Nobel Peace Prize Laureate - Rigoberta Menchú Tum

The following is a brief account of Rigoberta Menchú Tum's of efforts to secure more equitable rights for the indigenous people of Guatemala as well as her notable efforts to seek reconciliation for the disastrous impact of civil war on her country.  This short biography was taken from the website of the Nobel Women's Initiative -

"Rigoberta Menchú Tum was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation work based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples in her native Guatemala. She is the first indigenous person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2007, Rigoberta ran for Presidency of Guatemala with Encuentro por Guatemala in 2007.  Subsequently, Rigoberta made important contributions in spearheading the first indigenous party in Guatemala, and garnering enough votes to make her WINAQ party official, and ran again for President with this party in 2011. Despite the fact that she was not elected, she remains a steadfast presence in Guatemalan politics and the struggle to end impunity.  

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Rigoberta was born in 1959 to a poor Indian family in the highlands of Guatemala. Like many other countries in the Americas, Guatemala has experienced great tension between the descendants of European immigrants and the native Indian population. The Menchú family experienced extreme hardship as a result of their Mayan background.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Guatemala’s repressive military dictatorship began a large-scale repression of Indian peoples. Before she was 21, Rigoberta's mother, father and brother were brutally tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan army.

Rigoberta confronted the oppression faced by her family and her peoples by actively protesting labor and human rights abuses. In 1981 she was forced to seek exile in Mexico, where she became an eloquent defender of the rights and values of indigenous peoples and other victims of government oppression. On several occasions, Rigoberta returned to her home country to plead the cause of the Indian peasants, but death threats forced her back into exile. In 1983, Rigoberta's testimonial book I, Rigoberta Menchú, catapulted the plight of indigenous people in Guatemala into global headlines.

After receiving the Peace Prize, Rigoberta established the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation which promotes the rights of indigenous people around the world.  In 1998, she published Rigoberta: La Nieta de los Mayas, later translated into English and titled Crossing Borders.

From 1994 to 2003, Rigoberta served as the official spokesperson for the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Peoples. She has held the position of Good Will Ambassador for the Peace Accords in Guatemala since 2004. Rigoberta is also president of the company Salud para Todos ("Health for All"), which aims to offer affordable generic medicines to indigenous people in Guatemala."

The complete text of Tum's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech can be found here.

America – the Crisis of the Intellect

The apparent ascendancy of Donald Trump as the front-running candidate for President of the United States in the Republican Party and the decision made by the Republican leadership in the United States Senate to refuse to even consider the sitting President’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court are powerful indicators that our political system, based on democratic principles and the rule of law, is in serious jeopardy.  In my mind, it reflects a crisis of the intellect.

In regards to Donald Trump, his bellicose and often mean-spirited pronouncements and apparent worldview readily exposes both a poverty of intellect and a severely troubled personality.  It is my contention that he displays a behavior that is indicative of a pathological narcissist.  His speech exposes an apparent inability and outright refusal to engage in the political process which requires a capacity to listen to opposing viewpoints and to make compromises based upon reasoned judgment.  The political process embodied in compromise is essential if we, as a people, are to retain the democratic principles that we claim to cherish.  Otherwise, we willingly embrace demagoguery – a path that will necessarily have disastrous consequences; for, we are not a monolithic society.  This country is made up of very diverse elements in terms of race, culture, world view and perspective; it is this diversity that allows for our collective growth, development and maturity as a people.  To suppress this diversity or to deny entire sectors of the population an opportunity to engage as full members of the culture is to effectively diminish us all.

The recent decision of Republican Senators to refuse to even engage in their constitutional responsibility to accept or reject a Presidential nominee for the open seat on the Supreme Court following the death of Antonin Scalia is a serious abrogation of their role in this very important process.  The arguments that they have put forward to justify this position are untenable and border on the absurd.  This kind of collective behavior reflects, in my mind, a determination to have their own way regardless of the cost and undermines the veracity of the political process.

If the American people find this behavior acceptable then we do suffer from a crisis of the intellect.  Admittedly, the nation is faced with serious issues that need to be addressed and undoubtedly arouse fear.  Reasoned solutions to these problems, however, will not be achieved through authoritarian and intellectually vacant policies that may temporarily alleviate those fears but will eventually lead to unfortunate consequences.

Can We Avert Calamity

One hundred and ninety-five countries recently reached a consensus at the end of an historic meeting in Paris regarding the need to lower carbon emissions and thereby diminish our dependency upon fossil fuels as the predominant source of energy for human activity.  This, in itself, is a major breakthrough in that it represents a nearly universal recognition of the reality of climate change and its very real threat to the future of the species upon planet earth.  

However, there is a wide chasm between recognizing the threat and collectively implementing the degree and intensity of change that is required to meaningfully address the problem.  The enormity of the issue cannot be understated.  The level of CO² in the atmosphere has already breached 400 parts per million (ppm).  This compares to ~ 270 ppm that was the measure of CO² in the pre-industrial age.  The current level compares to eras in the earth’s distant past in which the climate conditions were of such extremes that human existence would be seriously constrained.  The effects of climate change are very much in evidence around the planet.  It is not within the scope of this article to attempt to enumerate the details.  Human activity is literally transforming the earth’s climate – no manner of obfuscation or denial can alter this reality.

The degree of political, social, cultural and religious unrest that seems to infest human communities throughout the world provides suggestive evidence that human beings are collectively unable to face the enormous challenges posed by the seemingly ineluctable “progress” of climate change.  In reality, there is no threat to the future viability of the human species greater than this issue.

In order to successfully and radically diminish the production of greenhouse gases to a degree that would obviate the threat to humans in the near and more distant future, action is required on a scale of unheard proportions.  This level of global cooperation will not be possible or even conceivable if we persist in responding to real or imagined threat with violence and irrational behavior; if we continue to value the self at the expense of the larger community; if we insist on showing little or no compassion for the hundreds of millions of our species faced with dire circumstance in everyday life and if we put the immediate interests of the State above the well-being of humanity.

Simply put, in my judgment, without true and lasting peace of mind and spirit both individually and collectively, the solution(s) to the problem of climate change will elude us.  In the final analysis, it is up to us – the viability of future generations of human beings is in in our collective hands.

Guns in America

We as a people need to accept the deep-seated social malaise that plagues us, if we are to ever resolve the issue around gun violence in America.  It goes deeper than the fact that murderous weapons are widely dispersed within the general population. 

There are many individuals within the fabric of this culture that suffer needlessly.  There are many men, women and children who live without a home and find themselves without sufficient resources to live a “normal” life.  There are many who are stricken with severe mental illness and have no recourse to adequate and sustaining care.  There are many people of color who feel the constant weight of intolerance; who bear the burden of unequal treatment under the law; who endure the unrelenting pain of racial prejudice.  There are many women who are subjected to derision simply because they seek to exert control over their own bodies.

As a society, we have chosen a path where the individual has been elevated to predominant position while the commons is being dismantled and those aspects of living that are essential to successful living such as access to adequate nutrition, shelter and health care are denied on a regular basis to so many in need.  We have, in essence, become a people without the necessary degree of compassion that would lead to an alleviation of this degree of suffering.

We have allowed the voices of ignorance, intolerance and in many cases sheer and unmitigated stupidity to secure a hold on the national psyche.  For example, in the face of unrelenting gun-related violence, there are suggestions – taken seriously – that the real solution to this issue is for everyone to carry guns.  This idea is absolute madness; for, it envisions a future where the social contract that is a necessary component of a sane society is completely obliterated. 

We have permitted illogical and spurious ideas to come to the forefront of serious national debate without being sufficiently challenged.  The most of egregious of these is, in my opinion, the contention that climate change is not real and of no consequence.   

In essence, if we do not collectively use reasoned judgment and a basic trust in reality-based information to fashion public policy grounded in compassion and a view towards a sane and sustainable future, we will effectively rob the future of possibilities for our descendants.

Climate Change Revisited

Despite the anti-science rhetoric that seems to have broad representation in the US Congress, climate change is a very real phenomenon that if unchecked will put the world's people in peril. If our collective behavior in regards to burning of fossil fuels continues unabated it will necessarily have a dramatic impart on peace and security in the world populated by future generations of human beings. The question we must pose to ourselves is, "Is this the legacy we want to leave behind?"

An example of what the future may have in store is what changes are occurring in the lives of the peoples of the Marshall Islands.

The Tragedy of Forced Migration

It is currently estimated that approximately 60 million human beings have been forced to leave their homeland propelled by the ravages of war, extreme poverty and hunger.  This is said to be the greatest mass migration in human history even when compared to World War II and its aftermath. 

The media is being inundated with images of the desperate acts made daily by men, woman, children and the elderly in order to find a new home – a place where they might find some stability and chance for the future.  These individuals and families are so determined that they are willing to risk their lives and accept unimaginable hardship rather than endure the daily terror they face remaining in the place where are all their ethnic and cultural ties lie.  It is a profoundly traumatic decision that they feel compelled to make in the hope of finding some degree of peace and security.

The predominant motivation that is driving these remarkably desperate acts is the horrific consequences of violence and war.  They are fleeing from what have become so-called “Failed States” that include the countries of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, the Sudan and a list of countries with increasing instability that include Nigeria and the Congo, for example.

For the most part, these States and their boundaries were created as a direct result of the occupation and economic exploitation by the colonial empires of the past – British, Dutch and French for example. These areas of the globe possess important resources for the developed world and are of immense geopolitical importance as demonstrated by the military and economic involvement and intervention of current day superpowers such as the United States and Russia.

The current state of unrest in these countries reflects severe and seemingly intractable religious, ethnic and cultural differences that reside within national borders that were previously held in check either by a powerful colonial presence or a strong and autocratic leader or both.  Once these factors were no longer present, it left a power vacuum and its inevitable chaos.

This situation is no longer contained within the boundaries of the countries involved but is spilling over into the developed world – it has become a worldwide problem of immense proportions. If peace and social justice is to ever be attained, the world community needs to find creative and imaginative ways to bring warring factions together with the aim of establishing some kind of dialog to help diminish the level of violence so that human suffering can be abated.  This is a daunting problem with no easy solution; for, it requires that the peoples of this planet begin to think and act globally.  The human species on plant earth is becoming more and more tenuous; this state of being is also being threatened by the looming consequences of climate change.  It is the choices we make now that will profoundly influence the future.   

Lessons Never Learned

A current snapshot of the human world would reveal a very troubled, beleaguered and often deadly place for millions upon millions of humans.  If I were to create a partial listing of areas on the globe where human-inspired conflagration was evident, it would look something like this –

·         Millions of Syrians have already fled their country as innocents are being besieged and slaughtered by their own government and by pseudo Islamic State referred to as The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) led by a group of Islamic fundamentalist involved in atrocities of a most unsettling nature that are supposedly sanctioned by their Creator – behavior reminiscent of the early Crusades under the banner of Christendom.  This forced emigration is having an unsettling impact on the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Europe.

·          The people of Northern Yemen are being killed in large numbers by aerial bombardment from Saudi fighter planes as a part of a coalition effort to derail the growing influence of the Houthis.  It seems that the United States is part of that effort supplying armaments including bombs and cluster devices.

·          The people of Gaza have lived under horrific conditions for years.  The entire population of this rather miniscule strip of land has been kept as virtual prisoners by the Israeli government that periodically uses deadly force to control and constrain them.

·         The African continent has many hotspots where regional conflict abounds including Nigeria, The Congo, Kenya, Libya and Tunisia.  The specific cause(s) for violence and aggression in each of these regions have different explanations, but the end result remains the same – horrific suffering and death endured by many.

The unsettling reality that underlies all of these examples of human discord, mayhem and destruction is the fact that even though we are in the midst of the twenty-first century – a time of remarkable change inspired by technological innovation and scientific exploration regarding the nature of reality – the lessons that human history should have taught us remain unlearned.

While historians and political scientists attempt to find the immediate explanations for these regional conflagrations as they should; for, that is nature of their work, an important point is missed.  What individuals who have the good fortune to live in sovereignties with stable governments under the rule of law and with sustainable economies fail to recognize is that the history of these countries is replete with blood, savagery and needless death in order to accommodate the will to power and dominance.  This to me is an inescapable truth.  All the sad and reckless behavior that typifies the current state of humanity is nothing new.  We, as a species, have been there many times before.

In my mind, the tragedy of the human experience is that we, as a species, have collectively failed to develop a new paradigm for living.  We seem to continue to embrace a world view in which differences in religion, political belief, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, cultural identification and economic status are paramount and provide sufficient reason for enmity, suspicion, hatred and violence.

We have failed to recognize that all members of the our species are worthy of living a full and fruitful existence deserving; of equal treatment and equality of opportunity and justified in the expectation of equal access to that which is essential to life – adequate nutrition, housing, healthcare, peace and social justice and security.  Without this all-inclusive mindset we are doomed to repeat this cycle again and again