ACTIVIST GUATEMALARigoberta Menchú Tum appeals to the best in all of us, wherever we live and whatever our background.
—THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE COMMITTEE
Rigoberta’s back ached as she bent to pick up the beans that had fallen off the coffee bushes. Up ahead she could see her mother picking with her baby brother, Nicholás, strapped to her back. Rigoberta was worried. They had been at this finca (large coffee, cotton, or sugar cane plantation) for fifteen days now, and Nicholás had been crying the whole time. He was crying now. Her mother unwrapped him and tried to feed him some healing herbs. His belly was swollen from malnutrition, and he was barely breathing.
Eight-year-old Rigoberta could hardly contain her anger. Working on the fincas, they could hardly afford to buy food, let alone medicine for a sick baby. They couldn’t ask for help because they spoke a different language from the other workers. But most unfair was that if her mother stopped working to care for Nicholás, they would all be thrown out and would lose the money they desperately needed for food. When Nicholás died later that morning, Rigoberta was angrier than she’d ever been in her entire life. The day of his death was the first day of her battle to save her Indian people from their tremendous struggles.
At Rigoberta’s birth, a midwife tied red thread around her hands and feet, symbolizing her purity and to remind Rigoberta to care for the earth. Around Rigoberta’s neck she tied a small red pouch containing herbs, plants, salt, lime, tobacco, and garlic to protect the girl from harm.
Rigoberta Menchú was born in 1959, in the mountains of northwest Guatemala. She and her seven siblings grew up in the village of Chimel, which her parents founded. Like most of the people in Guatemala, Rigoberta’s family and village were descended from the ancient and proud Mayan Indians of Central America. The families in her village were very poor, living in small huts built from cane or corn stalks. The villagers spent years clearing fields out of the forest just to grow enough corn to feed their families. But most years they couldn’t live off their meager crops, so they were forced to work on the fincas that were owned by the Ladinos (people descended from the Spanish who had invaded Central America in the 1500s).
The first time Rigoberta went to the capital, she asked her father, “What are those strange animals on the road?” He answered, “Those are cars!”
Although most Guatemalans are Indian, it was the Ladinos who controlled most of the country’s land and businesses. Like most Indian children, Rigoberta never had a chance to go to school. As soon as she could walk, she helped her parents at the fincas. She picked up fallen coffee or cotton behind her mother, or watched her younger siblings so her mother could pick more. By eight, Rigoberta was working full time—meaning from three in the morning until the sun went down. For her fifteen-hour day she was paid about four cents!
Conditions were terrible. Although workers earned just enough to stay alive, the finca owners would cut their pay if they broke a branch off a coffee bush. They could buy extra food, medicine, and other necessities at the company store, but for much higher prices than normal. The result was that many workers earned no money at all after their months of hard labor, and many actually went into debt to pay for food. Workers who complained were fired. Rigoberta lost two brothers on the fincas; a younger one died of malnutrition, and an older one died from being sprayed with toxic pesticides (finca owners usually didn’t clear workers from the fields before they sprayed).
When the families returned to their mountain villages to work their own fields, they faced even more difficult problems. They spent years clearing land and tending fields before they could finally produce enough to feed the families. That’s just when the rich landowners stepped in, claiming the land was really theirs. The Indians would have to leave or work on the land as laborers.
When Vicente first went to the government for help, they tricked him into signing papers written in Spanish, which he couldn’t read, which said the Indians would give their land to the landowners.
As the village leader, Rigoberta’s father, Vicente, protested. Rigoberta often traveled with her father to the capital, Guatemala City, as he met with members of the government and asked for help. They didn’t care about the problems of the Indians, so Vicente met with labor organizations that really were trying to help the workers. Through them, Rigoberta came to believe that the only way the Indians could protect themselves from the government and the rich landowners would be to organize and fight for their rights. Rigoberta’s father encouraged her. He often told her, “When you’re old enough, you . . . must do what I do.”
Her father was first arrested for his role in organizing the Indians when Rigoberta was just thirteen. Over the next few years, life became a nightmare. The government and landowners sent armies into villages. They destroyed everything, killing men, women, and children. They imprisoned and tortured anyone who fought back. They even forced young Indian men to fight against their own people, or be killed.
By the time she was fifteen, Rigoberta had taken over as a leader of her people. She met with her father’s friends and with priests and Europeans. She organized her own village to protect itself from army raids. Of course, there was no money for defense, but they were creative. They developed underground escape routes, secret hideouts, and booby traps. The villagers learned to defend themselves with sticks, rocks, and other crude weapons.
Villagers used lime juice, salt, and chilies to blind their attackers.
Once her own village was prepared, Rigoberta began traveling to other villages to teach them to fight back. As she traveled, Rigoberta began to realize that the biggest obstacle keeping Indians from organizing was their language. The Mayan Indians spoke twenty-two different languages, and few people spoke Spanish, so communicating with each other and protesting Spanish laws were nearly impossible. Over the next few years, Rigoberta learned to speak three other main Mayan languages, and she improved her Spanish with help from the Catholic nuns in the villages. She now had the tools she needed to be the voice of her people.
By 1978, when she was nineteen, Rigoberta and her entire family were being hunted by the government. They were all involved in fighting for Indian rights. Earlier her father had helped start the Committee of Peasant Unity, or CUC, which fought for fair wages and decent treatment from the landowners, and demanded respect for Indian communities, religion, and culture. When Rigoberta joined the CUC in 1979, it had grown into a powerful political group supported by the majority of Guatemalans.
It was too dangerous for the entire family to stay together, so the village had a special fiesta in honor of the Menchú family and to say good-bye. They ate a feast of roast pig and tamales, played drums and marimbas, and danced late into the night. It was one of the happiest memories of Rigoberta’s difficult life. The next morning, they all scattered to different villages. It was the last time Rigoberta would see her family together and alive.
First her younger brother, Petrocinio, was tortured and burned to death while Rigoberta and her mother watched helplessly. Four months later, her father was killed during a protest in the capital. He and other CUC members took over several radio stations, trying to broadcast their story to the outside world. When they took over the Spanish embassy, still trying to get the world’s attention, the army bombed the building. Everyone inside died. And finally, the next year, Rigoberta’s mother was kidnapped and killed while out buying food for hungry villagers.
The Indian people of Guatemala now looked to Rigoberta to guide them. She became a leader of the CUC, organizing more protests in the capital and self-defense workshops in the villages. Everywhere Rigoberta went, she was hunted. The kidnappings and killings continued: by 1980 one hundred thousand Indians had been killed, thirty thousand were missing, and another two hundred thousand had fled to Mexico. In 1981, at twenty-two, Rigoberta, fearing for her life, joined her people in exile. She fled to Mexico. It broke her heart to leave her struggling people behind, but it was the only way she could spread their story to the outside world. If she did, she knew she could get the help the Indians needed to survive.
In Mexico she led the efforts to stop the Guatemalans’ brutal treatment of the Indians. She began traveling the world telling of her people’s struggle. Finally in 1983 the whole world heard the voice of the Guatemalan Indians, through the publication of I, Rigoberta Menchú, a book about Rigoberta’s life. It was a huge hit and was published in twelve languages. In 1992 the little girl who’d picked coffee beans off the ground won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts on behalf of her people. She was the youngest person ever to win the world’s most prestigious prize.
Eighty-seven percent of Guatemalans still live in poverty.
Thanks to Rigoberta’s leadership and the courage of her people, conditions in Guatemala have improved. She used the $1.2 million Nobel award to start the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation. Its mission is to continue helping native peoples improve their communities. With the world’s outraged attention focused on Guatemala, the government was forced to stop most of its attacks and kidnappings. Recent governments have worked with Rigoberta and Indian groups to address their concerns.
With Guatemala’s problems improving, Rigoberta finally felt she could spare enough of herself to fall in love and get married, something she thought she would never do. But Rigoberta has not rested. Instead she has turned her attention to the indigenous (native) peoples all over the world. “We have broken the silence around Guatemala. Now I would like to see native and non-native people living side by side,” she said. In 1993 Rigoberta was chosen by the United Nations to be a Goodwill Ambassador for the Indigenous Peoples. In 2009 Rigoberta and her foundation began working to establish a Mayan University for Guatemalan Indians.
Rigoberta’s work is far from finished. As long as there is injustice, Rigoberta will continue to be the brave voice for the oppressed, impoverished peoples of the world.