Meet Rigoberta Menchú Tum: More Than a First
Photo Illustration: Humanizing History Visuals. Photo: Carlos Rodriguez/ANDES, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Welcome to Humanizing History™! Every month, we feature a central theme. Each week, we dive into different areas of focus.
This month’s theme: Changemakers — More than a First
This week’s focus: Hidden History, a facts-based narrative to highlight someone who changed history
Today’s edition of Humanizing History™ is about 1,200 words, an estimated 4½-minute read.
Trigger Warning: This newsletter references violence, genocide, and family loss. Please care for yourself as needed.
The Why for This Week’s Topic
This month, we’re exploring changemakers who were “the first” to break barriers — but were also more than a first.
Being first is often celebrated, yet these stories rarely begin — or end — with the milestone itself.
To understand changemakers with more nuance, we can consider context, obstacles, persistence, and the perhaps immeasurable ripples their actions create across generations.
Last week, we met Jim Thorpe.
Today, we turn our attention to Rigoberta Menchú Tum — the first Indigenous person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
As we’ll learn, her courage, resilience, and advocacy for Indigenous rights impacted Guatemala, and the larger world, in profound ways.
Early Life: The Land of Chimel
Rigoberta Menchú Tum was born in the mountains of Guatemala, in a village inhabited by the K’iche’ Maya.
Menchú Tum describes her childhood: “I started in a small village… at the time there was no road, no drinking water, there was no light. In fact, there is no electricity there yet. This village is called Chimel, it’s in the mountains.”
Rugged and remote, Chimel rests in steep, fertile, forested mountains. With unpaved roads, the only way to reach it fully is by foot.
Here, in Chimel, for generations, families grew corn, beans, and other crops — their hands working and shaping the soil their grandparents and ancestors had toiled for generations.
Born into the Maya K’iche’ people, her grandparents taught Rigoberta that humans are “a microcosm,” meaning that “we are an extraordinary but tiny inspiration” of a larger universal energy — a belief system she inherited, that continues to impact her work and how she sees the world.
When describing humanity, Menchú Tum says: “When we are born, we are dominated by the sun and then we return to coexistence. Without trees, we cannot exist. Without rivers, without clouds, without oxygen — human beings do not exist.”
This wisdom seemingly grounds Rigoberta to cultivate strong relationships to land, to community, and to the realization that seeds from the past can feed generations to come.
A Civil War Rages
A childhood of nurturing land and growing crops was swept into violent upheaval as a multi-decade civil war raged across Guatemala at the hands of its government and foreign support, including the U.S.
Massacres, disappearances, and terror — fire and guns tore through the land, homes, and lives her ancestors and neighbors had tended. Over the course of 36 years, more than 200,000 lives were taken, about 83 percent of whom were Maya.
Her family’s loss was tragic. Her parents and brother gone. Their graves unknown, their bodies never recovered. Her grief, a call to action.
Menchú Tum speaks of her loss: “I was 23 when my whole family was destroyed. This part marked an entire episode of my life. I could not leave in oblivion the death of my parents. I wanted to preserve their memory… [their] dignity... This is what brought me close to the issue of Human Rights and issues of impunity.”
Facing extreme loss, Rigoberta chose to turn grief into action. Rather than being forgotten, erased, or ignored, she demanded that the world look, that her story — their story, our story — be known.
Speaking Out for Justice
Rigoberta Menchú Tum began to speak for Indigenous rights. She traveled across Guatemala and beyond its borders — joining youth and community groups to organize protests and demonstrations.
Her work wasn’t solely personal — she saw it as continental, global. Advocating for Indigenous rights, and ultimately human rights, was a movement that spanned generations and borders.
Seeking safety from the ongoing war, Menchú Tum had to flee to Mexico. There, far from home, she organized movements, while genocide still haunted the people of Guatemala.
Rigoberta’s voice was her power. In 1983, her memoir I, Rigoberta Menchú, gained international attention.
A Nobel Peace Prize and Beyond
By the age of 33, Rigoberta Menchú Tum became the first Indigenous person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yet, this wasn’t her goal per se. Menchú Tum reflects, “I was already a great admirer of the Nobel Prize, without knowing and without striving for it, because I believe nobody achieves the Nobel Prize by aiming for it.”
The award recognized her courage, but her impact is far larger than any single honor. Her advocacy channels generations of Maya wisdom and knowledge systems, resilience, and community strength — the energy of her ancestors, carried forward as hope for future generations.
Her commitment to justice didn’t stop with recognition.
More than 30 years after Guatemala's civil war, Menchú Tum bravely entered the courtroom to testify in the trial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, whose regime carried out horrific acts of genocide.
Menchú Tum’s testimony helped secure a historic conviction. The court’s verdict didn’t just sentence a dictator, it carved a space for memory, truth, and healing.
She states: “The closest members of my family were affected by the genocide. This is why I think the conviction of Montt may provide an opportunity to close a chapter of our lives — a chapter of profound pain, and a chapter that closes and allows us to begin a new relationship amongst Guatemalans. Because during the genocide, we felt so alone, we felt powerless, and we felt that nobody had our back. But now, a court has convicted Montt of genocide. For us, that suffices. The fact that genocide was recognized, means that nobody will ever forget.”
Indigenous Rights as Human Rights
While Rigoberta Menchú Tum unapologetically advocated — and continues to advocate — for Indigenous rights, her work is also universal. She recognizes the larger web of human existence all of us are tethered to.
In Menchú Tum’s own words: “There are elements that don’t change. It doesn’t matter if you were born in Asia, Africa, America, Europe, or wherever the continent is because our [human] constitution has no continent. So, luck has it that we are located on different sides of the planet, but we are not different beings, right?... What is true is that due to global warming, pollution, and the deterioration of the human being itself — what I call dehumanization — being a leader for good must be a priority.”
In this light, the Nobel Peace Prize may bear Rigoberta Menchú Tum’s name, but it carries the heartbeat of generations. It embodies symbolic seeds planted eons ago, whose energy continues to move through her advocacy — connecting past, present, and future generations to something both earthly and spiritual, something larger than, and perhaps outside of, ourselves.
What Comes Next?
As we discussed last week, changemakers labeled “The First,” can be remembered for a single achievement — or for the broader story of context, obstacles, persistence, and community inspiration behind them.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum was the “first” Indigenous person to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, yes — but she is also a skillful speaker, a survivor, a granddaughter, an organizer, a voice for generations whose lives were threatened, and a changemaker whose ripple continues today.
She is still with us. In 2025, at age 66, Rigoberta continues to make an impact on this world.
When unpacking her story, consider asking:
What conditions made being the “first” possible?
Who helped — or hindered — along the way?
What did it cost to be “the first”?
How does their story inspire change today?
Being first isn’t an ending. For Rigoberta Menchú Tum, it was an opening: a doorway to justice, remembrance, and the voices of Indigenous communities to be heard across the world. And because of her, their voices echo far beyond the mountains of Chimel.
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