Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Nobel doesn't end village's problems Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 16:22:11 EST Message-ID: \SE A;WORLD \SS (WS) \HD Nobel doesn't end village's problems \BY Christena Colclough \CR ASSOCIATED PRESS \DT CHIMEL, Guatemala CHIMEL, Guatemala - As mountain mists swirled around this isolated hamlet, the brother of Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu looked solemnly at where the family's adobe home once stood. Like about 440 other rural communities, Chimel was virtually wiped off the map in the 1980s in a scorched-earth anti-subversive military campaign that forced hamlets suspected of aiding leftist guerrillas to relocate in military-controlled "model villages." Those who resisted were killed or fled to exile. There were 59 families in Chimel. Six remain, but while more are returning the village's problems and fears are far from over. Nicolas Menchu, 43, says he has received death threats merely because he is the older brother of the Nobel Prize winner, who was honored last month for her human rights work among Guatemala's 5 million Indians. "Members of the Voluntary Civil Patrols have sent word they want to end the Menchu lineage and will start with the oldest surviving brother first," he said in an interview. "I fear for my life." While the patrols, which serve as eyes and ears for the army in the rural highlands, are officially voluntary, there is heavy pressure for men to take part. Those who refuse often are killed or beaten, and the patrols are blamed for a long list of killings. The Guatemalan government congratulated Rigoberta Menchu on her prize, although some conservatives and members of the military said it lent support to the small band of guerrillas who continue a 30-year-old civil war. The military and paramilitary forces are blamed for the deaths of as many as 50,000 Guatemalans, most of them highland Indians. The Menchu family has suffered mightily already. In 1979 her brother Patrucinio was kidnapped, tortured and killed. In 1980, her father was burned to death in a fire in the Spanish Embassy that started when he and 39 other peasants tried to occupy it to protest the increased militarization of the department of Quiche, where Chimel is located. Later that year, her mother was kidnapped, tortured and killed. In 1983, another brother, Victor Menchu, was shot in the head in nearby Uspantan. The family blames the killings on the Guatemalan military. Chimel, although no longer subject to military incursions, still gets threats and pressure from other communities. Rigoberta Menchu has lived in self-imposed exile in Mexico since 1981. Fearing reprisals, she did not go to Chimel on a brief visit to Guatemala after winning the prize. But neighbors and family members remember her from when she lived there. Miguel Lux, a neighbor of the Menchus, said that from an early age the Nobel laureate showed her father's leadership qualities. "Rigoberta was an organizer, she followed her father's footsteps," he said. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM