Rigoberta Menchú

📍Uspantan, Quiche, Guatemala

“Rigoberta Menchú Tum was born in January 1959 in Laj Chimel, a village near Uspantán in the Quiché highlands of Guatemala, into a K'iche' Maya family of farmers. As a child she travelled with her family to work on coffee and cotton plantations on the Pacific coast, in harsh conditions. Her father, Vicente Menchú, was a community leader who campaigned for indigenous land rights. During Guatemala's civil war, her father was killed in 1980 when the security forces set fire to the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City, which he and other activists had occupied in protest, and her mother and a brother were also killed by the army. In 1981 she fled to Mexico. Her testimony, published in 1983 as I, Rigoberta Menchú, drew international attention to the violence against Guatemala's Maya people, and in 1992 she received the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Sources: Menchú, R. I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983, translated Ann Wright), Verso; Stoll, D. Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (1999), Westview Press