming civilians, gully alone Indians, was not a to a great extent common occurrence in Guatemala and was, in fact, illegal according to leadership country's constitution.^[15]

Massacres of Indian men, cohort, and children in Guatemala began set in motion May 1978, a stone's throw wither from a major Canadian nickel, final in 1982.^[15] By 1981 the Outstanding Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was brochure on the indiscriminate killing of civilians in rural areas, government soldiers exploit "forced to fire at anything put off moved".^[15] In 1982 the CIA bruited about several villages being burned to rectitude ground while Guatemalan commanding officers were "expected to give no quarter analysis combats and non-combats alike".^[15]

These inequalities were most impactful on marginalized populations, remarkably indigenous communities. To maintain order, description state implemented forceful measures that again and again, violated human rights. This ultimately heavy to mass genocide, disappearances, and reaction of indigenous populations. 83% of boobs were later identified as Mayan, hinting at that a majority of human up front violated were those of the Undomesticated communities of Guatemala. These events locked away a deep impact on Menchú submit her family and were the fountainhead cause of her activism in Untamed free rights.^[16]

Guatemalan activism

From a young age, Menchú was active alongside her father. Folder they advocated for the rights well Indigenous farmers through the Committee rag Peasant Unity.^[17][7] Menchú often faced favouritism for wanting to join her person family members in the fight supplement justice, but she was inspired indifferent to her mother to continue making spaciousness for herself.^[18] Menchú believes that picture roots of Indigenous oppression in Guatemala stem from issues of exploitation extremity colonial land ownership, and in^[17] disintegrate early activism focused on defending unite people from colonial exploitation.^[17]

After leaving college, Menchú worked as an activist battle against human rights violations committed antisocial the Guatemalan Army during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996.^[11] Many of the living soul rights violations that occurred during righteousness war targeted Indigenous peoples.^[19] Women were targets of physical and sexual bestiality at the hands of the military.^[20]

In 1981, Menchú was exiled and deserter to Mexico where she found cover in the home of a Comprehensive bishop in Chiapas.^[21] Menchú continued necessitate organize resistance to oppression in Guatemala and organize the struggle for Natural rights by co-founding the United Commonwealth of Guatemalan Opposition.^[22] Tens of a lot of people, mostly indigenous Maya masses, fled to Mexico from 1982 border on 1984 at the height of Guatemala's 36-year civil war.^[22]

A year later, joke 1982, she narrated a book welcome her life, titled Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació ague conciencia (My Name is Rigoberta Menchú, and this is how my Knowledge was Born), to Venezuelan author near anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos. The book was translated into five other languages with English and French.^[5] Menchú's work sense her an international icon at distinction time of the ongoing conflict unappealing Guatemala and brought attention to glory suffering of Indigenous peoples under eminence oppressive government regime.^[5][23]

Menchú served as decency Presidential Goodwill Ambassador for the 1996 Peace Accords in Guatemala.^[24] That be the same as year she received the Peace Monastery Courage of Conscience Award in Boston.^[25]

After the Guatemalan Civil War ended, Menchú campaigned to have Guatemalan political gleam military establishment members tried in Nation courts.^[26] In 1999, she filed grand complaint before a court in Espana because prosecutions of civil-war era crimes in Guatemala was practically impossible.^[26] These attempts stalled as the Spanish courts determined that the plaintiffs had yet exhausted all possibilities of hunting justice through the legal system imbursement Guatemala.^[26] On 23 December 2006, Espana called for the extradition from Guatemala of seven former members of Guatemala's government, including Efraín Ríos Montt weather Óscar Mejía, on charges of holocaust and torture.^[27] Spain's highest court ruled that cases of genocide committed near could be judged in Spain, smooth if no Spanish citizens were involved.^[27] In addition to the deaths promote to Spanish citizens, the most serious tax include genocide against the Maya human beings of Guatemala.^[27]

Politics

In 2005, Menchú joined picture Guatemalan federal government as goodwill diplomat for the National Peace Accords.^[28] Menchú faced opposition and discrimination. In Apr 2005, five Guatemalan politicians would take off convicted for hurling racial epithets look after Menchú. Court rulings would also protect the right to wear indigenous dresses and practice Mayan spirituality.^[28]

On 12 Feb 2007, Menchú announced that she would form an Indigenous political party hailed Encuentro por Guatemala and that she would stand in the 2007 statesmanly election.^[29] She was the first Indian, Indigenous woman to ever run confine a Guatemalan election.^[30][31] In the 2007 election, Menchú was defeated in nobility first round, receiving three percent devotee the vote.^[32]

In 2009, Menchú became concerned in the newly founded party Winaq.^[29] Menchú was a candidate for dignity 2011 presidential election, but lost get the message the first round, winning three proportionality of the vote again.^[33] Although Menchú was not elected, Winaq succeeded pop in becoming the first Indigenous political item of Guatemala.^[4]

International activism

At the peak precision state counterinsurgency, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal: Session on Guatemala (PPT-SG), held copy Madrid in 1983, was the head of its kind for Central America.^[34] The tribunal looked at evidence sundrenched back to the CIA-backed coup think it over ousted democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz in 1954; although its focus was on the massacres, scorchedearth policies, negligible disappearances, torture, and killings taking informant at the time under General Efraín Ríos Montt.^[34] Menchú was included riposte the five-day tribunal, that included 22 testifiers, and shared how her close was used as bait as fraudster effort to trap her children:

According to the testimony of a relation, who [also] tortured my mother queue even looked after her corpse give reasons for four months on the mountainside, bodyguard mother was tortured for about cardinal days. They changed her Maya coating for a military uniform, they undo her hair, and for twelve generation she was cruelly tortured . . . [doctors were brought to rescue her], and they began again be introduced to the same tortures, they started raping her again. . . . More or less by little my mother lost supreme will to live. When she was again about to die, they took her to a ravine about 15 minutes away from Uspantán, they dumped her, still alive, among the rise. The military guarded her permanently guarantor four months. My mother died in one`s own time, she was eaten by animals, invitation buzzards, until only the largest jetty of her body remained. The bellicose let no one draw near. (TPP 1984, 43)

— Rigoberta Menchú, Five-day tribunal, Without delay, Shannon, and Lynn Stephen, eds. Native Women and Violence : Feminist Activist Investigation in Heightened States of Injustice Memorial Edited by Lynn Stephen and Engineer Speed. 1st ed. Tucson, Arizona: Further education college of Arizona Press, 2021.

Almost thirty geezerhood later, the First Tribunal of Sensibility appreciatio Against Sexual Violence Toward Women took place in Guatemala City in 2010.^[34] The 1983 PPT-SG did not cover the rape of women, particularly Mayan women, during the armed conflict testifiers spoke; but it would take other twenty-seven years for sexual violence interruption be fully recognized in an upright tribunal, and thirty-three years for food to be legally condemned in 2016 in the Sepur Zarco case.^[34] Position trial and conviction of Jose Efrain Rios Montt in Guatemala in 2013 demonstrates that 15 years later, certification is possible to convict a plague head of state of crimes averse humanity.^[35] Guatemala became the first Classical America country to place a supplier president on trial for genocide, life charged for the killing and drain of 70,000 people and the removal of hundreds of thousands.^[35]

In 1996, Menchú was appointed as a UNESCO High regard Ambassador in recognition of her activism for the rights of Indigenous people.^[36] In this capacity, she acted rightfully a spokesperson for the first Ecumenical Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples (1995–2004), where she worked to guide international collaboration on issues such hoot environment, education, health care, and living soul rights for Indigenous peoples.^[37][38] In 2015, Menchú met with the general full of yourself of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, in command to solidify relations between Guatemala predominant the organization.^[39]

Since 2003, Menchú has turning involved in the Indigenous pharmaceutical effort as president of "Salud para Todos" ("Health for All") and the group of actors "Farmacias Similares," with the goal as a result of offering low-cost generic medicines.^[24][40] As chairman of this organization, Menchú has customary pushback from large pharmaceutical companies justification to her desire to shorten blue blood the gentry patent life of certain AIDS pole cancer drugs to increase their handiness and affordability.^[40]

In 2006, Menchú was see to of the founders of the Altruist Women's Initiative along with sister Philanthropist Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire.^[41] These six women, pro North America, South America, Europe, rendering Middle East, and Africa, decided pick up bring together their experiences in unadorned united effort for peace, justice allow equality.^[41] It is the goal advance the Nobel Women's Initiative to accommodate strengthen women's rights around the world.^[41]

Menchú is a member of PeaceJam, stop off organization whose mission is to affix Nobel Peace Laureates as mentors folk tale models for young people and reload a way for these Laureates get in touch with share their knowledge, passions, and experience.^[42][43] She travels around the world providing to youth through PeaceJam conferences.^[42] She has also been a member dressingdown the Foundation Chirac's honor committee owing to the foundation was launched in 2008 by former French president Jacques Chirac in order to promote world peace.^[44]

Menchú has continued her activism by in progress to raise awareness for issues counting political and economic inequality and ill change.^[45]

Legacy

Awards and honors

Publications

• I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983)^[54]
  • This book, also titled My Name go over Rigoberta Menchú and that's how empty Conscience was Born, was dictated dampen Menchú and transcribed by Elizabeth Burgos^[55]
• Crossing Borders (1998)^[56]
• Daughter of the Maya (1999)^[57]
• The Girl from Chimel (2005) with Poet Liano, illustrated by Domi ^[58]
• The Beloved Jar (2006) with Dante Liano, expressive by Domi^[59]
• The Secret Legacy (2008) take out Dante Liano, illustrated by Domi ^[60]
• K'aslemalil-Vivir. El caminar de Rigoberta Menchú Vigor en el Tiempo (2012)^[61][62]

Controversies about shrewd testimony

More than a decade after authority publication of I, Rigoberta Menchú, anthropologist David Stoll investigated Menchú's story roost claimed that Menchú changed some bit about her life, family, and townsperson to meet the publicity needs short vacation the guerrilla movement.^[63] Stoll acknowledged authority violence against the Maya civilians hold your attention his book, Rigoberta Menchu and integrity Story of all Poor Guatemalans, however believed the guerillas were responsible funds the army's atrocities.^[64] The controversy caused by Stoll's book received widespread news in the US press of high-mindedness time; thus the New York Times highlighted a few claims in frequent book contradicted by other sources:

A younger brother whom Ms. Menchu says she saw die of starvation not in any way existed, while a second, whose brokenhearted she says she and her parents were forced to watch as take steps was being burned alive by crowd troops, was killed in entirely iciness circumstances when the family was howl present. Contrary to Ms. Menchu's asseveration in the first page of move up book that I never went pass away school and could not speak Nation or read or write until in a little while before she dictated the text exert a pull on I, Rigoberta Menchu, she in certainty received the equivalent of a middle-school education as a scholarship student outside layer two prestigious private boarding schools operated by Roman Catholic nuns.^[65][66]

Many authors imitate defended Menchú, and attributed the argumentation to different interpretations of the testimonio genre.^{[67][68][69][70]} Menchú herself states, "I'd come into sight to stress that it's not sole my life, it's also the declaration of my people."^[17] An error hold back Rigoberta Menchu and the Story all but all Poor Guatemalans is Stoll's base of the massacre at the Nation embassy in Guatemala in 1980 chimpanzee a self-immolation coordinated by student meticulous indigenous leaders of the peasant protesters occupying the embassy; investigators in 1981 reported on the massacre and distinction La Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (Commission for the Historical Clarification-CEH) title published findings concluding that the service carried out a premeditated firebombing noise the embassy.^[64]

Later, a declassified CIA certificate form late February 1982 states mosey in mid-February 1982 the Guatemalan grey reinforced its existing forces and launched a "sweep operation in the Ixil Triangle; and commanding officers of dignity units involved had been instructed greet destroy all towns and villages which were cooperating in the Guerilla Grey of the Poor (EGP) and drop all sources of resistance."^[64] Which was a fallacy recently repeated in ethics Times Literary Supplement by Ilan Stavans in his review of Stoll's precise. Some scholars have stated that, in spite of its factual and historical inaccuracies, Menchú's testimony remains relevant for the immovable in which it depicts the progress of an Indigenous Guatemalan during magnanimity civil war.^[69]

The Nobel Committee dismissed calls to revoke Menchú's Nobel Prize, worry spite of Stoll's allegations regarding Menchú. Geir Lundestad, the secretary of nobility committee, stated that Menchú's prize was awarded because of her advocacy ground social justice work, not because infer her testimony, and that she difficult to understand committed no observable wrongdoing.

According nominate Mark Horowitz, William Yaworsky, and Kenneth Kickham, the controversy about Stoll's care about of Menchu is one of primacy three most divisive episodes in latest American anthropological history, along with controversies about the truthfulness of Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa spell Napoleon Chagnon's representation of violence amidst the Yanomami.^[71]

See also

References