Thursday, 15th October, Mixco: interview with Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Unbelievable. Guatemala’s most famous woman agrees to an interview with us. We head to her home in Mixco, just outside Guatemala City, and settle down to interview Rigoberta Menchu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1992 and her husband, Angel. (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1992/presentation-speech.html)
I can’t possibly do this interview justice when we are racing out the door to get to El Salvador now, but I don’t think I have met such an inspiring woman for a very long time. She won the prize for her efforts to bring the struggle of indigenous people in Guatemala, and now the world over, to the fore. Her own story is one of immense suffering, her family were tortured during Guatemala’s fierce civil war, she was exiled alone to Mexico, and continued to campaign. She won the prize in 1992. She is, in some ways, as controversial a choice at Obama – though in a different way: elements of her autobiography were thrown into question when an anthropologist went sniffing about. That aside, there is no doubt that her entire family were slaughtered around her, and she has endured suffering which very few can know in their lifetime. Yet she has been able to take those experiences and use them for the positive, to try and eradicate indigenous suffering and poverty.
The interview, as we expected, was inspiring. She talked about her work, her dedication to bringing peace and understanding, and about her own love for Angel and the importance of it in her life. Angel talked about love in the Mayan tradition, and his advice was some of the most sage that we have heard so far (”love is every moment of every day. It’s the ups and downs, the victories and the failures, the laughter and the tears.”). What an amazing experience. Not for the first time on this trip, I’m am totally flawed by the people that we are meeting.
