Crossing borders

In this, the second instalment of her autobiography, the celebrated Guatemalan Indian leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner picks up the story where her first volume, I, Rigoberta Menohu, ended. In 1981 Rigoberta fled from Guatemala, deeply traumatised by the violence inflicted on her community including the murders of her brother, father and mother. Exiled in Mexico she began building a support movement with the Indians living as outlaws in Guatemala's mountains. In 1988 she returned to Guatemala City where she was immediately arrested and released only after considerable international pressure. Danielle Mitterrand and Desmond Tutu were amongst those who joined a worldwide campaign to secure the Nobel Peace Prize for Rigoberta. Here she describes the events leading up to winning the prize in 1992 and the joyous celebrations which followed in Guatemala. In her role as roving ambassador for indigenous peoples Rigoberta has traversed the globe and her chronicle of these journeys is a thread which winds through this book. But, like its predecessor, Crossing Borders is much more than a political diary. In these pages Rigoberta talks with deep affection about her family and especially her mother, a woman who combined the various roles of peasant leader, midwife and keeper of the community's secrets. She returns again to the traditions of her Mayan background, comparing her people's respect for the village and its environment with the selfish individualism of a modern consumer society she has come to know only as an adult.