Rigoberta Menchu Tum Today on PWCTW we will talk about Rigoberta Menchu, awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992. Menchu is a women activist from the indigenous Quiché Maya group on Guatemala. She was born on January 9, 1959. She was born to a poor native peasant family and raised in the Quiche branch of the Mayan culture. From and early age, she helped with the family farm work, while they were in the northern highlands and on the Pacific coast, where adults and children went to pick coffee on the big plantations. Young Menchu became involved in social reform activities through her Catholic Church, where later she became prominent in the women’s rights movement while she was still only a teenager. The activism of Menchú and her family soon led to persecution by Guatemala’s military government. Her father was a leader of a peasant organization opposed to the government and was later accused of guerrilla activities by the military. During Guatemala’s ensuing civil war, he died in a fire while protesting human rights abuses. By 1979, Menchu officially joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). That same year her brother was captured by the military, tortured and [...]