Rigoberta Menchú “The Legacy of War in Guatemala: Continuous Human Rights Abuses” November 18, 2004

Rigoberta Menchú speaks on campus on November 18.

A Nation Yearning: Peace, Equality and Justice in Guatemala
By Simeon Tegel

Imagine a country where known perpetrators of genocide openly dominate national life as though they were upstanding and dedicated public servants. Imagine a nation where racism is so entrenched that the majority of citizens are effectively unrepresented within the state. Imagine a society where that majority lives a marginal existence overshadowed by the fear of violent, arbitrary retribution from a rich, corrupt elite. Imagine a society where that majority are routinely denied not just their most fundamental rights but even the recognition of their humanity. Imagine a country where thousands of families live in indefinite mourning for murdered loved ones whose remains have yet to be found and given a decent burial. Imagine Guatemala.

Yet despite painting this disturbing picture of her homeland, Rigoberta Menchú, the Mayan indigenous rights campaigner and winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, also offered many reasons for hope during a wide-ranging talk, marked by her gentle sense of humor, to a packed conference room in Barrows Hall on November 18. Quietly charismatic, Menchú touched on themes including impunity, racism, social justice, memory, the role of Guatemalan immigrants to the U.S. both within Guatemala and in their host country, and the importance of a sense of spirituality and humility in private and public life. The mutual affection held by Menchú and her audience of UC Berkeley students and faculty was almost tangible as she responded, sometimes playfully, to the audience’s questions.

In front of the packed Lipman Room, the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner talked about her ongoing role in promoting human rights in Guatemala and throughout Central America.

“Guatemala is a country that has suffered a great deal. The genocide that took place in recent years is not truly over,” Menchú said. “There have been 214 exhumations since the signing of the peace accords. Yet there are close to 3,000 clandestine graves that must still be exhumed in the coming years.” Carrying out these exhumations will be an exhausting, expensive and time-consuming process. Challenges range from difficulties in identifying remains, which many times is only possible through DNA analysis, to simply providing enough coffins to give a dignified burial to these victims of a brutal and baffling civil war. Among the dead still to be discovered are Menchú’s two brothers, Víctor and Patrocinio. Only once those victims are laid to rest will Guatemala truly be able to “become a normal country, a country without an armed internal conflict, a country that can truly move forward,” Menchú insisted.

Impunity and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of corporate mafias, often linked to drug-trafficking, are both major, structural problems that Guatemala must still confront. Until these twin evils are dealt with, Guatemala will continue to be a place where violence is a routine rather than extraordinary occurrence, Menchú suggested. Both problems preceded the genocide in Guatemala, in which an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans, mainly Mayan Indians, were murdered. However, both problems are now more deeply entrenched within the power structures of the state and society as a result of those atrocities and the political and economic alignments that surrounded them. In particular, General Efraín Ríos Montt, who seized power in a coup in 1982 and who played an instrumental role in the initiation of some of the worst crimes against humanity of the 1980s, was someone Menchú wanted to see in one of the yellow uniforms worn by convicts in Guatemala’s prisons.

With Professor Beatriz Manz, Ms. Menchú pauses prior to her talk on the Berkeley campus.

Equally, three major problems that underlay the bloodshed still remain in the structured of Guatemalan society: massive social inequality, widespread and deeply ingrained racism and the lopsided pattern of land ownership. While most Mayans live in absolute or relative poverty, the elite continue to enjoy a lifestyle of fabulous luxury. The ruling class’s ownership of most of Guatemala’s land, including most of its best land, has come at the expense of indigenous Mayan and ladino peasants who depend on agriculture to eke out a subsistence living. That problem has now been compounded by global warming and drought; more than half of the current crop of maize has not survived, Menchú warned. In a year, many in Guatemala will be facing even worse hardship than they currently endure. In turn, the issues of agrarian reform and the distribution of wealth within Guatemala cannot be clearly distinguished from that of race.

Race is everything in Guatemala. More than 65 percent of Guatemalans are indigenous Mayans yet they are largely unrepresented within the state apparatus. The quotidian racism which drove the genocide is, if anything, more open now than in the 1980s. “Before, we were treated with indifference. We were treated as if we didn’t exist,” said Menchú. “But now we are starting to see verbal aggression, attitudes and open expressions of public opinion that are very racist. Lately, we have had incidents of Guatemalan Mayan women being been pulled from restaurants or hotels and being told ‘You can’t come in here. We only have respectable people here. We don’t have employees or Indians.’” Even Menchú’s own status as a Nobel Laureate and, perhaps, the only Guatemalan with a truly international profile, has failed to insulate her against this racism; she is currently embroiled in a court suit after allegedly being spat on, struck and insulted with racial epithets during a hearing in the nation’s constitutional court.

In the courtyard between Stephens and Moses Halls.

Despite this racism, many political parties still try to win the indigenous vote. Mayans are thus put on their electoral lists, but towards the bottom. This provides the illusion of indigenous representation within the political system but without delivering the reality; only those at the top of the lists usually ever win public office. Nevertheless, Menchú held out the promise of an electoral alliance between poor ladinos and Mayans based on their shared interests and need for land. “Democracy is something that is built day by day by all citizens,” she said. “In Guatemala, racism is cultural. Many ladino brothers do not even realize they are racists. It is not their fault because the system forms them that way.”

Menchú also talked about her own prominent role within Guatemalan society and politics, and the momentous impact of her Nobel Prize. Initially, many members of the national elite were simply incredulous that an uneducated, indigenous female could have been chosen for the prestigious international award. “The president had a problem with his hearing,” she joked. “He did not hear that I had won the Nobel Peace Prize.” Now the incredulity has been replaced with acceptance. The award has also placed a heavy burden of responsibility on Menchú’s shoulders. She is currently a member without portfolio of the Guatemalan cabinet and a governmental goodwill ambassador, an official role for which some supporters have attacked her. “If I am in the government they criticize me,” said Menchú philosophically. “If I am not in the government, they criticize me.” Menchú also now travels with her own security entourage and feels a duty to her people not to become another statistic of Guatemala’s bloody modern history.

Championing several concrete policy initiatives, Menchú suggested that “equality” should become an explicit goal of state policy. She would like to see more done to allow young Mayans to gain access to higher education. Above all, funding in the form of scholarships is required to empower them to have successful careers and to become more effective community leaders. That education should also have a cultural element to encourage the survival of traditional Mayan knowledge and values and a newfound pride in them among all Guatemalans. And the Nobel Laureate wanted to see more cooperation and collaboration between Guatemalan immigrants in the United States and their home country. Those immigrants send remittances worth around $3 billion back to Guatemala every year. In return, they should be encouraged to learn more about their own indigenous heritage, including the Mayan calendar: “Identity is something that cannot be bought. It can only be lived.”

Even as she called for justice for some of the worst crimes against humanity anywhere in the world in recent decades, Menchú insisted on the possibility of a brighter future for Guatemala. But achieving this goal will require hard work and intelligent tactics, she stressed. “When we talk about strengthening institutions and about strengthening democracy and civil society, and struggling for human rights, it doesn’t just mean protesting in the streets,” said Menchú. “It also means institutional changes, supporting ways of strengthening the attorney general’s office or the civil, national police, trying to make changes in the army so that we establish a code of ethics to fully prohibit any more engaging in the type of abuses of the past. It means working with the congress, working with the political parties. The political parties should not just be involved with corruption or supporting impunity. On all different levels, we have to work for these changes.”

Rigoberta Menchú is the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She has campaigned tirelessly for justice on behalf of Guatemala’s Mayan peoples, and for the perpetrators of genocide against them to be brought to justice . Her autobiography, I, Rigoberta Menchú, has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She spoke on “The Legacy of War in Guatemala: Continuous Human Rights Abuses” in the Lipman Room, in Barrows Hall, on November 18.

Simeon Tegel is a graduate student in the Latin American Studies program.

Ms. Menchú talks with Professors Harley Shaiken and Beatriz Manz at a reception following the event.