Guatemala: Rigoberta Menchu – another Indian President?
February 25, 2007
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1992, worthy representative of maya-quiche ethnic group, after long considerations and consultations with leaders of Indian organisations and left-centrist parties and groupings has decided – she will take part in the elections.
To a certain extent Guatemala will repeat the Bolivian precedent, when Indian-aymara Evo Morales, experienced in many political battles figure, became a candidate. He challenged the extreme conservatism and gain a victory.
In respect of Menchu it is too difficult to make any forecast of categorically victorious nature. Guatemala since the times of the progressive leader Jacobo Arbenz (1951-1954) has been under the yoke, you can't say otherwise, of local oligarchy, which enjoys practically unconditional support of the United States.
Overthrow of Arbenz that dared to encroach on excessive privileges of banana company «United Fruit», has become a tragic episode in the history of Guatemala. The pretext for overthrow has become a so called «communist infiltration» into the country, faked «news» of which have been extensively spread by the US Central Intelligence Agency. In June 1954 a gang of mercenaries, trained by the CIA, burst into the country. The government of Arbenz has fallen, and many long years of repressions, political persecutions, armed resistance of guerillas have followed.
It is possible to say that only in 1992 the democratic norms of ruling the country were restored, although the instruments of power are still with the traditional political elite that is guided by the United States.
There is no doubt that the blessing shadow of Jacobo Arbenz will accompany Rigoberta Menchu in her election campaign, in her attempts to return power to the people, including its Indian portion that makes about 60% of 12 million of the Guatemalans.
In case of victory of Menchu her future program is predictable: strengthening of sovereignty of the country, provision of realistic civil and social rights to all citizens without any exclusion, use of positive experience of reforms of those Latin American countries that have already started the road of struggle against neo-liberalism, which caused great damage to the economy of Latin America.
It is worth recollecting that Menchu has once won a «fight» with representatives of traditional Guatemala elite – at the trial of March-April 2005. The grandson of former dictator E. Rios Montt and four women-activists of the conservative party Frente Republicano Guatemalteco were convicted for racial offence. The grandson of dictator, who called Menchu a «dirty Indian, who should sell tomatoes at the market» got more than two years in prison and that was a precedent, which has given a proper encouragement to the Indians and lifted their self-consciousness and self-respect up to the unheard-of previously heights.
Well-known as a fighter for Indian rights, Menchu does a lot for her people not only at the political scene, but in real life as well. Arranged by her network of medical and pharmaceutical help to the poorest layers of population, will probably effect the electorate much more effectively than usual propaganda with slogans and promises.
One can predict intensifications of attacks on Rigoberta Menchu in the coming months. As it already happened before, the opponents will try to doubt all her trajectory of a victim of the dictator regime and fighter for human rights. Especially often they use her book of reminiscences «My name is Rigoberta Menchu», in which she tells about the drama of her Indian family, persecutions and tortures, which she's undergone. The thesis that the content of the book was completely faked-up, with suspicious frequency, is brought up to the pages and TV screens of bourgeois mass media.
There has appeared an additional aspect in «discrediting» Menchu, which, however, is customary: the president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez is «interested» in her victory and therefore «takes steps» to render her assistance, of course, by his abundant petrodollars.
Vice president of Guatemala Eduardo Stein not long ago during his visit to Washington refuted such rumors: «There is no Venezuelan money in Guatemalan election campaign! Signals of that kind have not come!» According to Stein, Menchu in her views does not belong to «radical populism» so much frightening the «rich and prosperous» of this world.
The president of Guatemala Oscar Berger has once taken a picture with Menchu in the best «spin-perspective»: hugs and kisses in extremely democratic context. All Guatemalans are brothers and sisters. The picture bears an obvious optimistic charge. And September 2007 will demonstrate if there are grounds for optimism.