Rigoberta Menchu
By Natalie Do

"What hurts Indians most is our costumes are considered beautiful,
but it's as if the person wearing them didn't exist."

Rigoberta Menchu's efforts for simple and basic human rights for the indigenous and aboriginal Indians of Guatemala has established her as one of the premier advocates of peace. Her work has gained international attention, improving human rights and making history. In 1992, Menchu was the first indigenous and youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. She selflessly used the $1.2 million prize to erect an organization in her father's name whose mission is to fight for human rights, declaring, "This award acknowledges my peoples sufferings and let's people know that a change will occur." Indeed, Rigoberta Menchu has dedicated her life to making a change in the quality of life where people can live with dignity and be free from government oppression.

She was born into a life of poverty and suppression and began working in the fields at the tender age of eight. In Guatemale, children were forced to grow up quickly and work so they could eat. Life was difficult not only because of the Indians poor economic status but also because they possessed no rights as citizens in Guatemala. The lack of protection for Indian people left them vulnerable to the abuses of the government. When Rigoberta was a teenager, the government demanded that her family abdicate their land to the state. Her father refused and formed an organization to protests the actions of the government. His civic work and ideals had a powerful impact on Rigoberta. Her father was brutally burned to death during a peaceful demonstration by government agents. Other members of her family have been assassinated, also.

After the death of her father, Rigoberta began her social and political work in earnest. Describing the influence of her father, she tells anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray in her autobiography I, Rigoberta Menchu, "My father told me 'when you're old enough, you mush travel, you must go around the country. You know that you must do what I do."

Although Rigoberta was minimally educated at her church, she self taught herself Spanish because she realized that education was the key to escaping poverty and discrimination. She learned the' language of her oppressors so that she could use it to describe the horrors inflicted upon her and the Indians to the world. She learned to communicate in other languages as well and traveled the world to tell others about the sufferings of her people.

To enact constructive change, Rigoberta chose to continue peaceful political and social work instead of violence. She joined the Committee of Peasant Union (CUC) and organized a peasant resistance movement to carry on the work of her deceased father. She also became an active member of the Committee for Campesino Unity and then later the Revolutionary Christians. Later, because of her active role in the resistance movement against the Guatemalan government, she was forced to flee to Mexico for safety. While in exile, she continued her fight for human rights by co-founding the United Republic of Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG).

Although she has labeled an enemy by the Guatemalan government and has received many death threats, Rigoberta is undeterred by the danger. She continues to fight for human rights because of the horrors and destruction she has witnessed to her people. Rigoberta's altruistic mission to help others serves as an inspiration to many. She represents the quintessential peace hero.

Natalie Do is a student at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California.