Rigoberta Menchú Tum (; born 9 January 1959) is a
K'iche' Guatemalan
human rights activist,
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the
Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting
Indigenous rights internationally.
In 1992 she received the
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...
, became an
UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador
UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador is an official postnominal honorific title, title of authority, legal status and job description assigned to those goodwill ambassadors and advocates who are designated by the United Nations. UNESCO goodwill ambas ...
, and received the
Prince of Asturias Award
The Princess of Asturias Awards (, ), formerly the Prince of Asturias Awards from 1981 to 2014 (), are a series of annual prizes awarded in Spain by the Princess of Asturias Foundation (previously the Prince of Asturias Foundation) to individuals ...
in 1998. Menchú is also the subject of the testimonial biography ''I, Rigoberta Menchú'' (1983) author of the autobiographical work, ''Crossing Borders'' (1998), and is subject interest among other works. Menchú founded the country's first indigenous political party,
Winaq,
and ran for
president of Guatemala
The president of Guatemala (), officially titled President of the Republic of Guatemala (), is the head of state and head of government of Guatemala, elected to a single four-year term. The position of President was created in 1839.
Selectio ...
in 2007 and 2011 as its candidate.
Personal life
Rigoberta Menchú was born to a poor Indigenous family of K'iche' Maya descent in
Laj Chimel, a rural area in the north-central Guatemalan province of
El Quiché.
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
In a protracted conflict during the Spanish colonization of the Americas, Spanish colonisers gradually incorporated the territory that became the modern country of Guatemala into the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain. Before the conquest, this te ...
. Menchú's mother began her career as a
midwife
A midwife (: midwives) is a health professional who cares for mothers and Infant, newborns around childbirth, a specialisation known as midwifery.
The education and training for a midwife concentrates extensively on the care of women throughou ...
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.
Both of her parents regularly attended Catholic church, but her mother remained connected to her
Maya spirituality and identity.
She believes in many teachings of the Catholic Church, but her mother's Maya influence also taught Menchú the importance of living in harmony with nature and retaining her Maya culture.
Menchú considers herself to be the perfect mix of both her parents.
In 1979–80, Menchú's brother, Patrocinio, and mother, Juana Tum Kótoja, were kidnapped, brutally tortured and murdered by the
Guatemalan Army.
Her father, Vicente Menchú Perez, died in the 1980
Burning of the Spanish Embassy
The Burning of the Spanish Embassy (sometimes called the Spanish Embassy Massacre or the Spanish Embassy Fire) refers to the occupation of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on January 31, 1980, by indigenous peasants of the Commi ...
, which occurred after urban guerrillas took hostages and were attacked by government security forces.
In January 2015, Pedro García Arredondo, a former police commander of the Guatemalan Army who later served as the chief of the now defunct
National Police (Policía Nacional, PN),
was convicted of attempted murder and crimes against humanity for his role in the embassy attack;
Arrendondo was also previously convicted in 2012 of ordering the enforced disappearance of agronomy student Édgar Enrique Sáenz Calito during the country's long-running internal armed conflict.
In 1984, Menchú's other brother, Victor, was shot to death after he surrendered to the Guatemalan Army, was threatened by soldiers, and tried to escape.
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 Tz'unun ("hummingbird" in K’iche’ Maya), who had died after being born prematurely in December. They adopted a son, Mash Nahual Ja' ("Spirit of Water").
Menchú featured prominently in the 1983 documentary ''
When the Mountains Tremble'', directed by Newton Thomas Sigel and
Pamela Yates.
She lives with her family in the municipality of
San Pedro Jocopilas,
Quiché Department
Quiché () is a department of Guatemala. It is in the heartland of the Kʼicheʼ (Quiché) people, one of the Maya peoples, to the north-west of Guatemala City. The capital is Santa Cruz del Quiché. The word Kʼicheʼ comes from the languag ...
, northwest of Guatemala City, in the heartland of the Kʼicheʼ people.
Connections to the Guatemalan civil war
Following military coups that started with the CIA-orchestrated removal of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, the Cuban revolution of 1959, and the Che Guevara's commitment to create as many Vietnams as he could, the U.S. moved to condone and often support authoritarian rule in the name of national security.
The
Guatemalan Civil War lasted from 1962 to 1996 and was provoked by social, economic, and political inequality. An estimated 250,000 people were assassinated, including 50,000 ''desaparecidos,'' and hundreds of thousands of displaced individuals, either at the hands of the armed forces or the militarized civilians knows as ''
Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil'' (Civil Defense Patrols).
This made people nervous since arming civilians, let alone Indians, was not a very common occurrence in Guatemala and was, in fact, illegal according to the country's constitution.
Massacres of Indian men, women, and children in Guatemala began in May 1978, culminating in 1982.
By 1981 the US
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
(CIA) was reporting on the indiscriminate killing of civilians in rural areas, government soldiers being "forced to fire at anything that moved".
In 1982 the CIA reported several villages being burned to the ground while Guatemalan commanding officers were "expected to give no quarter to combats and non-combats alike".
These inequalities were most impactful on marginalized populations, especially indigenous communities. To maintain order, the state implemented forceful measures that often, violated human rights. This ultimately led to mass genocide, disappearances, and displacement of indigenous populations. 83% of victims were later identified as Mayan, indicating that a majority of human rights violated were those of the Indigenous communities of Guatemala. These events had a deep impact on Menchú and her family and were the root cause of her activism in Indigenous rights.
Guatemalan activism
From a young age, Menchú was active alongside her father. Together they advocated for the rights of Indigenous farmers through the
Committee for Peasant Unity.
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. Menchú believes that the roots of Indigenous oppression in Guatemala stem from issues of exploitation and colonial land ownership, and in
her early activism focused on defending her people from colonial exploitation.
After leaving school, Menchú worked as an activist campaigning against
human rights
Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
violations committed by the Guatemalan Army during the country's
civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
, which lasted from 1960 to 1996.
Many of the human rights violations that occurred during the war targeted Indigenous peoples. Women were targets of physical and sexual violence at the hands of the military.
In 1981, Menchú was exiled and escaped to Mexico where she found refuge in the home of a Catholic bishop in Chiapas. 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.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly indigenous Maya people, fled to Mexico from 1982 to 1984 at the height of Guatemala's 36-year civil war.
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. The book was translated into five other languages including English and French.
Menchú's work 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.
Menchú served as the Presidential Goodwill Ambassador for the 1996 Peace Accords in Guatemala.
[GUATEMALA: RIGOBERTA MENCHU STEPS BEYOND TRADITION TO MOVE INDIGENOUS AGENDA](_blank)
thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved 27 November 2017. That same year she received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award in Boston.
After the
Guatemalan Civil War ended, Menchú campaigned to have Guatemalan political and military establishment members tried in Spanish courts.
In 1999, she filed a complaint before a court in Spain because prosecutions of civil-war era crimes in Guatemala was practically impossible.
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.
On 23 December 2006, Spain called for the
extradition
In an extradition, one Jurisdiction (area), jurisdiction delivers a person Suspect, accused or Conviction, convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, into the custody of the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforc ...
from Guatemala of seven former members of Guatemala's government, including
Efraín Ríos Montt
José Efraín Ríos Montt (; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer, politician, and dictator who served as ''de facto'' President of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the blo ...
and
Óscar Mejía, on charges of
genocide
Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
and
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...
.
Spain's highest court ruled that cases of genocide committed abroad could be judged in Spain, even if no Spanish citizens were involved.
In addition to the deaths of Spanish citizens, the most serious charges include genocide against the
Maya people
Maya () are an ethnolinguistic group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people who lived w ...
of Guatemala.
Politics

In 2005, Menchú joined the Guatemalan federal government as
goodwill ambassador for the
National Peace Accords.
Menchú faced opposition and discrimination. In April 2005, five Guatemalan politicians would be convicted for hurling racial epithets at Menchú. Court rulings would also uphold the right to wear indigenous dresses and practice Mayan spirituality.
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.
She was the first Maya, Indigenous woman to ever run in a Guatemalan election. In the 2007 election, Menchú was defeated in the first round, receiving three percent of the vote.
In 2009, Menchú became involved in the newly founded party
Winaq.
Menchú was a candidate for the
2011 presidential election, but lost in the first round, winning three percent of the vote again. Although Menchú was not elected,
Winaq succeeded in becoming the first Indigenous political party of Guatemala.
International activism

At the peak of state counterinsurgency, the
Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal: Session on Guatemala (PPT-SG), held in Madrid in 1983, was the first of its kind for Central America.
The tribunal looked at evidence going back to the CIA-backed coup that ousted democratically elected president
Jacobo Árbenz in 1954; although its focus was on the massacres,
scorched earth
A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy of destroying everything that allows an enemy military force to be able to fight a war, including the deprivation and destruction of water, food, humans, animals, plants and any kind of tools and i ...
policies, forced disappearances, torture, and killings taking place at the time under General
Efraín Ríos Montt
José Efraín Ríos Montt (; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer, politician, and dictator who served as ''de facto'' President of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the blo ...
.
Menchú was included in the five-day tribunal, that included twenty-two testifiers, and shared how her mother was used as bait as an effort to trap her children:
Almost thirty years later, the First Tribunal of Consciousness Against Sexual Violence Toward Women took place in Guatemala City in 2010.
The 1983 PPT-SG did not acknowledge the rape of women, particularly Maya women, during the armed conflict testifiers spoke; but it would take another twenty-seven years for sexual violence to be fully recognized in an ethical tribunal, and thirty-three years for it to be legally condemned in 2016 in the
Sepur Zarco case.
The trial and conviction of Jose Efrain Rios Montt in Guatemala in 2013 demonstrates that 15 years later, it is possible to convict a former head of state of
crimes against humanity
Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as ...
.
Guatemala became the first Latin America country to place a former president on trial for genocide, being charged for the killing and disappearance of 70,000 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands.
In 1996, Menchú was appointed as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in recognition of her activism for the rights of Indigenous people. In this capacity, she acted as a spokesperson for the first
International Decade of the World's 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. In 2015, Menchú met with the general director of UNESCO,
Irina Bokova, in order to solidify relations between Guatemala and the organization.
Since 2003, Menchú has become involved in the Indigenous
pharmaceutical
Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy ( pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the ...
industry as president of "
Salud para Todos" ("Health for All") and the company "Farmacias Similares," with the goal of offering low-cost
generic medicine
A generic drug is a pharmaceutical drug that contains the same chemical substance as a drug that was originally protected by chemical patents. Generic drugs are allowed for sale after the patents on the original drugs expire. Because the active ch ...
s.
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.
In 2006, Menchú was one of the founders of the
Nobel Women's Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates
Jody Williams,
Shirin Ebadi,
Wangari Maathai,
Betty Williams and
Mairead Corrigan Maguire.
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.
It is the goal of the Nobel Women's Initiative to help strengthen
women's rights
Women's rights are the rights and Entitlement (fair division), entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st c ...
around the world.
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.
[Profile](_blank)
BusinessWire.com, 20 April 2015. Retrieved 27 November 2017. She travels around the world speaking to youth through PeaceJam conferences.
She has also been a member of the
Foundation Chirac's honor committee since the foundation was launched in 2008 by former French president
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac (, ; ; 29 November 193226 September 2019) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He was previously Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Pari ...
in order to promote world peace.
Menchú has continued her activism by continuing to raise awareness for issues including political and economic inequality and climate change.
Legacy
Awards and honors

* 1992
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...
for her advocacy and social justice work for the indigenous peoples of Latin America
["The Nobel Peace Prize 1992"](_blank)
Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 27 November 2017.
* 1992 UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador position for her advocacy for the indigenous peoples of Guatemala
** Menchú was the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize at the time, and the first indigenous people recipient.
* 1996 Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for her authorship and advocacy for the indigenous peoples of Guatemala
* 1998
Prince of Asturias Prize for improving the condition of women and the communities they serve. (Jointly with 6 other women.)
* 1999 asteroid
9481 Menchú was named in her honor ()
* 2010
Order of the Aztec Eagle for services provided for Mexico
* 2018 Spendlove Prize for her advocacy for minority groups
* In 2022, the
University of Bordeaux Montaigne, located in
Pessac, gave her name to its newly built library in her honor.
Publications
* ''I, Rigoberta Menchú'' (1983)''
''
** This book, also titled ''My Name is Rigoberta Menchú and that's how my Conscience was Born,'' was dictated by Menchú and transcribed by Elizabeth Burgos
* ''Crossing Borders'' (1998)
* ''Daughter of the Maya'' (1999)
* ''The Girl from Chimel'' (2005) with Dante Liano, illustrated by Domi ''
''
* ''The Honey Jar'' (2006) with Dante Liano, illustrated by Domi
* ''The Secret Legacy'' (2008) with Dante Liano, illustrated by Domi
* ''K'aslemalil-Vivir. El caminar de Rigoberta Menchú Tum en el Tiempo'' (2012)
Testimony controversy
More than a decade after the publication of ''I, Rigoberta Menchú'', anthropologist
David Stoll investigated Menchú's story and claimed that Menchú changed some elements about her life, family, and village to meet the publicity needs of the guerrilla movement.
Stoll acknowledged the violence against the Maya civilians in his book, ''Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of all Poor Guatemalans,'' but believed the guerillas were responsible for the army's atrocities.
The controversy caused by Stoll's book received widespread coverage in the US press of the time; thus the ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' highlighted a few claims in her book contradicted by other sources:
Many authors have defended Menchú, and attributed the controversy to different interpretations of the testimonio genre.
Menchú herself states, "I'd like to stress that it's not only ''my'' life, it's also the testimony of my people."
An error in ''Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of all Poor Guatemalans'' is Stoll's representation of the massacre at the Spanish embassy in Guatemala in 1980 as a self-immolation coordinated by student and indigenous leaders of the peasant protesters occupying the embassy; investigators in 1981 reported on the massacre and the
La Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (Commission for the Historical Clarification-CEH) and published findings concluding that the army carried out a premeditated firebombing of the embassy.
Later, a declassified CIA document form late February 1982 states that in mid-February 1982 the Guatemalan army reinforced its existing forces and launched a "sweep operation in the
Ixil Triangle; and commanding officers of the units involved had been instructed to destroy all towns and villages which were cooperating in the
Guerilla Army of the Poor (EGP) and eliminate all sources of resistance."
Which was a fallacy recently repeated in the Times Literary Supplement by Ilan Stavans in his review of Stoll's book. Some scholars have stated that, despite its factual and historical inaccuracies, Menchú's testimony remains relevant for the ways in which it depicts the life of an Indigenous Guatemalan during the civil war.
The Nobel Committee dismissed calls to revoke Menchú's Nobel Prize, in spite of Stoll's allegations regarding Menchú.
Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the committee, stated that Menchú's prize was awarded because of her advocacy and social justice work, not because of her testimony, and that she had committed no observable wrongdoing.
According to Mark Horowitz, William Yaworsky, and Kenneth Kickham, the controversy about Stoll's account of Menchu is one of the three most divisive episodes in recent American anthropological history, along with controversies about the truthfulness of
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Col ...
's ''
Coming of Age in Samoa'' and
Napoleon Chagnon's representation of violence among the
Yanomami
The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people of the Americas, indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. ...
.
See also
*
List of civil rights leaders
*
List of peace activists
This list of peace activists includes people who have proactively advocated Diplomacy, diplomatic, philosophical, and non-military resolution of major territorial or ideological disputes through nonviolent means and methods. Peace activists usua ...
*
List of female Nobel laureates
The Nobel Prizes are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel#Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to Mankind." Additionally, the Nobel Mem ...
*
List of feminists
References
Bibliography
* Ament, Gail. "Recent Maya Incursions into Guatemalan Literary Historiography". ''Literary Cultures of Latin America: A Comparative History''. Eds. Mario J. Valdés & Djelal Kadir. 3 Vols. Vol 1: ''Configurations of Literary Culture''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004: I: 216–215.
* Arias, Arturo. "After the Rigoberta Menchú Controversy: Lessons Learned About the Nature of Subalternity and the Specifics of the Indigenous Subject" ''
MLN'' 117.2 (2002): 481–505.
* Beverley, John. "The Real Thing (Our Rigoberta)" ''
Modern Language Quarterly'' 57:2 (June 1996): 129–235.
* Brittin, Alice A. "Close Encounters of the Third World Kind: Rigoberta Menchu and Elisabeth Burgos's Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu". ''Latin American Perspectives'', Vol. 22, No. 4, Redefining Democracy: Cuba and Chiapas (Autumn, 1995), pp. 100–114.
* De Valdés, María Elena. "The Discourse of the Other: Testimonio and the Fiction of the Maya." ''Bulletin of Hispanic Studies'' (Liverpool), LXXIII (1996): 79–90.
* Feal, Rosemary Geisdorfer. "Women Writers into the Mainstream: Contemporary Latin American Narrative". ''Philosophy and Literature in Latin America''. Eds. Jorge J.E. Gracia and Mireya Camurati. New York: State University of New York, 1989. An overview of women in contemporary Latin American letters.
*
Golden, Tim"Guatemalan Indian Wins the Nobel Peace Prize" ''New York Times'' (17 October 1992): p. A1, A5.
* Golden, Tim. "Guatemalan to Fight on With Nobel as Trumpet": ''New York Times'' (19 October 1992): p. A5.
* Gossen, Gary H. "Rigoberta Menchu and Her Epic Narrative". ''Latin American Perspectives'', Vol. 26, No. 6, If Truth Be Told: A Forum on David Stoll's "Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans" (Nov., 1999), pp. 64–69.
* Gray Díaz, Nancy. "Indian Women Writers of Spanish America". ''Spanish American Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Source Book''. Ed. Diane E. Marting. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988
* Millay, Amy Nauss. ''Voices from the Fuente Viva: The Effect of Orality in Twentieth-Century Spanish American Narrative''. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005.
* Logan, Kathleen. "Personal Testimony: Latin American Women Telling Their Lives". ''Latin American Research Review'' 32.1 (1997): 199–211. Review Essay.
* Nelan, Bruce W. "Striking Against Racism". ''Time'' 140:61 (26 October 1992): p. 61.
* Stanford, Victoria. "Between Rigoberta Menchu and La Violencia: Deconstructing David Stoll's History of Guatemala" ''Latin American Perspectives'' 26.6, If Truth Be Told: A Forum on David Stoll's "Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans" (Nov., 1999), pp. 38–46.
* ---. "From I, Rigoberta to the Commissioning of Truth Maya Women and the Reshaping of Guatemalan History". ''Cultural Critique'' 47 (2001) 16–53.
* Sommer, Doris. "Rigoberta's Secrets" Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 18, No. 3, ''Voices of the Voiceless in Testimonial Literature'', Part I. (Summer, 1991), pp. 32–50.
* Stoll, David "Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans" (Westview Press, 1999)
* ---. "Slaps and Embraces: A Rhetoric of Particularism". ''The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader''. Ed. Iliana Rodríguez. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
* Wise, R. Todd. "Native American Testimonio: The Shared Vision of Black Elk and Rigoberta Menchú". In ''Christianity and Literature,'' Volume 45, Issue No.1 (Autumn 1995).
* Zimmerman, Marc. "Rigoberta Menchú After the Nobel: From Militant Narrative to Postmodern Politics". ''The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader''. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
External links
*
*
Salon.comRigoberta Menchú meets the press AP story in ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', 12 February 1999 (Subscription only.)
"Spain may judge Guatemala abuses" BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
, 5 October 2005
"Anthropologist Challenges Veracity of Multicultural Icon" – ''The Chronicle of Higher Education''.(Subscription only.)
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Menchu, Rigoberta
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Encuentro por Guatemala politicians
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