Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Spanish: [riɣoˈβeɾta menˈtʃu]; born 9 January 1959) is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.
She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 1996, and received the Prince of Asturias Award in 1998. She is the subject of the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983), and author of the autobiographical work Crossing Borders (1998). Menchú founded the country's first indigenous political party, Winaq, and ran as its candidate for president of Guatemala in the 2007 and 2011 presidential elections.
Rigoberta Menchú was born to a poor Indigenous family of K'iche' Maya descent in Laj Chimel, a rural area in the north-central Guatemalan department of El Quiché. Her family was one of many Indigenous families who could not sustain themselves on the small pieces of land they were left with after the Spanish conquest of Guatemala. Menchú's mother began her career as a midwife at age sixteen and continued to practice using traditional medicinal plants until she was murdered at age 43. Her father was a prominent activist for the rights of Indigenous farmers in Guatemala. Both of her parents regularly attended Catholic church, but her mother remained connected to her Maya spirituality and identity. She believes in many teachings of the Catholic Church, but her mother's Maya influence also taught Menchú the importance of living in harmony with nature and retaining her Maya culture. Menchú considers herself to be the perfect mix of both her parents.
In 1979–80, Menchú's brother, Patrocinio, and mother, Juana Tum Kótoja, were kidnapped, brutally tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan Army. Her father, Vicente Menchú Perez, died in the 1980 Burning of the Spanish Embassy, which occurred after urban guerrillas took hostages and were attacked by government security forces. In January 2015, Pedro García Arredondo, a former police commander of the Guatemalan Army who later served as the chief of the now defunct National Police (Policía Nacional, PN), was convicted of attempted murder and crimes against humanity for his role in the embassy attack; Arrendondo was also previously convicted in 2012 of ordering the enforced disappearance of agronomy student Édgar Enrique Sáenz Calito during the country's long-running internal armed conflict.
In 1984, Menchú's other brother, Victor, was shot to death after he surrendered to the Guatemalan Army, was threatened by soldiers, and tried to escape.
In 1995, Menchú married Ángel Canil, a Guatemalan, in a Mayan ceremony. They had a Catholic wedding in January 1998; at that time they also buried their son Tz'unun ("hummingbird" in K’iche’ Maya), who had died after being born prematurely in December. They adopted a son, Mash Nahual Ja' ("Spirit of Water").
Menchú featured prominently in the 1983 documentary When the Mountains Tremble, directed by Newton Thomas Sigel and Pamela Yates.
She lives with her family in the municipality of San Pedro Jocopilas, Quiché Department, northwest of Guatemala City, in the heartland of the Kʼicheʼ people.
In 2025, Menchú became a Mexican citizen.
Connections to the Guatemalan civil war
Following military coups that started with the CIA-orchestrated removal of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, the Cuban revolution of 1959, and the Che Guevara's commitment to create as many Vietnams as he could, the U.S. moved to condone and often support authoritarian rule in the name of national security. The Guatemalan Civil War lasted from 1962 to 1996 and was provoked by social, economic, and political inequality. An estimated 250,000 people were assassinated, including 50,000 desaparecidos, and hundreds of thousands of displaced individuals, either at the hands of the armed forces or the militarized civilians knows as Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (Civil Defense Patrols). This made people nervous since arming civilians, let alone Indigenous peoples, was not a very common occurrence in Guatemala and was, in fact, illegal according to the country's constitution.
Massacres of Indigenous men, women, and children in Guatemala began in May 1978, culminating in 1982. By 1981 the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was reporting on the indiscriminate killing of civilians in rural areas, government soldiers being "forced to fire at anything that moved". In 1982 the CIA reported several villages being burned to the ground while Guatemalan commanding officers were "expected to give no quarter to combats and non-combats alike".
These inequalities were most impactful on marginalized populations, especially indigenous communities. To maintain order, the state implemented forceful measures that often, violated human rights. This ultimately led to mass genocide, disappearances, and displacement of indigenous populations. 83% of victims were later identified as Mayan, indicating that a majority of human rights violated were those of the Indigenous communities of Guatemala. These events had a deep impact on Menchú and her family and were the root cause of her activism in Indigenous rights.
From a young age, Menchú was active alongside her father. Together they advocated for the rights of Indigenous farmers through the Committee for Peasant Unity. Menchú often faced discrimination for wanting to join her male family members in the fight for justice, but she was inspired by her mother to continue making space for herself. Menchú believes that the roots of Indigenous oppression in Guatemala stem from issues of exploitation and colonial land ownership, and in her early activism focused on defending her people from colonial exploitation.
After leaving school, Menchú worked as an activist campaigning against human rights violations committed by the Guatemalan Army during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. Many of the human rights violations that occurred during the war targeted Indigenous peoples. Women were targets of physical and sexual violence at the hands of the military.
In 1981, Menchú was exiled and escaped to Mexico where she found refuge in the home of a Catholic bishop in Chiapas. Menchú continued to organize resistance to oppression in Guatemala and organize the struggle for Indigenous rights by co-founding the United Republic of Guatemalan Opposition. Tens of thousands of people, mostly indigenous Maya people, fled to Mexico from 1982 to 1984 at the height of Guatemala's 36-year civil war.
A year later, in 1982, she told her life story to Venezuelan author and anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos. Leading to the book titled Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia (My Name is Rigoberta Menchú, and this is how my Awareness was Born). The book was translated into five other languages including English and French. Menchú's work made her an international icon at the time of the ongoing conflict in Guatemala and brought attention to the suffering of Indigenous peoples under an oppressive government regime.
Menchú served as the Presidential Goodwill Ambassador for the 1996 Peace Accords in Guatemala. That same year she received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award in Boston.