Rigoberta Menchu (1959 - )

Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan activist for the rights of the indigenous people and a winner of Nobel Peace Prize, was born in 1959 in a small Guatemalan village of Chimel located in the northern highlands. Her family was Quiche Indian and very poor. The small plot of land that the family owned did not produce enough to feed everyone. Like their neighbors, who were in the same predicament, they traveled to the coast to work as laborers on large coffee or cotton plantations, working up to fifteen hours a day for eight months a year. Her father was a leader of the peasant movement against the Guatemalan government. Following in her father's footsteps, Menchu helped organize the United Peasant Committee and struggled to better the lives of her people. She brought international attention to the plight of the Indigenous peoples in Guatemala by writing an autobiography and by winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.

Life on a plantation was harsh. People lived in crowded sheds with no clean water or toilets. Children had to start working at an early age or else they were not fed. Rigoberta started working on the plantation at the age of eight. She did not have an opportunity to attend school. Two of her brothers died on the plantation, one as a result of poisoning from pesticides sprayed on coffee plants and another from malnutrition.

Native Indians in Guatemala had no rights of citizenship, which were restricted to people of Spanish descent. The military-led government and wealthy plantation owners took Indian-occupied lands by force. Rigoberta's father became a leader in the peasant movement opposing this action and began a series of petitions and protests to secure lands for Indigenous people who had been living on them. He was frequently arrested and imprisoned for his activities.

In 1979, Rigoberta's sixteen-year-old brother was kidnapped by soldiers, tortured and burned alive while his family watched. In 1980, her father and 38 other Indian leaders died in a fire at the Spanish embassy while protesting violations of Indian human rights abuses. Rigoberta's mother, also a leader in her community and a healer, was kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed the following year.

Rigoberta was likewise active in her father's movement, the United Peasant Committee. She was wanted by the Guatemalan government, but after her mother's death, she fled to Mexico. While in Mexico, she dictated her autobiography, I...Rigoberta Menchu  (1984), telling the world not only her own story, but also about the lives of her fellow Indians. Her book and the campaign she led for social justice brought international attention to this conflict between indigenous Indians and the military government of Guatemala.

In 1992, Rigoberta Menchu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She used the $1.2 million cash prize to set up a foundation in her father's name to continue the fight for human rights of the indigenous people. Due to her effort, the United Nations declared 1993 the International Year for Indigenous Populations.