LIVRE LAURÉAT DU PRIX NOBEL AUTOGRAPHE 1995 PAIX RIGOBERTA 2024 MENCHU SIGNÉ

igoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959 to a poor Indian peasant family and raised in the Quiche branch of the Mayan culture. In her early years she helped with the family farm work, either in the northern highlands where her family lived, or on the Pacific coast, where both adults and children went to pick coffee on the big plantations.

Rigoberta Menchú soon became involved in social reform activities through the Catholic Church, and became prominent in the women's rights movement when still only a teenager. Such reform work aroused considerable opposition in influential circles, especially after a guerilla organization established itself in the area. The Menchú family was accused of taking part in guerrilla activities and Rigoberta's father, Vicente, was imprisoned and tortured for allegedly having participated in the execution of a local plantation owner. After his release, he joined the recently founded Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC).

In 1979, Rigoberta, too, joined the CUC. That year her brother was arrested, tortured and killed by the army. The following year, her father was killed when security forces in the capital stormed the Spanish Embassy where he and some other peasants were staying. Shortly afterwards, her mother also died after having been arrested, tortured and raped. Rigoberta became increasingly active in the CUC, and taught herself Spanish as well as other Mayan languages than her native Quiche. In 1980, she figured prominently in a strike the CUC organized for better conditions for farm workers on the Pacific coast, and on May 1, 1981, she was active in large demonstrations in the capital. She joined the radical 31st of January Popular Front, in which her contribution chiefly consisted of educating the Indian peasant population in resistance to massive military oppression.

In 1981, Rigoberta Menchú had to go into hiding in Guatemala, and then flee to Mexico. That marked the beginning of a new phase in her life: as the organizer abroad of resistance to oppression in Guatemala and the struggle for Indian peasant peoples' rights. In 1982, she took part in the founding of the joint opposition body, The United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). In 1983, she told her life story to Elisabeth Burgos Debray. The resulting book, called in English, I, Rigoberta Menchú, is a gripping human document which attracted considerable international attention. In 1986, Rigoberta Menchú became a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the CUC, and the following year she performed as the narrator in a powerful film called When the Mountains Tremble, about the struggles and sufferings of the Maya people. On at least three occasions, Rigoberta Menchú has returned to Guatemala to plead the cause of the Indian peasants, but death threats have forced her to return into exile.

Over the years, Rigoberta Menchú has become widely known as a leading advocate of Indian rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation, not only in Guatemala but in the Western Hemisphere generally, and her work has earned her several international awards.

From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1992, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1993

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/ Nobel Lectures/The Nobel Prizes. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.

Selected Bibliography

By Rigoberta Menchú Tum

Crossing Borders: An Autobiography. New York: Verso, 1998. (First published in Italian, October 1997, and in Spanish, April 1998.)

I, Rigoberta Menchú. An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Edited and introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. New York and London: Verso, 1984. (Her life story, based on a week of recorded interviews with the editor, a Latin American anthropologist, who revised and arranged the transcripts. The original Spanish title in 1983 was “My Name is Rigoberta Menchú and This is How My Consciousness Was Raised.” Translated into more than twelve languages and received several international awards. The autobiography became a most influential image internationally of the atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army in peasant villages during the civil war. In 1999 a controversy arose over its credibility, see Stoll below.

Other Sources

Calvert, Peter. Guatemala. A Nation in Turmoil. Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1985. (Excellent historical introduction to Guatemala's social and economic problems, with the comparative perspective of other volumes in Westview's series on the Nations of Contemporary Latin America. By a British scholar.)

Hooks, Margaret, ed. Guatemalan Women Speak. Introduction by Rigoberta Menchú Tum. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1991.

Perera, Victor. Unfinished Conquest. The Guatemalan Tragedy. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: Univ. of California Press, 1993. (By a native Guatemalan, whose story of the civil conflict is based on both personal experience and scholarship. With an important bibliographical essay.)

Simon, Jean-Marie. Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987.

Sommer, Doris. “No Secrets: Rigoberta's Guarded Truth.” Women's Studies 20 (1991): 51–72. (Analyses I, Rigoberta as an example of women's testimonial literature and discusses implications of the contrasts between Rigoberta's mother tongue and Spanish, a hierarchical language with gender concepts very different from Quiché.)

Stoll, David. Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999. Stoll's critical examination of Rigoberta's autobiography, based on local interviews and documentary sources, shows that parts of her own and her family history are not correct, even when she speaks as an eyewitness of events described. Stoll approves of her Nobel prize and has no question about the picture of army atrocities which she presents. He says that her purpose in telling her story the way she did “enabled her to focus international condemnation on an institution that deserved it, the Guatemalan army”. As an anthropologist who has studied the Mayan peasants, however, he feels that by inaccurately portraying the events in her own village as representative of what happened in all such indigenous villages in Guatemala, she gives a misleading interpretation of the relationship of the Mayan peasants to the revolutionary movement. Asked about Stoll's allegations, Professor Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, declared that the decision to award the prize to Menchú “was not based exclusively or primarily on the autobiography”, and he dismissed any suggestion that the Committee should consider revoking the prize.

Tedlock, Dennis, transl. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. (The sacred text of the Maya.)

Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Spanish: [riɣoˈβeɾta menˈtʃu]; born 9 January 1959)[1] is a Kiche Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist,[2] and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemalas Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.[3]

She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and the Prince of Asturias Award in 1998, 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 countrys first Indigenous political party, Winaq.[4]

Menchú with her husband and son

Part of a series on

Indigenous rights

Indalo symbol

Rights

Ancestral domainIntellectual propertyLand rightsLanguageTraditional knowledgeTreaty rights

Governmental organizations

AADNCACHPRArctic CouncilBureau of Indian AffairsCouncil of Indigenous PeoplesFUNAIINPINCIPUNPFII

NGOs and political groups

AFNAmazon Conservation TeamAmazon WatchCAPCOICACONAIECultural SurvivalEZLNfPcNIPACCIPCBIWGIANARFONICSurvival InternationalUNPO more ...

Issues

Indigenous decolonizationCivilizing missionManifest destinyLands inhabited by indigenous peoplesDiscovery doctrineIndigenism

Legal representation

ILO 107ILO 169United Nations Declaration

Category

vte

Contents

1Personal life

2Guatemalan activism

2.1Politics

3International activism

4Legacy

4.1Awards and honors

4.2Publications

4.2.1Controversies about her testimony

5See also

6References

7Bibliography

8External links

Personal life

Rigoberta Menchú was born to a poor Indigenous family of Qiche Maya descent in Laj Chimel, a rural area in the north-central Guatemalan province of El Quiché.[5] 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.[6] Menchús 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.[7] Both of her parents regularly attended Catholic church, and her mother remained significantly connected to her Maya spirituality and identity.[7] Menchú considers herself to be the perfect mix of both her parents.[7] She believes in many teachings of the Catholic Church, but her mothers Maya influence also taught Menchú the importance of living in harmony with nature and retaining her Maya culture.[7]

In 1979-80 her brother, Patrocinio, and her mother, Juana Tum Kótoja, were kidnapped, brutally tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan army.[3] 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.[8] 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.[8][9]

In 1984, Menchús other brother, Victor, was shot to death after he surrendered to the Guatemalan army, was threatened by soldiers, and tried to escape.[10]

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 Tzunun ("hummingbird" in Mayan), who had died after being born prematurely in December.[11] They adopted a son, Mash Nahual J'a ("Spirit of Water").[12][13]

She lives with her family in the municipality of San Pedro Jocopilas, Quiché Department, northwest of Guatemalạ City, in the heartland of the Kʼicheʼ people.

Guatemalan activism

From a young age, Menchú was active alongside her father, advocating for the rights of Indigenous farmers through the Committee for Peasant Unity.[14][7] 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.[15] She believes that the roots of Indigenous oppression in Guatemala stem from issues of exploitation and colonial land ownership.[14] Her early activism focused on defending her people from colonial exploitation.[14]

After leaving school, Menchú worked as an activist campaigning against human rights violations committed by the Guatemalan armed forces during the countrys civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996.[10] Many of the human rights violations that occurred during the war targeted Indigenous peoples.[16] Women were targets of physical and sexual violence at the hands of the military.[17]

In 1981, Menchú was exiled and escaped to Mexico where she found refuge in the home of a Catholic bishop in Chiapas.[18] 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.[19] Tens of thousands of people, mostly Mayan Indians, fled to Mexico from 1982 to 1984 at the height of Guatemalas 36-year civil war.[19]

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.[5] Menchú narrated the book in Spanish, although she had only learned to speak it three years prior.[14] 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.[14] 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.[5][20]

Menchú served as the Presidential Goodwill Ambassador for the 1996 Peace Accords in Guatemala.[21] That same year she received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award in Boston.[22]

Part of a series on

Feminism

Symbol venus.svg

History

General variants

Religious variants

Concepts

Outlooks

Theory

By country

Lists and categories

Woman-power emblem.svg Feminism portal

vte

After the Guatemalan Civil War ended, Menchú campaigned to have Guatemalan political and military establishment members tried in Spanish courts.[23] In 1999, she filed a complaint before a court in Spain because prosecutions of civil-war era crimes in Guatemala was practically impossible.[23] 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.[23] On 23 December 2006, Spain called for the extradition from Guatemala of seven former members of Guatemalas government, including Efraín Ríos Montt and Óscar Mejía, on charges of genocide and torture.[24] Spains highest court ruled that cases of genocide committed abroad could be judged in Spain, even if no Spanish citizens were involved.[24] In addition to the deaths of Spanish citizens, the most serious charges include genocide against the Maya people of Guatemala.[24]

Politics

Menchú commemorating the Treaty on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2009

On 12 February 2007, Menchú announced that she would form an Indigenous political party called Encuentro por Guatemala and that she would stand in the 2007 presidential election.[25] She was the first Maya, Indigenous woman to ever run in a Guatemalan election.[26] Had she been elected, she would have become Latin Americas fourth Indigenous president after Mexicos Benito Juárez, Perus Alejandro Toledo and Bolivias Evo Morales.[27] In the 2007 election, Menchú was defeated in the first round, receiving three percent of the vote.[28]

In 2009, Menchú became involved in the newly founded party Winaq.[25] Menchú was a candidate for the 2011 presidential election, but lost in the first round, winning three percent of the vote again.[29] Although Menchú was not elected, Winaq succeeded in becoming the first Indigenous political party of Guatemala.[4]

International activism

In 1996, Menchú was appointed as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in recognition of her activism for the rights of Indigenous people.[30] In this capacity, she acted as a spokesperson for the first International Decade of the Worlds 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.[31][32] In 2015, Menchú met with the general director of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, in order to solidify relations between Guatemala and the organization.[33]

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.[21][34] 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.[34]

In 2006, Menchú was one of the founders of the Nobel Womens Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire.[35] 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.[35] It is the goal of the Nobel Womens Initiative to help strengthen womens rights around the world.[35]

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.[36][37] She travels around the world speaking to youth through PeaceJam conferences.[36] She has also been a member of the Foundation Chiracs honor committee since the foundation was launched in 2008 by former French president Jacques Chirac in order to promote world peace.[38]

Menchú has continued her activism in recent years, according to the Prensa Latina, by continuing to raise awareness for issues including political and economic inequality and climate change.[39] She continues to be a spokesperson for human rights, including the current violations occurring in Venezuela.[40]

Legacy

Awards and honors

The Nobel Peace Prize Medal awarded to Menchú is safeguarded in the Museo del Templo Mayor in Mexico City.

1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy and social justice work for the indigenous peoples of Latin America[41]

1992 UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador position for her advocacy for the indigenous peoples of Guatemala[42]

Menchú became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize at the time, and its first Indigenous recipient.[43]

1996 Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for her authorship and advocacy for the indigenous peoples of Guatemala[44]

1998 Prince of Asturias Prize for improving the condition of women and the communities they serve. (Jointly with 6 other women.)[45]

1999 asteroid 9481 Menchú was named in her honor (M.P.C. 34354)[46]

2010 Order of the Aztec Eagle for services provided for Mexico[47]

2018 Spendlove Prize for her advocacy for minority groups[48]

Publications

I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983)[49]

This book, also titled My Name is Rigoberta Menchú and thats how my Conscience was Born, was dictated by Menchú and transcribed by Elizabeth Burgos[50]

Crossing Borders (1998)[51]

Daughter of the Maya (1999)[52]

The Girl from Chimel (2005) with Dante Liano, illustrated by Domi [53]

The Honey Jar (2006) with Dante Liano, illustrated by Domi[54]

The Secret Legacy (2008) with Dante Liano, illustrated by Domi [55]

Kaslemalil-Vivir. El caminar de Rigoberta Menchú Tum en el Tiempo (2012)[56][57]

Controversies about her testimony

More than a decade after the publication of I, Rigoberta Menchú, anthropologist David Stoll investigated Menchús story and claimed that Menchú changed some elements about her life, family, and village to meet the publicity needs of the guerrilla movement.[58] The controversy caused by Stolls book received widespread coverage in the US press of the time.[59] The New York Times highlighted a few claims in her book contradicted by other sources:[60]

A younger brother whom Ms. Menchu says she saw die of starvation never existed, while a second, whose suffering she says she and her parents were forced to watch as he was being burned alive by army troops, was killed in entirely different circumstances when the family was not present. Contrary to Ms. Menchus assertion in the first page of her book that I never went to school and could not speak Spanish or read or write until shortly before she dictated the text of I, Rigoberta Menchu, she in fact received the equivalent of a middle-school education as a scholarship student at two prestigious private boarding schools operated by Roman Catholic nuns.

Many authors have defended Menchú, and attributed the controversy to different interpretations of the testimonio genre.[61][62][63][64] Menchú herself states, "Id like to stress that its not only my life, its also the testimony of my people."[14] Despite accusations of factual and historical discrepancies, Menchús testimony remains relevant for the ways in which it depicts the life of an Indigenous Guatemalan during the civil war.[63]

The Nobel Committee dismissed calls to revoke Menchús Nobel Prize, rejecting the claims of falsification by Stoll.[65] Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the committee, said Menchús prize was awarded because of her advocacy and social justice work, not because of her testimony.[5][41]

According to Mark Horowitz, William Yaworsky, and Kenneth Kickham, the controversy about Stolls account of Menchu is one of the three most divisive episodes in recent American anthropological history, along with controversies about the truthfulness of Margaret Meads Coming of Age in Samoa and Napoleon Chagnons representation of violence among the Yanomami.[66]

RIGOBERTA MENCHÚ TUM

Guatemala, 1992

Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a Mayan k'iche' activist born in 1959 in Chimel, a small Mayan community in the highlands of Guatemala. As a young girl, Rigoberta traveled alongside her father, Vincente Menchú, from community to community teaching rural campesinos their rights and encouraging them to organize.

In 1960, ethnic and socioeconomic tensions engrained since colonization spurred a brutal civil war against the Mayan people. The military dictatorship, under the leadership of Efraín Ríos Montt, and rich landowners initiated the bloodshed. By the time a peace agreement was signed in 1996, 450 Mayan villages were destroyed, over 200,000 Guatemalans murdered and 1 million were displaced.

Rigoberta and her family mobilized Guatemalans during the 2024 war to denounce government-led mass atrocities. Their activism came at a great cost. At a peaceful protest held at the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City in 1980, Rigoberta's father and thirty-seven other campesino activists were murdered in a fire. Not long after, the Guatemalan army tortured and murdered Rigoberta's brother and mother. At age 21, Rigoberta fled into exile.

Rigoberta spoke publicly about the plight of the Mayan people in Guatemala while in exile. In 1983 she published I, Rigoberta Menchú and catapulted the civil war into global headlines. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples. After receiving the prize Rigoberta returned to Guatemala and established the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation (FRMT) to support Mayan communities and survivors of the genocide as they seek justice. Rigoberta and the Foundation have been key in advocating for justice in several high profile cases in Guatemala, including the trial against former dictator Efrain Ríos Montt in May 2013, the Spanish Embassy massacre in January 2015, and the case of 14 survivors of sexual violence in Sepur Zarco in February 2016.

Rigoberta ran for President of Guatemala in 2007 and 2011 under the banner of WINAQ, the first indigenous-led political party founded by herself. In 2013 the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) appointed her as a Special Investigator within its Multicultural Nation Program. She continues to seek justice for all Mayan people impacted by the genocide.

"Only together can we move forward, so that there is light and hope for all women on the planet."

Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959 to a poor Indian peasant family and raised in the Quiche branch of the Mayan culture. In her early years she helped with the family farm work, either in the northern highlands where her family lived, or on the Pacific coast, where both adults and children went to pick coffee on the big plantations.

Rigoberta Menchú soon became involved in social reform activities through the Catholic Church, and became prominent in the womens rights movement when still only a teenager. Such reform work aroused considerable opposition in influential circles, especially after a guerilla organization established itself in the area. The Menchú family was accused of taking part in guerrilla activities and Rigobertas father, Vicente, was imprisoned and tortured for allegedly having participated in the execution of a local plantation owner. After his release, he joined the recently founded Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC).

In 1979, Rigoberta, too, joined the CUC. That year her brother was arrested, tortured and killed by the army. The following year, her father was killed when security forces in the capital stormed the Spanish Embassy where he and some other peasants were staying. Shortly afterwards, her mother also died after having been arrested, tortured and raped. Rigoberta became increasingly active in the CUC, and taught herself Spanish as well as other Mayan languages than her native Quiche. In 1980, she figured prominently in a strike the CUC organized for better conditions for farm workers on the Pacific coast, and on May 1, 1981, she was active in large demonstrations in the capital. She joined the radical 31st of January Popular Front, in which her contribution chiefly consisted of educating the Indian peasant population in resistance to massive military oppression.

In 1981, Rigoberta Menchú had to go into hiding in Guatemala, and then flee to Mexico. That marked the beginning of a new phase in her life: as the organizer abroad of resistance to oppression in Guatemala and the struggle for Indian peasant peoples rights. In 1982, she took part in the founding of the joint opposition body, The United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). In 1983, she told her life story to Elisabeth Burgos Debray. The resulting book, called in English, I, Rigoberta Menchú, is a gripping human document which attracted considerable international attention. In 1986, Rigoberta Menchú became a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the CUC, and the following year she performed as the narrator in a powerful film called When the Mountains Tremble, about the struggles and sufferings of the Maya people. On at least three occasions, Rigoberta Menchú has returned to Guatemala to plead the cause of the Indian peasants, but death threats have forced he

Born to a family of six in a peasant community steeped in the ancient Maya-Quiche culture, as a teenager Rigoberta Menchú participated in social reform programmes led by the Catholic Church and was active in the womens rights movement in Guatemala. Helping the Indian population to resist massive military oppression, Menchú had to go into hiding, but she went on to win the Nobel Prize for her efforts on behalf of indigenous people.

She fled Guatemala in 1981, after various members of her family were tortured and assassinated by the armed forces, and she found refuge in the home of a Catholic bishop in Chiapas, across the border in Mexico. Like her father, Menchú had become increasingly involved in the Committee for Peasants Unity, a group protesting the unequal patterns of land ownership in Guatemala. While in exile, she continued to organise resistance to oppression in Guatemala and the struggle for Indian 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 Guatemalas 36-year civil war.

When Menchú accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, it was in the name of all indigenous people. She used the prize money to fund The Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation, which carries out projects in education, health care, community development and human rights. In July 1992, she returned to Guatemala but had to leave again after three attempts on her life.

Undeterred, Menchú moved the headquarters of the organisation back to Guatemala in 1994, feeling the need for a more grassroots-oriented approach. The foundation helped in the repatriation of many refugees. Today it places emphasis on civic education to encourage citizens participation, such as a campaign in 1994-95 to encourage women and indigenous people to vote.

An advocate of Indian rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation, Menchú taught herself not only Spanish but also other Mayan languages. Her belief in multilingual and multiethnic solutions means that her foundation disapproves of the creation of a ministry for the indigenous peoples of Guatemala. She believes there is a risk of marginalisation, that it would become, in her own words, "a tiny bureaucratic office for Maya peoples".

In 1993, she was nominated by the United Nations as Goodwill Ambassador for the International Year of the Indigenous Peoples. Currently she presides over the Indigenous Initiative for Peace. Her autobiography, "I, Rigoberta Menchú, An Indian Woman in Guatemala", was published in 1982.

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 equal part alongside her brothers in the struggle for justice, Rigoberta often faced male ridicule. Her mother gave her advice. “Analyze your position as a woman and demand a share,” she told her. “A child is only given food when he demands it.”

The government's response to peasant organization was tremendous repression. The army occupied and even bombed Indian villages, believing that people who were fighting for their land were lending support to the rebels. The villagers fled to the mountains, without blankets or clothes. Rigoberta organized the women, getting them to build encampments and learn how to defend themselves. In this period, many who survived left their traditional land, becoming refugees.

Political leaders were a special target of the military governments who periodically killed them in public punishments as examples to others. Because of such demonstrations, Rigoberta decided not to marry nor have children, something almost unheard of in her culture. She could not endure it if something horrible happened to one of her children.

One of Rigoberta's brothers, Petrocinio, was kidnapped and killed by the army. No one knows for sure how, but family members say that his body was dumped, along with those of several others, in a town square. Soon after her brother's death, Rigoberta's father was killed, her mother three months later. Another brother was also killed. The horror of these events reinforced Rigoberta's will to fight. But with death threats against her life, she went into hiding. In 1981 she had to flee the country; she remained in exile for 10 years.

Outside Guatemala, Rigoberta's opposition to repression took a new turn. She began speaking about the plight of her people at the United Nations as well as throughout the Americas. The Guatemalan authorities tried to stop her, calling her a Communist and leftist guerrilla. Several attempts were made on her life. With the publication of her autobiography, I, Rigoberta Menchú, in 1983, and its translation into more than 20 languages, she reached an even greater audience. Rigoberta's words became her most effective weapon in the fight for survival of her people.

In her work during this time, Rigoberta helped to define the concept of “indigenous peoples,” differentiating it from the concept of ethnic or religious minorities. She says that indigenous peoples are original peoples, whose philosophies of life are rooted in their histories. They need to live communally, and recognize “Mother Earth ... (as) the source, the root, the origin of culture and existence. Human beings need the earth, and the earth needs human beings.” Although she distinguishes between indigenous peoples and other minorities, Rigoberta sees their struggle as one, saying that “women, indigenous peoples and minorities must join hands and fight for their common interests.”

In 1992, at the young age of 33, Rigoberta Menchú won the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Latin American woman and Indian to do so. Rigoberta acknowledged the prize as an homage to the struggles of indigenous people everywhere, and of indigenous women in particular. “I consider this prize, not as an award to me personally, but rather as one of the greatest conquests in the struggle for peace, for human rights and for the rights of the indigenous people who, along all these 500 years, have been split, fragmented, as well as the victims of genocide, repression and discrimination.”

Rigoberta also saw the prize as an instrument with which to fight for peace and justice. The only way to “build up a real democracy” was to seek justice for those who suffer economic, social and cultural disparities. Rigoberta went on to explain, “It is not enough to speak out against war; the causes of war must be eliminated. That is, we must end unjust distribution of wealth. I blame the first world for having taken our riches for so many years.”

Rigoberta used the money she was granted to set up the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation to aid indigenous people. Among its goals are the defense and promotion of human rights. It speaks out against continuing human rights abuses in Guatemala and elsewhere. It has played a major role in creating summits of indigenous leaders, trying to seek peaceful solutions to conflicts. After the signing of Guatemala's peace agreement, the foundation helped refugees return, finding them land and training them for jobs. Many projects are aimed at indigenous women, whom Rigoberta calls “the most exploited of the exploited ones...but still they are the ones that produce life and riches.”

As a result of her efforts, the United Nations declared 1993 the International Year for Indigenous Populations. In 1996 Rigoberta was appointed Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO. At conferences and campuses throughout the world, a small brown figure appears, radiant in her traditional clothes. It is Rigoberta Menchú, still stirring the consciousness and activism of the world.

Time Line: Guatemala

1960 A failed revolt by junior military officers against one of Guatemala's military dictatorships leads to armed insurrection against the government. Extreme right-wing groups of self-appointed vigilantes kidnap and torture anyone suspected of involvement in leftist activities.

1970s Grassroots groups, including peasant organizations, unions, the churches, intellectuals and others, begin to mount serious challenges for power. In attempts to crush the rebellion, the dictatorships commit great atrocities. Efraín R9íos Montt, a demagogic, right-wing general, is the country's president during its most violent periods. Forms of repression include disappearances and mass killings.

1978–83 The military attacks Indian villages, destroying over 400 and killing hundreds of thousands of people. Thousands of children are orphaned, one million people uprooted to become refugees; many flee to southern Mexico to escape systematic military repression.

1982 The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), an umbrella organization made up of four insurgency movements, is formed to lead the struggle against the government.

1985 An election relatively free of fraud is accomplished. Rounds of talks between URNG, the government and the army begin.

1992 Rigoberta Menchú wins Nobel Peace Prize.

1993 Ramiro De Leon Carpio, a popular human rights activist, moves the process forward, brokered now by the United Nations.

1996 The Government of Guatemala and representatives of URNG sign the last of a number of accords which bring to a close the 36-year-long internal conflict, the longest in Latin America. The agreements include the resettlement and economic integration of displaced people into Guatemalan society, the creation of a human rights commission, recognition of the country's cultural diversity, and the right of indigenous people to live by their own cultural norms.

Today Thousands of refugees have returned and the army is supposed to be downsizing. Unresolved is the reality that in Guatemala more than half the population are descendants of Mayan Indians, most of whom live in poverty, two-thirds in extreme poverty. The wealthiest 10% of Guatemalans receive almost one-half of all the nation's income; the top 20% receives two-thirds of all income. Only 4.28% of all landholders hold 61.8% of the arable land. Most rural households are landless, and many highlands peasants must migrate each year to the large southern coastal plantations to pick export crops. Here they work in subhuman conditions. Also, vigilante acts by right-wing military groups still occur.

Feb. 12 was a good day to be indigenous in Guatemala as the new government performed a pair of acts intended to symbolize a radical change in policy and behavior toward the countrys majority, but historically beleaguered, population.

President Oscar Berger started things off by turning over the Casa Crema, the building that for 40 years has served as the armys headquarters, to the Academia de Lenguas Mayas. The Academia will have the use of the vast property for 25 years, from where it is to further its work in the recovery, promotion, and diffusion of the Mayan languages.

Berger also installed Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu as goodwill ambassador, charged with seeing that the provisions of the stalled December 1996 Peace Accords are complied with. After seven years of procrastination, Guatemala has come under international scrutiny for shamelessly turning its back on its obligations under that agreement (see NotiCen, 2002-02-07). The most recent report of the Mision de Verificacion de las Naciones Unidas para Guatemala (Minugua) announced to the world, "The advances in the application [of the accords] were below expectations and were not sufficient to give new thrust to a peace process that has stagnated in the last years."

The Casa Crema handover was not a Berger initiative. It was a parting gesture of ex-President Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004), under whom indigenous people endured the irony of a ruling party, the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG), headed by Gen. Efrain Rios Montt. Rios was president from 1982 to 1983 following a coup, and thousands of indigenous were massacred during that time.

At the ceremony, Menchu highlighted the importance of the handover of the Casa Crema, stressing that the facility "should be the symbol of the science and technology to which the Mayan people have a right. The building will also house Channel 5, which will be called Maya TV and which will broadcast Mayan-themed programming.

Menchus collaboration with this government represents a radical departure with her traditional role as sharp critic of the state. Wrapped in the protective cloak of the Nobel Peace Prize, she has been able to take past regimes to task for discrimination against indigenous people, for human rights violations against them, and for the "exploitation of the rich against the poor" by the business sector. Now she is part of the governmental apparatus and an ally of the business interests that brought Berger to power. In addition to her title of goodwill ambassador, she will also serve on a commission of "notable citizens" to oversee the legislature.

Right or left?

"The turn Rigoberta has taken has been 90 degrees," said Rosalina Tuyuc, an indigenous activist easily the equal of Menchu in accomplishment, in personal history, and in the hearts of her compatriots (see NotiCen, 1999-01-28). Tuyuc is the long-time director of the Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala (Conavigua), a now powerful organization of women widowed by the 36-year internal war. Tuyuc seemed shocked at Menchus new affiliations. "A couple of weeks ago she had assured me that she was not going to participate in the government, but now I find out that she is. We dont know what her reasons were, but the truth is that I dont believe, no matter what she does, that she will change the conditions of poverty, exclusion, and racism toward the indigenous people."

Menchu disagreed. "Its time to participate," she said, "and I believe that we must take advantage of the opportunity we have now of representing the state to get support from the international community for the fulfillment of the peace accords."

Tuyuc clearly thought Menchu was being suckered. "It is evident that what the government wants is a person like her who has credibility at the international level. But I believe that beyond what she could gain to change the conditions of life for the indigenous, the government will gain far more," she argued. An old friend of Menchus, Tuyuc still was at a loss to explain how the Nobel laureate could have accepted a place at the table with the "business elite and a racist [president] who has disrespected the indigenous people."

Berger needs her

For Berger, the arrangement with Menchu was not such a stretch. He is under the gun to get the accords back on track, and besides, he has said, "she has negotiated with presidents of other countries who are committed to the fight against hunger." He said this on Feb. 2, after meeting with her. One of her assignments will be a Program against Hunger patterned after the one that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched in Brazil (see NotiSur, 2003-01-10).

Things have gone badly for the indigenous since the end of the genocidal war against them. The World Bank has reported that Guatemala is the third-poorest country in Latin America, surpassed only by Haiti and Bolivia, and most of that poverty is borne by the indigenous. Minugua has called the levels of racial discrimination similar to those of South Africa under Apartheid.

Menchu had told more than just Tuyuc that she would not serve in the government. She also told Berger that she would not accept his invitation to serve in his Cabinet, but even then she characterized his administration as a "symbol of hope, a good omen for Guatemala." On Jan. 14, Bergers inauguration day, she said she would "speak today with the president to come up with an agenda and find the best way for me to contribute directly as a promoter of the peace accords."

If Menchu has embraced a strategy of working within the system in the public sector, she appears to have done no less in the private sector. Last November she opened a chain of drugstores, Farmacias Similares, to sell generic drugs at low prices and to offer general medical consultation to the poor. The pharmacies are patterned after a similar project in Mexico that started about five years ago.

Now, she said, "We want to establish 50 pharmacies [in 2004] throughout the country, and then start the project in Ecuador, a country with an ample indigenous population and where the first steps in this direction have already been taken." She said she expects that 200 Guatemalan doctors recently graduated from medical schools in Cuba will join the project to bring health care to the entire population, principally those with scarce resources.

Hundreds of Guatemalans have received scholarships since 1998 to study medicine in Cuba. Menchu will need the cooperation of the government to get the project going on a larger scale and to expand the availability of generic drugs, now numbering about 200 that her stores can sell. She said she would be seeking authorizations.

Menchu was severely criticized in Mexico last year for supporting a bill in the Mexican Senate to reduce patent protections on HIV and cancer drugs from 20 to 10 years. The argument against her was that she was using her fame and influence to benefit Farmacias Similares in Mexico, of which she is listed as a director. Parenthetically, Menchu is not a foreign director; she is a naturalized Mexican, having received citizenship in March 1998.

Gustavo Meono, director of the Fundacion Rigoberta Menchu, a nonprofit organization, said that the pharmacies are a humanitarian service whose profits will go directly to the foundation to fund human rights projects. He said foundation funds come mainly from international donations but self-sustaining projects like this are needed to guarantee their continued existence.

Menchu called the criticism racist and against what she considers a noble cause. Last year she defended the pharmacy and clinic projects by pointing out that they benefit thousands of poor families. Denying any contradiction between her Nobel status and this business, she said that ex-President Nelson Mandela of South Africa has done the same kind of thing.

Maya Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu will run for Guatemalas presidency this year in an attempt to become Latin Americas second indigenous head of state that will pitch her against a civil-war era army foe.

Menchu, a defender of victims of Guatemalas bloody 1960-1996 civil war from the Maya ethnic group, will run in the Sept. 9 election, although she has not decided for which party, spokeswoman Otilia Lux de Coti told reporters on Friday.

If Menchu wins, she will follow the footsteps of Evo Morales who last year became Bolivias first indigenous president. Latin Americas native population suffers discrimination despite being a majority in several countries.

The presidential bid is sure to open up old wounds. The civil war between right-wing governments and leftist insurgents claimed 200,000 lives, most of them Maya farmers killed by soldiers and paramilitaries.

Menchu is deciding whether to run for the newly formed, left-of-center Together for Guatemala coalition or the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit (URNG), the peacetime party launched by the former rebel group of the same name.

Gen. Otto Perez Molina, an army commander at the height of the war in the Quiche region where Menchu was born and which was hit hardest by army and paramilitary massacres, is running for president with the Patriotic Party.

Menchus brother and mother were tortured and killed during the Cold War-era conflict, which ended with peace accords a decade ago but left deep scars among the Maya inhabitants of Guatemalas dirt-poor countryside.

The Nobel Prize (/ˈnoʊbɛl/ NOH-bel; Swedish: Nobelpriset [nʊˈbɛ̂lːˌpriːsɛt]; Norwegian: Nobelprisen [nʊˈbɛ̀lːpriːsn̩]) is not a single prize but five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobels will of 1895, are awarded to ”those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

Nobel Prizes are awarded in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace (Nobel characterized the Peace Prize as "to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses").[1] In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (Swedens central bank) established the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize.[1][2][3] Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards available in their respective fields.[4][5]

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist most famously known for the invention of dynamite. He died in 1896. In his will, he bequeathed all of his "remaining realisable assets" to be used to establish five prizes which became known as "Nobel Prizes." Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901.[1]

The prize ceremonies take place annually. Each recipient (known as a "laureate") receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a monetary award. In 2020, the Nobel Prize monetary award is 10,000,000 SEK, or US$1,145,000, or €968,000, or £880,000.[6] A prize may not be shared among more than three individuals, although the Nobel Peace Prize can be awarded to organizations of more than three people.[7] Although Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, if a person is awarded a prize and dies before receiving it, the prize is presented.[8]

The Nobel Prizes, beginning in 1901, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, beginning in 1969, have been awarded 603 times to 962 people and 25 organizations.[1] Four individuals have received more than one Nobel Prize.[9]

Contents

1History

1.1Nobel Foundation

1.1.1Formation of Foundation

1.1.2Foundation capital and cost

1.2Inaugural Nobel prizes

1.3Second World War

1.4Prize in Economic Sciences

2Award process

2.1Nominations

2.2Selection

2.3Posthumous nominations

2.4Recognition time lag

3Award ceremonies

3.1Nobel Banquet

3.2Nobel lecture

4Prizes

4.1Medals

4.2Diplomas

4.3Award money

5Controversies and criticisms

5.1Controversial recipients

5.2Overlooked achievements

5.3Emphasis on discoveries over inventions

5.4Gender disparity

6Facts

7Specially distinguished laureates

7.1Multiple laureates

7.2Family laureates

8Refusals and constraints

9Cultural impact

10See also

11References

11.1Citations

11.2Sources

11.2.1Books

12Further reading

13External links

History

A black and white photo of a bearded man in his fifties sitting in a chair.

Alfred Nobel had the unpleasant surprise of reading his own obituary, which was titled The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper.

Alfred Nobel (About this soundlisten (help·info)) was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a family of engineers.[10] He was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill, which he made into a major armaments manufacturer. Nobel also invented ballistite. This invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite. Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth coming from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous.[11]

In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper. It was Alfreds brother Ludvig who had died; the obituary was eight years premature. The article disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered. This inspired him to change his will.[12] On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, from a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 63 years old.[13]

Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime. He composed the last over a year before he died, signing it at the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895.[14][15] To widespread astonishment, Nobels last will specified that his fortune be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.[16] Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million SEK (c. US$186 million, €150 million in 2008), to establish the five Nobel Prizes.[17][18] Owing to skepticism surrounding the will, it was not approved by the Storting in Norway until 26 April 1897.[19] The executors of the will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of the fortune and to organise the awarding of prizes.[20]

Nobels instructions named a Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize, the members of whom were appointed shortly after the will was approved in April 1897. Soon thereafter, the other prize-awarding organizations were designated. These were Karolinska Institute on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June.[21] The Nobel Foundation reached an agreement on guidelines for how the prizes should be awarded; and, in 1900, the Nobel Foundations newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II.[16] In 1905, the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved.

Nobel Foundation

Formation of Foundation

Main article: Nobel Foundation

A paper with stylish handwriting on it with the title "Testament"

Alfred Nobels will stated that 94% of his total assets should be used to establish the Nobel Prizes.

According to his will and testament read in Stockholm on 30 December 1896, a foundation established by Alfred Nobel would reward those who serve humanity. The Nobel Prize was funded by Alfred Nobels personal fortune. According to the official sources, Alfred Nobel bequeathed 94% of his fortune to the Nobel Foundation that now forms the economic base of the Nobel Prize.[citation needed]

The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organization on 29 June 1900. Its function is to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes.[22] In accordance with Nobels will, the primary task of the Foundation is to manage the fortune Nobel left. Robert and Ludvig Nobel were involved in the oil business in Azerbaijan, and according to Swedish historian E. Bargengren, who accessed the Nobel family archive, it was this "decision to allow withdrawal of Alfreds money from Baku that became the decisive factor that enabled the Nobel Prizes to be established".[23] Another important task of the Nobel Foundation is to market the prizes internationally and to oversee informal administration related to the prizes. The Foundation is not involved in the process of selecting the Nobel laureates.[24][25] In many ways, the Nobel Foundation is similar to an investment company, in that it invests Nobels money to create a solid funding base for the prizes and the administrative activities. The Nobel Foundation is exempt from all taxes in Sweden (since 1946) and from investment taxes in the United States (since 1953).[26] Since the 1980s, the Foundations investments have become more profitable and as of 31 December 2007, the assets controlled by the Nobel Foundation amounted to 3.628 billion Swedish kronor (c. US$560 million).[27]

According to the statutes, the Foundation consists of a board of five Swedish or Norwegian citizens, with its seat in Stockholm. The Chairman of the Board is appointed by the Swedish King in Council, with the other four members appointed by the trustees of the prize-awarding institutions. An Executive Director is chosen from among the board members, a Deputy Director is appointed by the King in Council, and two deputies are appointed by the trustees. However, since 1995, all the members of the board have been chosen by the trustees, and the Executive Director and the Deputy Director appointed by the board itself. As well as the board, the Nobel Foundation is made up of the prize-awarding institutions (the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute, the Swedish Academy, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee), the trustees of these institutions, and auditors.[27]

Foundation capital and cost

The capital of the Nobel Foundation today is invested 50% in shares, 20% bonds and 30% other investments (e.g. hedge funds or real estate). The distribution can vary by 10 percent.[28] At the beginning of 2008, 64% of the funds were invested mainly in American and European stocks, 20% in bonds, plus 12% in real estate and hedge funds.[29]

In 2011, the total annual cost was approximately 120 million krona, with 50 million krona as the prize money. Further costs to pay institutions and persons engaged in giving the prizes were 27.4 million krona. The events during the Nobel week in Stockholm and Oslo cost 20.2 million krona. The administration, Nobel symposium, and similar items had costs of 22.4 million krona. The cost of the Economic Sciences prize of 16.5 Million krona is paid by the Sveriges Riksbank.[28]

Inaugural Nobel prizes

A black and white photo of a bearded man in his fifties sitting in a chair.

Wilhelm Röntgen received the first Physics Prize for his discovery of X-rays.

Once the Nobel Foundation and its guidelines were in place, the Nobel Committees began collecting nominations for the inaugural prizes. Subsequently, they sent a list of preliminary candidates to the prize-awarding institutions.

The Nobel Committees Physics Prize shortlist cited Wilhelm Röntgens discover.