Jesús Tecú Osorio (born 1971 in Río Negro,

Baja Verapaz Baja Verapaz () is a department in Guatemala. The capital is Salamá. Baja Verapaz contains the Mario Dary Biotope Preserve, preserving the native flora and fauna of the region, especially the endangered national bird of Guatemala, the Resplen ...

) is a Guatemalan

social activist Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in Social change, social, Political campaign, political, economic or Natural environment, environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes i ...

, worker for

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

, and advocate for the Achi Maya. In 1982, much of the population of Río Negro was murdered; Tecú survived, but witnessed the deaths of most of his immediate family members. He spent two years as a household slave to one of the perpetrators before being remanded into the custody of his older sister, who had also survived the massacres. In 1993, Tecú began legal proceedings to have the

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...

of Río Negro exhumed; this led directly to the

prosecution A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the Civil law (legal system), civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the ...

of three of the men responsible for the massacre and, in 1998, to their being sentenced to death for crimes against humanity (in 1999, their sentences were commuted to 60 years in prison). As of 2006, this is the only Guatemalan trial for crimes against humanity committed during the civil war for which the perpetrators have been convicted. Tecú has organized four separate charitable organizations, including a legal aid clinic, for the Achi Maya people. He has written his memoirs – these have been translated into English as ''The Massacres of Rio Negro'' – and gone on speaking tours throughout Canada, Europe, and the USA. In 1996, Tecú won the

Reebok Human Rights Award The Reebok Human Rights Award honoured activists under the age of thirty who fought for human rights through non-violent means. Each year, the award was given to four or five individuals. Each received a grant of US $50,000 that was to be used to ...

; he used the

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

25,000 prize money to start the New Hope Foundation which provided scholarships and later expanded into a school called the New Hope Community Bilingual Institute in

Rabinal Rabinal is a small town, with a population of 15,157 (2018 census),Citypopulation.de
Population of cities & to ...

. In 2007, he was awarded an honorary law degree from

Saint Francis Xavier University St. Francis Xavier University is a public undergraduate liberal arts university located in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is a member of the Maple League, a group of primarily undergraduate universities in Eastern Canada. History St. Franc ...

. In 2010, Tecu was awarded the Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty by

Human Rights First Human Rights First (formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights) is a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3), international human rights organization based in New York City and Washington, D.C. In 2004, Human Rights First started its " ...

.Guatemalan Genocide Survivor Wins Roger Baldwin Award
at

; published March 25, 2010; retrieved August 15, 2014

References

External links

Reebok's profile of Jesús Tecú Osorio
(via

archive.org The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

)
Fundación Nueva Esperanza/ New Hope Foundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tecu Osorio, Jesus 1971 births Living people People from Baja Verapaz Department Guatemalan human rights activists Guatemalan Maya people Indigenous activists of the Americas

See also

References

External links