Legal Activists of Color: FW: [chicana writer news] Rigoberta Menchu now Guatemalan presidential contender

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From: dorinda moreno <dorindamoreno@comcast.net>
Reply-To: <chicnews@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:46:07 -0700
To: Abigails Daughters <ABD@lists.carlc.com>, Chicana <chicnews@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [chicana writer news] Rigoberta Menchu now Guatemalan presidential contender

AP Interview:
Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu now Guatemalan presidential contender

The Associated Press Thursday, March 29, 2007

GUATEMALA CITY: Armed men guard the spacious Suburban-
style residence of Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu. But
behind the home's walls, chickens and rabbits roam in
pens near a flower-bedecked Mayan altar, depicting the
double life of the peasant girl-turned-international
leader.

Wrapping herself in colorful, hand-woven clothing and
representing her people as an acclaimed human rights
activist, Menchu is comfortable crossing cultures. But
her ability to manage in both worlds is about to be put
to a new test as she aspires to rule her deeply divided
country.

Menchu's presidential run represents the increasing
political participation of Indians across Latin
America, highlighted by the 2005 election of Bolivian
President Evo Morales.

Menchu said elective politics will open a new chapter
not only for herself but for millions of other Mayans.
She recently created the Indian-led political movement
Winaq, which in Mayan means "the wholeness of the human
being," and will form the first Indian-led voting bloc
in Guatemala's Congress.

"I have the great honor of being able to open up this
space," Menchu said during an interview with The
Associated Press at her home. "Things will never be the
same here again."

But whether Guatemala is ready to be led by an
Indian or a woman--let alone both--remains to be
seen.

"If she were to win, for many it would be like
the servant trying to take over the country--that's
the mentality," said Estuardo Zapeta, a Mayan
intellectual who writes a column for Siglo 21
newspaper.

He questioned whether Menchu is also ready for politics
after enjoying saint-like status as a Nobel laureate.

"She is a symbol of success for Indian people here, and
I worry that if she is crushed by this process, that
she will then become a symbol of failure," he said.

Polls show Menchu, among 12 candidates for the Sept. 9
election, trailing behind the top three competitors.
Polls have shown that while Menchu is well liked,
people say they would not vote for her as president.
Zapeta said many do not see her as being capable of
running this male-dominated society.

Menchu acknowledged the symbolic importance of her
candidacy, but was willing to take the risks. She sees
her campaign as a "thermometer" measuring Guatemala's
progress in battling racism and building democracy. She
also said her campaign will be her own and does not
seek to ally herself with Morales, although his party
sent her a letter congratulating her on her bid.

Guatemala's Indian community - which was devastated by
massacres and forced disappearances during the civil
war that ended 10 years ago - is much less organized
and politically active than the Indian communities in
Bolivia and Ecuador. A small elite of whites
and Ladinos - people of Indian descent who no longer
identify with those traditions--keeps a firm grip on
power, and Mayans rarely march in mass here.

Bias against Mayans is so extreme that the United
Nations Development Program warned recently that
Guatemala could become ungovernable unless it overcomes
"historically racist attitudes."

Some 42 percent of the population identifies itself as
Mayan. Yet only a handful of Indians occupy seats in
Congress and none has ever risen to the presidency.
Most Mayans earn less than half of what Ladinos earn,
and millions live on just a few dollars a day. Many
feel the division everyday. Last year, a Guatemalan
City disco refused to let in a young woman dressed in
traditional Mayan garb.

Even Manchu - who is revered at home and abroad after
winning the 1992 Nobel prize - was told by a politician
in 2003 to "go and sell tomatoes at the market,
Indian," after she testified against allowing former
dictator Gen. Jose Efrain Rios Montt to run for
president. She has accused Rios Montt of genocide in a
Spanish court.

Some say no person can better break down the barriers
than Menchu, who sued the politician who made the
tomatoes insult and four of his colleagues who made
similar comments. The men were forced to pay a fine
under a rare use of Guatemala's 2002 anti-
discrimination law.

"Guatemala has been ready to have a Mayan president for
more than 200 years," said Menchu, who gave part of her
US$1 million Nobel prize money to her Rigoberta Menchu
Tum Foundation, which provides legal aid to Indians,
researches atrocities and organizes conferences to
raise awareness about Indian rights, among other
things.

Menchu said she would represent everyone as president.

She lives with her husband and 12-year-old son in a
two-story home in an upper-middle class, gated
community on the edge of the capital.

Menchu grew up and farmed with her family in the tiny
Quiche Indian village of Laj Chimel in Guatemala's
northwestern mountains, and she still keeps chickens,
rabbits and pigeons in pens off a lawn lined with
papaya and banana trees.

Ceramic pots hold dried flowers surrounding a Mayan
altar of stones where the Menchu family has set out a
Johnnie Walker whiskey bottle and burned incense and
herbs for the higher spirits.

Inside the house, Menchu's family photos of her wedding
and her husband laughing as their son whispers in his
ear mix with images of the 48-year-activist shaking
hands with Pope John Paul II and other world leaders.

Menchu promises to clean up corruption and reform the
military and police forces now beholden to traffickers
of Colombian cocaine - a battle that has proven nearly
impossible for even seasoned politicians to win.
Criminal gang members deported from the U.S. run
rampant, and death squads created during the civil war
allegedly live on inside the nation's police forces.

She also vowed to review Guatemala's new trade
agreement with the United States to see if it truly
benefits most Guatemalans, suggesting she could cancel
it if she feels it does not.

But Menchu's candidacy has revived old questions about
her credibility, which suffered after allegations that
she embellished parts of her biography, "I, Rigoberta
Menchu." Years later, she remains deeply defensive
about those claims, and it's that reaction - rather
than the story itself - that most bothers
anthropologist David Stoll, who wrote the 1999 book
questioning her facts.

"If she really thinks she can bat down honest questions
by saying the questioner is racist or an American CIA
agent, that's not going to make her a very good
presidential candidate," said Stoll, who teaches at
Middlebury College in Vermont.

Menchu dismissed the debate as trivial, compared to the
atrocities of war the book described. The book is
evidence - filed as part of her Spanish court case
charging five former officials of Guatemala's military
and three former government officials with genocide for
a 1980 fire at the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City
that killed 37 people, including diplomats, Menchu's
father and other Mayan activists occupying the building
in a protest.

"What I want to ask the media and everyone for is
respect for the 200,000 deaths in Guatemala," she said,
referring to the estimate of those who were killed
during 36 years of civil war. "If you want to debate, I
ask you to go to the mass graves, go to the area where
there are the remains of our dead. I ask for respect
for my father who was burned alive and my brother who
was tortured."

On the Net: Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation:
http://www.rigobertamenchu.org/

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