Subscribe to DeepL Pro to edit this document.

Visit www.DeepL.com/profor more information.

RIGOBERTA MENCHU BIOGRAPHY

Rigoberta Menchu Tum born January 9, 1959 in Laj Chimel (Uspantán,

Guatemala) is a Guatemalan indigenous leader and human rights activist. She
is recognized for her leadership at the forefront of social struggles at the
national and international level.

Rigoberta had a very hard childhood, since she was a child she perceived
discrimination, injustice and exploitation towards the indigenous people of her
country. At the age of 5, she began working on
a coffee farm in terrible conditions to help support her family, as they lived in
extreme poverty.
He spent most of his childhood during the Guatemalan civil war that lasted
from 1962 to 1996. Thanks to this war, he lost several members of his family,
especially his parents Vicente Menchú and Juana Tum Kotoja and his cousin
Francisco Tum, who died as a result of torture by the military or by the parallel
police of the "death squads".

From a young age he was involved in the struggles of indigenous peoples and
peasants, which led him to political persecution and exile. In 1978, she was a
member of CUC (Comité de Unidad Campesina) and RUOG (Representación
Unitaria de la Oposición Guatemalteca), of which she was part of its leadership
until 1992. She was also a woman with a penchant for politics, on February 12,
2007, she announced that she would run in the presidential elections of
Guatemala in 2007, unfortunately she did not reach the first position, but she
was in the 5th, but she did not give up and ran again on September 11, 2011 in
the Frente Amplio de Guatemala.

Much of her popularity came from her autobiographical book Me llamo

Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia, written by Elizabeth Burgos,
which recounts all that Rigoberta Menchú had suffered as a result of
government repression.
She was and is well known for her struggle for social justice and ethno-cultural
reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous people, for which
she has been awarded several honors among these:
In 1991, he participated in the preparation of the United Nations Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In the Guinness Book of Records she was, at the time, the youngest Nobel
laureate and the first indigenous woman to win the Nobel Prize.
In 1998 she won the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation,
along with Fatiha Boudiaf, Fatana Ishaq Gailani, Somaly Mam, Emma Bonino,
Graça Machel and Olayinka Koso-Thomas "for their work, separately, in
defense and dignification of women".
In 2006, she was a Unesco Goodwill Ambassador for the government of Óscar
Berger.
He received the Odebrecht Award in 2014.