Rigoberta menchu biography summary example

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

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

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

Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Spanish:[riɣoˈβeɾtamenˈtʃu]; born 9 January 1959) is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.

In 1992 she received the Nobel Peace Prize, became an UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, and received the Prince of Asturias Award in 1998. Menchú is also the subject of the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983) author of the autobiographical work, Crossing Borders (1998), and is subject interest among other works. Menchú founded the country's first indigenous political party, Winaq, and ran for president of Guatemala in 2007 and 2011 as its candidate.

Personal life

Rigoberta Menchú was born to a poor Indigenous family of K'iche' Maya descent in Laj Chimel, a rural area in the north-central Guatemalan province of El Quiché. Her family was one of many Indigenous families who could not sustain themselves on the small pieces of land they were left with after the Spanish conquest of Guatemala. Menchú's mother began her career as a midwife at age sixteen and continued to practice using traditional medicinal plants until she was murdered at age 43. Her father was a prominent activist for the rights of Indigenous farmers in Guatemala. Both of her parents regularly attended Catholic church, but her mother remained connected to her Maya spirituality and identity. She believes in many teachings of the Catholic Church, but her mother

Rigoberta Menchú’s powerful autobiography begins with these simple words: “This is my testimony... I’d like to stress that it’s not only my life, it’s also the testimony of my people... My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.”

Some of the facts that Rigoberta shares about her life have been questioned. But her story can still be read as a description of the common experiences of many Indians who led lives of exploitation, deep discrimination and fear of Guatemala’s brutal military dictatorships.

Rigoberta was born into a large peasant family. Her mother and father were both leaders in her community. Her father organized a peasant group, the United Peasant Committee (CUC), and worked to hold on to his land.

Many Indians, like Rigoberta’s family, had to spend half the year working on coastal plantations that typically exported coffee and cotton. The intense heat of the coast frequently made the highland Indians sick. Malnutrition and handling the fungicides used on the plantations frequently caused the workers to grow ill.

Although Rigoberta’s parents could not read or write, Rigoberta was lucky enough to receive education when some Belgian nuns found her to be bright and promising. In spite of the family’s money problems, she was kept by the nuns in their convent for a year, and attended school up through the first year of junior high.

To better herself, Rigoberta worked as a servant in an urban middle-class household. Misused and criticized for her Indian ways, she experienced the deep divide that exists between the Indians and the rest of Guatemalan society.

In her village, Rigoberta joined a revolutionary anti-government Christian movement. Observing the lives of the Indians, she came to the conclusion that their problems stemmed from the ownership of the land. The best land, which used to belong to Indians she says, was owned by big landowners who neither accepted Indians nor their ways. Wanting to take an

Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans

Read the Review

The Story of All Poor Guatemalans

My name is Rigoberta Menchú. I am twenty three years old. This is my testimony. I didn't learn it from a book and I didn't learn it alone. I'd like to stress that it's not only my life, it's also the testimony of my people.... The important thing is that what has happened to me has happened to many other people too: My story is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.

—I, Rigoberta Menchú, p. 1

Gingerly, I was feeling my way into the Ixil Maya town of Chajul, in the western highlands of Guatemala. Except for the occasional fiesta, it was a quiet place of white-washed adobe and red-tiled roofs, where children played ingenious games with pieces of junk and adults were more polite than friendly. The majority spoke a bit of Spanish, but their own language was Ixil (pronounced ee-sheel), one of the twenty forms of Maya spoken by Guatemalans descended from the pre-Columbian civilization. In the early 1980s, the Guatemalan army burned down all the surrounding villages in order to defeat a Marxist-led guerrilla movement. Occasionally the army still brought in prisoners from the surrounding mountains, to be trucked off to an unknown fate. Or it flung down a corpse in the plaza as a warning of what happened to subversives. Under the circumstances, I had no right to expect that anyone would be willing to talk about what had happened—not while peasant guerrillas continued to fight, certain villages remained under their control, and the rest of the population was under the army's suspicious eye.

    Fortunately, some Chajules were willing to help me. Among them was an elder named Domingo. Now that he had related the town's sufferings, I was asking about other incidents in human rig

Rigoberta Menchu Tum is a Guatemalan activist for native rights and winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. She rose to fame in 1982 when she was the subject of a ghost-written autobiography, "I, Rigoberta Menchu." At the time, she was an activist living in France because Guatemala was very dangerous for outspoken critics of the government. The book propelled her to international fame in spite of later allegations that much of it was exaggerated, inaccurate or even fabricated. She has kept a high profile, continuing to work for native rights around the globe.

Early Life in Rural Guatemala

Menchu was born Jan. 9, 1959, in Chimel, a small town in the north-central Guatemalan province of Quiche. The region is home to the Quiche people, who have lived there since before the Spanish conquest and still maintain their culture and language. At the time, rural peasants like the Menchu family were at the mercy of ruthless landowners. Many Quiche families were forced to migrate to the coast for several months every year to cut sugarcane for extra money.

Menchu Joins the Rebels

Because the Menchu family was active in the land reform movement and grass-roots activities, the government suspected them of being subversives. At the time, suspicion and fear were rampant. The civil war, which had simmered since the 1950s, was in full swing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and atrocities such as the razing of entire villages were commonplace. After her father was arrested and tortured, most of the family, including 20-year-old Menchu, joined the rebels, the CUC, or Committee of the Peasant Union.

War Decimates Family 

The civil war would decimate her family. Her brother was captured and killed, Menchu said she was forced to watch as he was burned alive in a village square. Her father was a leader of a small band of rebels who captured the Spanish Embassy in protest of government policies. Security forc