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news
Menchú
gives hope
By Jeanne Hoffa
On-line Forty-Niner
Rigoberta Menchú
won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, yet still has a hard time
getting past border patrol agents and boarding international
flights. Officers take one look at her United Nations passport
and sneer.
No one who looks likes her could be an international diplomat,
said the featured speaker at the California Faculty Association's
Teach-In Wednesday. She said few Mayans have the opportunity
to become diplomats.
Though barely tall enough to peer over the podium, something
about Rigoberta Menchú makes people want to toss out
their CDs and Gap jeans and go dig trenches in South Africa.
The diminutive Mayan's early struggles toiling in Guatamalan
fields to help her family survive made such an impression
on her that she developed a keen eye for individuals struggling
against the odds, trying to make a life for themselves, fighting
for a little self-esteem, workings toward solving their problems.
Menchú gained international attention when she fought
against genocide in her native country, where 200,000 people
were murdered and another 50,000 are missing, an attrocity
that she said happened because people were silent.
Now she works to encourage people in all nations to believe
in the value of each other's voices, and to listen.
Now internationally famous, the woman who has traveled the
globe said she feels sad whenever she leaves a country.
"Even though I'm not familiar with their language, or
their customs, or their culture, I got to go there, and I
got to enjoy their great diversity," Menchú said.
"My Mayan ancestors would have loved the chance to travel,
to enjoy each of these diverse places. To know that they exist."
Menchú said the hope for the planet may rest in people's
ability to embrace their differences and treasure them, rather
than fear them.
"Each of us has defects," she said. "We need
to develop a code of ethics, so that if we encounter something
unknown to us, we don't respond to it with violence."
She said she felt sorry for every single life that was lost
in the terrorist attacks, and that lives lost throughout the
world are all tragedies and of equal value.
The challenge in dealing with the global crisis is to break
the rules, she said, which means breaking through expectations
of how the world should respond, or what the obvious answers
are.
Pain and suffering gave her wings, she said, and because of
hurt she became the person she is. People mature through suffering,
although she hoped the audience would not have to suffer in
order to discover their contribution to the world.
Menchú also addressed the concerns of the CFA, citing
statistics that 60,000 transnational corporations are merging
in an effort to make public institutions private. But their
goals are not to increase education; but to increase business.
Education is the birthright of every person in the world,
and that people had to fight to keep it from being taken away.
Education is like travel, she said, and that it is important
students need to get around, to experience different ways
of living, and how other people solve problems.
When members in the audience who had gathered to hear the
issues of the CFA asked her what they should do to make a
difference in their community, she said that each individual
has the power to make a difference.
"Sometimes, it's one person," she said, "one
person who is stubborn, one lone teacher, who everyone thinks
is crazy, someone who is trudging forward against the grain,
alone and sometimes in pain."
If people would evaluate how much time gets spent watching
television, or playing video games, they could see how much
time that could be spent involved in problems in their community.
Often she will spend time in a hospital, and afterwards she
feels renewed. She hoped others would discover what makes
them help themselves and others feel renewed.
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Jeanne
Hoffa/On-line Forty-Niner
Rigoberta Menchú, keynote speaker of
the California Faculty Association Teach-in, shares her experiences
in Guatemala to inspire others to get involved in the community.
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