Īt the age of 20, Menchú joined El Comité de Unidad Campesina, a labor organization composed of indigenous peasants. As she toiled alongside her siblings in the coffee fields, a young Rigoberta Menchú was inspired by her father to join the Catholic Church’s social reform campaign, while learning from her mother, Juana Tum Kótaja, to defend the rights of Mayan women facing threats of sexual violence at the hands of the Guatemalan military. At the forefront of the resistance effort were Ladino peasants and Mayan farmers, including Rigoberta Menchú’s father, Vincente Menchú Perez, who was an outspoken advocate for indigenous farmers’ rights. This conflict stemmed from a string of authoritarian military regimes – initiated by a 1954 United States-backed coup d’état that replaced democratically-elected Communist Jacobo Arbenz with far-right military officer Carlos Castillo Armas – stripping poor natives of their land and suffrage. One year after she was born, Guatemala descended into a lopsided 36-year civil war between genocidal government forces and an amalgamation of poor leftist indigenous groups.

Mothered by a Mayan midwife and fathered by a Catholic coffee farmer, Rigoberta Menchú Tum was quickly thrust into a world of poverty, activism, and violent persecution. On January 9, 1959, in Laj Chimel – a small indigenous community surrounded by unpaved Guatemalan mountain range - a Quiché Mayan child and future luminary for indigent natives across the Western Hemisphere was born. Disclaimer: The following blog post is not a reflection of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s opinion on Rigoberta Menchú Tum.

I, Rigoberta Menchu by Rigoberta Menchú