Where is rigoberta menchu from

International pressure also helped force the government to ease up on military violence and violation of people's rights, and in , many refugees who had fled from Guatemala to Mexico began to return. The following year, the Guatemalan government and rebel leaders signed a cease-fire agreement to end their year conflict, Latin America's longest civil war. Conservatives have accused her of being associated with communist groups, and the story of her life in her autobiography was questioned by journalist David Stoll in In , she filed charges in a Spanish court against several officials in Guatemala's former military governments, accusing them of genocide, torture, and state terrorism against some , people who had been killed in her country during the s.

In early , she was among the most celebrated speakers at the World Social Forum, a gathering of anti-globalization protesters in Brazil that was timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum, a meeting of politicians and corporate officers that was held at the same time in New York, New York. All Speakers Speeches Political ads. Attorney General U. Cabinet Member U. First Lady U. Representative U. She joined the radical 31st of January Popular Front, in which her contribution chiefly consisted of educating the Indian peasant population in resistance to massive military oppression.

In , she told her life story to Elisabeth Burgos Debray. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

New York: Verso, First published in Italian, October , and in Spanish, April An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Edited and introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. New York and London: Verso, Her life story, based on a week of recorded interviews with the editor, a Latin American anthropologist, who revised and arranged the transcripts. The autobiography became a most influential image internationally of the atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army in peasant villages during the civil war.

In a controversy arose over its credibility, see Stoll below. She herself fled to Mexico in the early s, where she came into contact with European groups that were working for human rights in Latin America. With time, Rigoberta began to favor a policy of reconciliation with the authorities, and Norway served as the intermediary in negotiations between the government and the guerrilla organizations.

A peace agreement was signed in We are deeply honoured to welcome such an iconic figure. Let us walk through a few moments of her moving life story. Several members of her close family were tortured and murdered by the military dictatorship that in was in power in Guatemala at the time. She joined the Committee of the Peasant Union CUC in , following in the footsteps of her father, to defend the rights and lives of the indigenous people who were victims of the military dictatorship.

Shortly after, due to threats made on her life, she had to go into exile in Mexico.