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SPEAKER_03: Before we get started, this episode contains some descriptions of upsetting violence. Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Melten Burak. I'm the host and producer of the podcast SESTA. We aim to harness the power of arts and culture to foster conversation and build peace in Cyprus. I'll be your guest host for this month of Womanica. This month, we're highlighting peace builders. In times of conflict, these women have stepped in, bringing their creativity and insight to help facilitate peace across the globe. Today's Womanica has dedicated her life to speaking out for indigenous Guatemalans. She fought tirelessly against the human rights abuses that occurred during and after the Guatemalan civil war, and has won a Nobel Peace Prize for her activism. Let's talk about Rigoberta Menchutum. Rigoberta was born on January 9th, 1959 in Guatemala. Her family, part of the indigenous K'iche' Mayan community, was very poor. Rigoberta's father owned a small piece of land in the highlands, but her family spent most of their time on the Pacific coast. There, they worked on coffee and cotton plantations to earn enough for food and medicine. The family was very poor. The work was brutal. Two of Rigoberta's brothers died on the plantation. Guatemala's history is marked by battles over democracy, and the US was instrumental in casting the first stones. In the 1950s, the US was facing down the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The US government saw communism as a big threat, and they did not want their neighbors and their families to be killed. And they did not want their neighbors in Latin America to side with the USSR. And so, when Guatemala's president, Jacobo Arbenz, legalized the Communist Party and attempted to nationalize the country's fruit plantations, the US intervened.
SPEAKER_09: The first time in the history...
SPEAKER_03: In 1954, the CIA backed a military coup to overthrow Arbenz, a leader who had been democratically elected by the people of Guatemala.
SPEAKER_09: Nixon praises Castillo Armás, the president of Guatemala, for overthrowing a communist regime. What Nixon doesn't say is that Castillo Armás was handpicked by the CIA.
SPEAKER_03: This launched the country into a civil war that lasted 36 years. It's estimated that 250,000 Guatemalans were killed. Many were indigenous Mayans. Rigoberta grew up during the civil war, and she witnessed the displacement, torture, and murder of her people. Rigoberta's father was involved in the Catholic Church and a member of the Committee for Peasant Unity, or CUC, an indigenous labor organization. His social activism with these organizations inspired Rigoberta from a young age. In 1979, she herself joined the CUC. That same year, one of Rigoberta's brothers was kidnapped. He was just 16 years old. Rigoberta, her mother, and her community banded together to find him but could not. The military announced it would hold a guerilla council, where they would publicly punish guerillas in their custody. Rigoberta said she walked for an entire day and night to see the proceeding. When she got there, 20 people were unloaded off the army truck. Her brother was one of them. The prisoners had been tortured for 15 days. Rigoberta's brother had been mutilated. Her mother had to keep herself from crying out. If the military knew, she was really angry. If the military knew she was related to an alleged guerilla, she could have been killed. An army captain gave a three-hour speech threatening the onlookers and describing the torture inflicted on the prisoners. Afterward, the prisoners, including Rigoberta's brother, were covered with gasoline and set on fire. Her father, Vicente, was accused of sowing unrest among the population and arrested many times over the years. In 1980, Vicente, along with a group of activists, occupied the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City to protest the government. A police chief ordered the building to be firebombed. Vicente was among the nearly 40 people who died inside. Soon after that, Rigoberta's mother was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the military government.
SPEAKER_03: Rigoberta continued her work with the CUC and the CUC in the United States. She fought for better conditions for farm workers on the coast. And in addition to speaking K'iche', she taught herself Spanish and other Mayan languages. That way, she could teach different communities across Guatemala about resisting military oppression. Rigoberta's activism made her a target for retaliation from the government. She went into hiding in Guatemala and then fled to Mexico. But she continued to organize for indigenous rights from afar. Tens of thousands of Guatemalans fled to Mexico in the early 1980s. Most of them were indigenous Mayans. In 1983, when Rigoberta was in her early 20s, she told her life story to an anthropologist. Over the course of eight days, they recorded hours and hours of tape. These recordings were recorded in the United States and these recordings eventually became the book I, Rigoberta Menchu, an Indian Woman in Guatemala. The book captivated readers around the world. It was a detailed, painful telling of her life experiences in war-torn Guatemala. And it garnered international support for the Guatemalan resistance movement. In 1992, Rigoberta received the Nobel Peace Prize. At that time, she was the youngest person to have ever received the award and the first indigenous person to do so. She used her prize money to create the Rigoberta Menchu Tung Foundation. The foundation is dedicated to education, health care and community development for indigenous Guatemalans. After the end of the Civil War in 1996, the foundation helped repatriate refugees. Today, the foundation focuses on civic education and voting rights. In 1998, an American academic published a book discrediting some of the details on Rigoberta's memoir. His research was featured on the front page of the New York Times, launching Rigoberta into the controversy and forcing her to respond to accusations. She has said she will defend her book to the death. Since then, other scholars have also defended her work. Even a member of the Nobel committee noted that memoirs often contain embellishments. And in the end, when someone is arguing over whether a man was burnt alive or murdered and burned, the exact details seem less important. The stories Rigoberta taught the world to hear do represent the kinds of very real violence and pain many poor indigenous Guatemalans face. And her activism today has kept these stories and experiences in the spotlight. Talk to you tomorrow!
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