She has decided to phone to one of her old friends, Joan Baez, who celebrates her 80th anniversary today. They have been talking about human rights and civil protests and about the last incredible events occurred in Washington, DC.
This is not new for The Grandma because she lives in a place that suffers the tyranny of those who do not respect the rule of law forcing legal presidents to go to exile, forcing legal presidents to leave their seats and elected deputies are imprisoned only for having different ideas and wanting a free land. It is the abuse that suffers the minorities, and The Grandma belongs to one of them.
Joan and The Grandma have been talking about a great woman who also belongs to a minority that once -before the arrival of the Castilian colones- was a majority and lived free in their land. Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Prize and K'iche' Indigenous feminist and human rights activist from Guatemala, who also was born on a day like today in 1959.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum (born 9 January 1959) is a K'iche' Indigenous feminist and human rights activist from Guatemala.
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.
She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, in addition to other prestigious awards. She is the subject of the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983) and the author of the autobiographical work, Crossing Borders (1998), among other works. Menchú is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. She ran for president of Guatemala in 2007 and 2011, having founded the country's first Indigenous political party, Winaq.
More information: Twitter-Rigoberta Menchú
Rigoberta Menchú was born to a poor Indigenous family of Q'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, and her mother remained very connected to her Maya spirituality and identity.
Menchú considers herself to be the perfect mix of both her parents. She believes in many teachings of the Catholic Church, but her mother's Maya influence also taught Menchú the importance of living in harmony with nature and retaining her Maya culture.
In 1979-80 her brother, Patrocinio, and her mother, Juana Tum Kótoja, were kidnapped, brutally tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan army. Her father, Vicente Menchú Perez, died in the 1980 burning of the Spanish Embassy, which occurred after urban guerrillas took hostages and were attacked by government security forces.
In January 2015, Pedro García Arredondo, a former police commander of the Guatemalan army, was convicted of attempted murder and crimes against humanity for his role in the embassy attack.
In 1984, Menchú's other brother, Victor, was shot to death after he surrendered to the Guatemalan army, was threatened by soldiers, and tried to escape.
In 1995, Menchú married Ángel Canil, a Guatemalan, in a Mayan ceremony. They had a Catholic wedding in January 1998; at that time they also buried their son Tz'unun, hummingbird in Maya, who had died after being born prematurely in December. They adopted a son, Mash Nahual J’a, Spirit of Water in Maya.
From a young age, Menchú was active alongside her father, advocating for the rights of Indigenous farmers through the Committee for Peasant Unity. Menchú often faced discrimination for wanting to join her male family members in the fight for justice, but she was inspired by her mother to continue making space for herself. She believes that the roots of Indigenous oppression in Guatemala stem from issues of exploitation and colonial land ownership. Her early activism focused on defending her people from colonial exploitation.
After leaving school, Menchú worked as an activist campaigning against human rights violations committed by the Guatemalan armed forces during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. Many of the human rights violations that occurred during the war targeted Indigenous peoples. Women were targets of physical and sexual violence at the hands of the military.
In 1981, Menchú was exiled and escaped to Mexico where she found refuge in the home of a Catholic bishop in Chiapas.
Menchú continued to organize resistance to oppression in Guatemala and organize the struggle for Indigenous rights by co-founding the United Republic of Guatemalan Opposition.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly Mayan Indians, fled to Mexico from 1982 to 1984 at the height of Guatemala's 36-year civil war.
A year later, in 1982, she narrated a book about her life, titled Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia, My Name is Rigoberta Menchú, and this is how my awareness was born, to Venezuelan author and anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos, which was translated into five other languages including English and French.
Menchú narrated the book in Spanish, although she had only learned to speak it three years prior. Spanish was a language that had been forced upon Indigenous peoples by colonizers, but Menchú sought to master the language and turn it against her oppressors. The book made her an international icon at the time of the ongoing conflict in Guatemala and brought attention to the suffering of Indigenous peoples under an oppressive government regime.
Menchú served as the Presidential Goodwill Ambassador for the 1996 Peace Accords in Guatemala. That same year she received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award in Boston.
More information: Nobel Women's Initiative
After the Guatemalan Civil War ended, Menchú campaigned to have Guatemalan political and military establishment members tried in Spanish courts.
In 1999, she filed a complaint before a court in Spain because prosecutions of civil-war era crimes in Guatemala was practically impossible. These attempts stalled as the Spanish courts determined that the plaintiffs had not yet exhausted all possibilities of seeking justice through the legal system of Guatemala.
In 1996, Menchú was appointed as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in recognition of her activism for the rights of Indigenous people. In this capacity, she acted as a spokesperson for the first International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples (1995–2004), where she worked to improve international collaboration on issues such as environment, education, health care, and human rights for Indigenous peoples.
In 2015, Menchú met with the general director of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, in order to solidify relations between Guatemala and the organization.
Since 2003, Menchú has become involved in the Indigenous pharmaceutical industry as president of Salud para Todos, Health for All, and the company Farmacias Similares, with the goal of offering low-cost generic medicines. As president of this organization, Menchú has received pushback from large pharmaceutical companies due to her desire to shorten the patent life of certain AIDS and cancer drugs to increase their availability and affordability.
In 2006, Menchú was one of the founders of the Nobel Women's Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. These six women, representing North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, decided to bring together their experiences in a united effort for peace, justice and equality. It is the goal of the Nobel Women's Initiative to help strengthen women's rights around the world.
Menchú is a member of PeaceJam, an organization whose mission is to use Nobel Peace Laureates as mentors and models for young people and provide a way for these Laureates to share their knowledge, passions, and experience.
She travels around the world speaking to youth through PeaceJam conferences. She has also been a member of the Foundation Chirac's honor committee since the foundation was launched in 2008 by former French president Jacques Chirac in order to promote world peace.
Menchú has continued her activism in recent years by continuing to raise awareness for issues including political and economic inequality and climate change.
More information: PeaceJam
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.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum
