Rigoberta Menchú, The First Guatemalan Woman to win the Nobel Prize

Rigoberta Menchú

From Guatemala, was born on January 9, 1959. Being very young, Rigoberta got involved in social reform activities and participated in the women’s rights movement.

The Menchu family was accused of participating in Guatemalan guerrilla activities, which resulted in Rigoberta losing several members of her family upon arrest, including her parents and brother.

With 20 years of age, she joins the Union Campesina Committee (CUC) (which her father founded), and through which a strike of agricultural workers would be coordinated in 1980, demanding better conditions for farm workers.

In1981, she left her country and took refuge in Mexico. In 1983, she told her life to Elisabeth Burgos Debray and resulted a book called I, Rigoberta Menchú.

In 1992, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in recognition of her struggle for social justice and ethnocultural reconciliation based on respect for indigenous rights

Rigoberta took important roles in this world, among many others, is a tireless activist, extraordinary researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), creator of the foundation that bears her name and author of several books.

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References:

López Patricia (October 5, 2017) Los derechos de indigenas, su horizonte. Rigoberta Menchu, 25 años de lucha. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Retrieved on February 18, 2019 from: http://www.gaceta.unam.mx/20171005/rigoberta-menchu-25-anos-de-lucha/

The Nobel Prize. Rigoberta Menchú Tum – Biographical. Nobel Media AB. Retrieved on February 18, 2019 from: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1992/tum/lecture/