It’s not every day locals get to listen to a Nobel Peace Prize winner speak about social justice, make an earnest appeal for reason during unreasonable times, and offer sage advice all in one go. The audience for Rigoberta Mench?’s visit to Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria on Oct. 23 got all that and more.
Hancock’s theme for the event was Breaking Barriers, and Mench?’s visit provided examples aplenty, with discussion ranging from spirituality and the root causes of human aggression to forensic pathology and child-rearing strategies based on the Mayan calendar.
She’s not what you’d call a one-trick pony.
Allan Hancock instructor Ana Gomez was part of the committee that arranged Mench?’s visit to the campus after hearing of her previous visit to Santa Maria in 2004.
“We wanted to expose our students to her message of social justice and peace,” Gomez said. “And, of course, she’s an amazing lady with an outstanding philosophy on life.”
Gomez also said that Mench?’s visit was important because “as educators, we have a responsibility to bring awareness of our students to a global level.”
Some people attended to learn more about the world, others because they’d read Mench?’s book or heard about her and were inspired. Some were there for school projects, and one person admitted to being there just to learn more Spanish. Brogan Sterns was one of those who came to hear Mench? speak for a school project, but ending up finding inspiration in her message.
“It’s very important to the people of this college—a lot of us haven’t experienced Third World poverty; a lot us need to realize it as a reality,” Sterns said. “I thought her message of giving oneself back to nature was very important.”
At one point during Mench?’s visit, she was asked whether she thought the world was getting closer to global peace, or further away.
“The problem is, we’re not together in what we mean when we say ‘peace,’” she said through her interpreter, her face growing sad. “Unfortunately, the concept that we have of peace in the world today is a concept of war ; of arms and soldiers and the military and invasions and conflict. Peace is not synonymous with war.
“I often ask myself what is it that allows humanity to reach a point of being so destructive ; where we have torture and forced disappearances and mass graves. I think it’s because when a person goes to war, they go to kill, they do not go to war to adore life.”
Mench? has had firsthand experience in these areas. She lost both of her parents and two brothers to Guatemalan security forces. In fact, it was bringing attention to the actions of the Guatemalan army during that country’s civil war that won her the Nobel Peace Prize. Helping exhume the bodies of those killed during the war is what she considers “the most impressive and hardest work that we do.”
“You start thinking you’re going to find 20 bodies and you end up with the remains of 200 to 300 people that were thrown into that mass grave,” she said.
Mench? is part of a DNA bank that will assist in the search for her brothers and sisters who were “disappeared,” and she’s actively involved in trying to prosecute those responsible.
For the past eight years, Mench? has been involved in a court case before the High Court of Spain, prosecuting the genocide in Guatemala.
During her visit, she wasn’t afraid to express her displeasure with the United Nation’s lack of action during Guatemala’s civil war, either: “If the U.N. had worked, we would have been able to avoid so much tragedy in the world. In the 1980s, if it had worked, we would have been able to avoid 200,000 victims of genocide.
“Unfortunately, the U.N. did not work, no one worked, nothing worked.”
Mench? has been able to turn the tragedy of those years to good, using the proceeds from her Nobel Peace Prize to set up the Rigoberta Mench? Foundation.
“I’m not romantic when it comes to the idea of saving all the children of the world,” she noted. “If I can get half a scholarship to five or 10 people, if I can get a scholarship to 100 people to finish elementary school—or just how lovely would it be if I could help get scholarships for people at the university level?”
Helping children and students is a big part of what Mench? does. Time and again she stressed the importance of today’s youth, and what being part of this generation means. She had an interesting take on the 16-and-younger crowd:
“So the children, if you’re born between 1992 and 2015, you are children that are born in this time we call ‘The time of no time,’” she said. “Adults will say, ‘I don’t know what to do with these kids. This kid is uncontrollable or mischievous.’
“What you’re seeing is a lot of cosmic energy, because they come to the world in a time when one era that has lasted for thousands of years is ending and a new one is coming.”
Mench? has also helped found the Nobel Women’s Initiative and the Association of Mayan Women. She’s also involved with the Academy of Maya Languages. And while she realizes she can’t save everyone, she also knows that’s no reason not to help those she can.
“If it’s just one or two people that you can help, then that’s what you do,” she said.
Contact Intern Nicholas Walter at intern@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2008.
