Menchú, Rigoberta, << mayn CHOO, ree goh BAIR tah >> (1959-…), a Guatemalan Quiche Indian, won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work to gain respect for the rights of Guatemala’s American Indian peoples. Menchú was born on Jan. 9, 1959, into a poor family in Chimel, northeast of Santa Cruz del Quiche. She became an agricultural laborer as a small child. In 1977, her father, Vicente Menchú, helped organize the Peasant Unity Committee, a group seeking rights for agricultural workers and land for peasants.
Since about 1960, Guatemala’s government had been fighting a civil war with leftist groups. It objected to the Menchú family’s political activities. By 1981, Menchú’s parents and one of her brothers had been killed by the Guatemalan army. That year, Menchú fled Guatemala. Her autobiography, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, was published in 1983. The book called attention to injustices suffered by Indians in Guatemala and to the human rights abuses of the Guatemalan military. A study published in 1998 charged that certain parts of Menchú’s book were inaccurate. Menchú responded that she had mixed other Indians’ experiences into her book, and that it represented the story of the Guatemalan people rather than of one individual.
In 2004, Guatemalan President Oscar Berger offered Menchú a position in Guatemala’s national government. She agreed to help oversee the implementation of the 1996 peace accords that ended the civil war. In September 2007, she ran for the presidency of Guatemala but was not elected.
