Feminist Peace Network

Here is an interesting piece about Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu Tum’s bid to become president of Guatemala. Jacob Wheeler writes for In These Times,

“She’s a national hero who isn’t nearly as radical anymore,� says Iduvina Hernandez, executive director of the Association for the Study and Promotion of Security in a Democracy, which monitors threats against human rights in Guatemala. “It’s a positive sign that she’s running, though she doesn’t have a chance to win. She’s merely testing the waters.�

Enrique Davis, an advisor to Menchú based in Mexico, admits that, if elected, she wouldn’t try to carry out the kind of radical agrarian reforms that prompted the United States to engineer a coup in 1954 against the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz—an action that spiraled the country into civil war six years later. But, Davis says, she would push for economic and social responsibility sorely lacking in a country where 10 percent of the population owns half of the wealth, and more than 50 percent survive on less than $2 a day.

“She’s not going to close your business or socialize things,� he says, referring to Guatemala’s rich, landowning and mostly light-skinned elite. “But you need to pay taxes and accept some co-responsibility for making the country better. It’s not enough to become a millionaire—you have to do something for this country, too.�

For more on her presidential campaign, click here.

Photo taken at the International Women’s Peace Conference in Dallas, TX, July, 2007 by Lucinda Marshall.

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