Menchú, Rigoberta

▪ Guatemalan activist

born Jan. 9, 1959, Guatemala

      Guatemalan Indian-rights activist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992.

      Menchú, of the Quiché Maya group, lost her family during Guatemala's civil war. Her father, a leader of a peasant organization opposed to Guatemala's military government, died in a fire while protesting human-rights abuses by the military. Her younger brother was kidnapped, tortured, and killed by a military death squad in 1979, and her mother was kidnapped, raped, mutilated, and murdered by soldiers the following year. Menchú fled to Mexico in 1981 and was cared for there by members of a liberal Roman Catholic group. She soon joined international efforts to make the Guatemalan government cease its brutal counterinsurgency campaigns against Indian peasants, becoming a skilled public speaker and organizer in the course of her efforts.

      Menchú gained international prominence in 1983 with her widely translated book I, Rigoberta Menchú, in which she tells the story of her impoverished youth and recounts in horrifying detail the torture-murders of her brother and mother. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her continuing efforts to achieve social justice and mutual reconciliation in Guatemala. In the late 1990s her autobiography became the centre of controversy after its veracity was questioned, most notably by David Stoll in Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (1999). Despite alleged inaccuracies in her story, Menchú continued to earn praise for bringing international attention to the situation in Guatemala. In 2004 she accepted President Óscar Berger's offer to help implement the country's peace accords. She ran unsuccessfully for president of Guatemala in 2007 as a candidate of the Encounter for Guatemala party.

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