Rigoberta Menchú

Ms. Rigoberta Menchú is a Qu'iche Indian woman who won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work defending the rights of indigenous people. Ms. Menchú has been campaigning for human rights in Guatemala for over twenty years and has been at the forefront of the struggle to bring former Guatemalan officials to justice for human rights crimes committed at the height of Guatemala's 36-year internal armed conflict.

In December 1999, Rigoberta Menchú, in partnership with Guatemalan and Spanish non-governmental organizations, petitioned Spain's National Court to hear a case charging General Ríos Montt and other former Guatemalan officials with genocide, terrorism, torture and illegal detention. These charges stemmed from a number of notorious incidents, including Rigoberta Menchú's personal story. Ms. Menchú's brother, father and mother all died during the Guatemalan internal armed conflict, in which an estimated 200,000 people, mostly indigenous Guatemalans, were killed or disappeared.

Ms. Menchú is the subject of a book about her life "Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia" ("I, Rigoberta Menchú," 1983) and is the author of the autobiographical work Crossing Borders (1998). Ms. Menchú tells her story as narrator of the 1983 film When the Mountains Tremble (updated in 2004), by Skylight Pictures. In 2007, Ms. Menchú led an unsuccessful presidential bid as the first woman candidate to run for president of Guatemala.