Rigoberta Menchu - Translation by Peggy Edwards

Rigoberta Menchu candidate to her country’s Presidency, “In Guatemala we are not poor but impoverished.”

By Luis Arritola

Even though she is not favored by statistics to win the first round for the Presidency of Guatemala on September 9- she’s in fifth place with a 2.4% electorate- Rigoberta Menchu realizes an intense campaign visiting small and distant communities all over the country, gathering testimonials of the profound needs of her people, principally Indigenous and composed of peasant women, who are the country’s majority.

Interviewed exclusively for PARA TODOS in her recent visit to the city of Los Angeles last June 2, 2007. Rigoberta Menchu gave us a picture of a country suffering from genocide, organized crime and unemployment. A country where 51% of the population are women and only 8% of them vote, where 16% are suffering from hunger and 90% of the children are undernourished.

Dressed in her characteristic Guatemalan clothing which underscores the intensity of the look in her eyes and the warmth of her smile, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize of 1992 says the worst obstacles of Guatemala’s development are, “crime, insecurity, the lack of a criminal justice system, and the existence of a corrupt congress. At least now, after 10 years from the time of signing the peace agreements in Guatemala, a person can vote without fear of being executed.” She commented that an average of 15 people die violently daily with no criminal retribution from the system.

Menchu claims, “a pact of govern ability is needed to fortify the state. Our state is weak. This pact must include all of business and civil society; it has to destroy the mafia and its influence; it has to confront the 200,000 Maras who originated in the United States, who constitute an atmosphere of daily violence.”

In a frame where the three leading candidates are allied to corporative and economic forces who finance their costly political campaigns, Rigoberta Menchu’s campaign is made up of ‘little ants’ with limited economic resources, but with sympathizers in the corners of the country which permit her to enter in contact with people of all communities, leading her to the conclusion that in, “Guatemala we are not poor but impoverished.”

She said it would be necessary to do an accounting of lands in order to recuperate illegally owned land, to take care of the profound causes which sank Guatemala in war for decades and was the cause of the country being stuck in extreme poverty causing the displacement of entire communities in the last 25 years and causing an intense migration of refugees to Mexico and the United States.

The sole indigenous and woman candidate to the Guatemalan Presidency in 2007, also pronounced herself in favor of the revision of the Panama-Puebla Plan now being studied by Guatemala, “which is a plan to waste our resources disguised as a fair agreement, and for the serious application of the Central American Peace Treaty known as “Esquipulas” already in its third version, to emphasize security in Guatemala and Central America,” said Menchu.

Regarding her relationship to the Guatemalan impresario, Rigoberta declared herself in favor of a “good business climate” which includes small as well as big business, in what she called an effort by all to grow and reduce the abysmal inequality within Guatemala.

In that sense, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, presidential candidate to the Guatemalan Presidency, said her proposal of government is a Guatemala who recognizes diversity, “We’re sick of a government for the few, we want a Guatemala who includes all of us, where we all fit.”

Regarding the emigrated Guatemalan community, Menchu leans towards, “dignifying the Guatemala immigrant, value him and make him feel that even from Guatemala we accompany him in his battles. Guatemala protects her citizens wherever they are.”

Menchu called upon Guatemalans wherever she went, to vote in the presidential election and that if they couldn’t to ask their family in Guatemala to do so.

The Presidential Elections on September 9 with 22 registered parties, probably will not indicate a clear majority by any one of them, so there will be a need for another round between the two top candidates, presumably Alvaro Colon, of the central left Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), with 21.3% and in first place and Otto Perez Molina of Partido Patriota (PP) in second place with 14.4%, a candidate also close to the corporations.

Whatever the electoral result, Rigoberta Menchu assures us that according to the Maya Calendar, about 2013, when the sixth sun will surge, the era of darkness that whips mankind with suffering, anguish and a lack of light will end. That is how she explains her participation in the presidential election, “What we do in Guatemala is open up a path for the future.”

“We won’t be able to win a complete democracy,”says the Nobel Peace Prize winner, “ We have to begin by fighting organized crime, which has corrupted all the scales of government. Finish with the remainders of the past where more than one million weapons exist on our streets. In a battle all together to open that path so the dawning may arrive and the New Era of Light for humanity according to our Maya Calendar.”