AMBASSADOR'S MEETING WITH NOBEL LAUREATE MENCHU

C O N F I D E N T I A L GUATEMALA 000593 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/08/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM GT SUBJECT: AMBASSADOR'S MEETING WITH NOBEL LAUREATE MENCHU REF: A. GUATEMALA 529 ¶B. 07 GUATEMALA 1859 ¶C. GUATEMALA 498 Classified By: Ambassador James M. Derham for reasons 1.4 (b&d). Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu told the Ambassador May 8 she did not regret her failed 2007 presidential bid. She said her nascent political movement would compete in future elections, and discussed her many international activities. Menchu said she was unimpressed by the Colom Government so far, and resented President Colom's failure to respond to her requests for meetings. Although dismissed by many Guatemalans as being out of touch with Guatemala's reality, Menchu was forward-looking, and made clear she plans to continue her busy international and domestic agendas. End Summary. Ambassador Meets with Nobel Laureate Menchu -------------- ¶2. (U) On May 8, the Ambassador and Pol/Econ Counselor had breakfast with Guatemalan Nobel Laureate and indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchu and Eduardo de Leon, Executive Director of the Rigoberta Menchu Foundation at the Residence. Menchu had just returned from Nobel Prize-related travel to Europe. She said she had also traveled recently to Colorado and Tennessee "on business" and in promotion of a traveling art exposition that includes a portrait of her. Asked about her activities in Guatemala, Menchu mentioned educational programs conducted by the Pavarotti Center in Santiago, Atitlan in which her Foundation is involved. She also said that she had recovered the last of her deceased father's land near Uspantan, Quiche Department, and discussed her efforts to conserve the adjacent Chimel Forest. Disappointed by Colom -------------- ¶3. (C) Asked her opinion of the Colom Government, Menchu sighed to indicate disappointment. She refrained from giving a detailed critique, but said that the new government had had a hard time getting started and finding the right people for senior positions. She said President Colom had "stabbed himself in the neck" with his public review of his first 100 days in office (ref a). It had only served to highlight the discrepancy between public expectations and what the new government had actually accomplished. She contrasted former President Berger's having named her Goodwill Ambassador for Guatemala and making her a cabinet member with President Colom's aloofness. She said she had twice requested meetings with President Colom. No Regrets About Presidential Bid -------------- ¶4. (C) Menchu said she had no regrets about her failed presidential candidacy of 2007. (Note: She won 3.1% of the vote, ref b). Her candidacy had been precedent-setting in that she was the first indigenous woman to ever have run for President of Guatemala. She said it "lit a spark" and laid political groundwork on which her Winaq Political Movement would build. Without committing to running again herself, she said her movement would participate in the next national elections. She felt she had been treated fairly by print media, but had had neither the financial resources nor the contacts to win favorable television coverage. Her relationship with the left-leaning "Encounter for Guatemala" (EPG) party, for which she ran as presidential candidate, had been one of electoral convenience, and had ended with the election. There had been no threats against her life during the course of the campaign, Menchu mentioned. Qthe course of the campaign, Menchu mentioned. ¶5. (SBU) Asked about the Public Ministry's recent assertion that none of the 50-plus murders of political activists in the run-up to the 2007 elections had been politically motivated, Menchu said it was hard to be sure (ref c). However, she said she believed that the September 7, 2007, murders of EPG candidates Esmeralda Uyu Sican and Wanceslao Ayapan, who were shot as they hung Menchu campaign posters along a rural road in San Raymundo, Guatemala Department, had been politically motivated. She also suspected that the May 26, 2007 murder of Liverato Granados, EPG candidate for Mayor of Zacapa, had been politically motivated. De Leon observed that the Public Ministry's dismal record in solving crimes made it difficult to come to firm conclusions about the motives for most murders. Comment -------------- ¶6. (C) Recovered from her electoral defeat, Menchu is clearly focusing more on interational activities related to her Nobel status thn on Guatemalan politics. Her Winaq movement has a small and very independent presence in Congress which does not appear to rely for guidance on Menchu. Clearly Menchu remains a presence in Guatemala, though far more for her international role than for her influence in Guatemalan politics. Derham