NOBEL PRIZE WINNER CALLED CHARISMATIC IN GUATEMALA EFFORT
MENCHU ESCHEWS VIOLENCE FOR PEACE DESPITE KILLING OF 3 FAMILY MEMBERS
Author: By Judith Gaines, Globe Staff
Date: Sunday, October 18, 1992
Page: 41
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
Rigoberta Menchu, the Quiche Indian awarded the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize on
Friday, is a courageous and charismatic woman who has risen above her meager
beginnings and suffering to advocate a peaceful, nonconfrontational end to
Guatemala's 30-year-old civil war, a Boston resident and a visitor, who know
her well, said yesterday.
"She saw people from her village die around her," said Michael Delaney, 31,
the resident who has known Menchu through his work as Central American program
coordinator for Oxfam America. "Members of her family were tortured and killed
in brutal ways. To come out of that working for peace, instead of being
embittered, is very striking," he said.
"The natural path for a person like her would be to identify with the
indigenous peoples' struggles and ignore the poor non-indigenous and mestizo
people," said the visitor, who has known Menchu since 1983 and asked that his
name not be disclosed. "She's unusual in her ability to relate to a wide range
of people without seeming to be threatening them."
As the two discussed their friend and colleague, a picture emerged of a
big-boned woman, not 5-feet tall, with a warm smile and large brown eyes -- a
small woman who has become an unusually effective advocate for reconciliation
among Guatemala's many ethnic groups.
Born in 1959, Menchu was raised in a family of six in the small village of
Uspanadan in the western Guatemalan highlands, where most of the country's
indigenous population lives.
She had no formal education and worked as a maid for a wealthy white family
as a young girl in Guatemala City, the country's capital. In her teens, she
picked coffee beans at plantations along the Guatemalan coast.
In the 1970s, her father, Vincente Menchu, began to organize the Committee
of Peasant Unity, a group protesting the unequal patterns of land ownership in
Guatemala -- where 2 percent of the population owns about 65 percent of the
land fit for crop planting -- and violations of human rights of indigenous
peoples.
But Rigoberta Menchu was not directly involved in the work until after her
mother, father and brother were killed in separate tragic circumstances in
1980 and 1981.
Her father was burned to death by the Guatemalan army and she "carried him
out of the Spanish embassy where he had been protesting for better wages" for
farmworkers, Delaney said. "He was so badly burned she could hardly recognize
him."
Her brother was tortured and burned by the military, and her mother, Juana,
was kidnapped, raped and mutilated.
According to her 1983 book, "I, Rigoberta Menchu," she found her mother's
body after Juana's ears had been cut off and she had been left to be consumed
by maggots, vultures and dogs.
After the killings, Menchu's two sisters joined Guatemalan guerilla forces
and she fled across the border into the Mexican state of Chiapas, where she
found refuge in the home of a Catholic bishop.
"She was psychologically weakened after seeing most of her family wiped
out," said her unidentified friend. "It took a lot of time for her to
recuperate." But it was their deaths that caused her to become politicized, he
said. "I think she felt she was the only one left alive from her family who
could do something to stop all the madness."
Working mainly through the Committee of Peasant Unity, Menchu began
speaking throughout the Americas and at the United Nations on behalf of
indigenous peoples and other victims of government represssion.
Guatemalan authorities responded by calling her a communist and accusing
her of being linked to the guerilla movement. They made several attempts on
her life and the lives of her companions, Menchu's associate said.
What has made her an effective advocate for those who oppose oligarchic
control of the country, he said, is that her speeches "are not that elaborate,
but go right to the heart of the matter. She looks at issues in a way that
touches the everyday life of common people."
Delaney added, "Her big word is dignity. She's always working to instill
dignity in her people and to change the structure that has deprived them of it
for so many years.
"As soon as you see her, there's a feeling of warmth and a sense that she's
focused on what's important. You know she's someone special."
GAINES;10/17 NKELLY;10/19,13:43 MENCHU18
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