Rigoberta Menchu, winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize
Credit: © Micheline Pelletier Decaux, Getty Images

People in the United States observe National Hispanic Heritage Month each year from September 15 to October 15. During this period, Latin American countries celebrate their independence. These countries include Cuba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan K’iche’ (previously spelled Quiche) Indigenous woman, won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work to gain respect for the rights of Guatemala’s Native American peoples. The Ki’che’ are descendants of the Mayan Indigenous people.

Menchu was born on Jan. 9, 1959, into a poor family in Chimel, northeast of Santa Cruz del Quiche. She became an agricultural laborer as a small child. In 1977, her father, Vicente Menchu, helped organize the Peasant Unity Committee, a group seeking rights for agricultural workers and land for peasants.

Rigoberta Menchú is a Guatemalan human rights activist. Menchú won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in support of American Indians’ rights in Guatemala.
Credit: © Robert Pitts, Landov

Since about 1960, Guatemala’s government had been fighting a civil war with leftist groups. It objected to the Menchu family‘s political activities. By 1981, Menchu’s parents and one of her brothers had been killed by the Guatemalan army. That year, Menchu fled Guatemala.

Her autobiography, I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, was published in 1983. The book called attention to injustices suffered by Indians in Guatemala and to the human rights abuses of the Guatemalan military. A study published in 1998 charged that certain parts of Menchu’s book were inaccurate. Menchu responded that she had mixed other Native Americans’ experiences into her book, and that it represented the story of the Guatemalan people rather than of one individual.

In 2004, Guatemalan President Oscar Berger offered Menchu a position in Guatemala’s national government. She agreed to help oversee the implementation of the 1996 peace accords that ended the civil war. In September 2007, she ran for the presidency of Guatemala but was not elected.

June 8, 2018

At around noon on Sunday, June 3, the Volcán de Fuego (Volcano of Fire) erupted in southern Guatemala, a nation in Central America. The explosive eruption forced a massive ash cloud more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) into the air, blotting out the sun and darkening the immediate area. The volcano also spewed lava and rock, and a super-heated mass of gas and volcanic material known as a pyroclastic flow raced down the volcano’s sides and engulfed nearby communities. Fuego has since continued to erupt, but its intensity has greatly diminished. The Guatemalan military is helping local firefighters, police, and volunteers rescue people trapped in the ashy mud and recover and count the bodies of the dead. Thus far, the volcanic eruption has killed 109 people and injured more than 300 others. Many people remain missing, and thousands of people have been forced from their homes.

On June 4, 2018, residents of the municipality of Alotenango, Gautemala, carry the coffins of people killed in the violent eruption of the nearby Volcán de Fuego. Credit: © Johan Ordonez, AFP/Getty Images

The towns of El Rodeo, Las Lajas, and San Miguel Los Lotes—those closest to Volcán de Fuego—were partially buried beneath volcanic mud and soot. Other areas were hit too as the pyroclastic flow burned and buried the people, homes, and vehicles in its path. Layers of volcanic ash covered nearby Antigua, a colonial city some 27 miles (44 kilometers) southwest of Guatemala City, the nation’s capital. Ash forced the closure of Guatemala City’s La Aurora International Airport, and the government warned of significant amounts of ash and toxic gases in the air. The government also warned of the threat of mudslides, as heavy rains could dislodge solidified volcanic material from Fuego’s steep sides and foothills. Local streams and waterways are clogged with ash, and the toll on area plant and animal life will be significant.

Fuego’s peak soars 12,346 feet (3,763 meters) above sea level. It is a stratovolcano, a tall volcanic mountain that typically has steep sides. Fuego is one of Central America’s most active volcanoes, and it is in a state of near-constant eruption. It has experienced more than 60 significant eruptions since the arrival of Spanish explorers in the area in 1524, but few of the events have resulted in human fatalities. Sunday’s eruption was by far Fuego’s largest and deadliest. The worst eruption in Guatemala’s recorded history took place at the nearby Volcán Santa María in 1902, an event that killed thousands of people.

Guatemala sits on the infamous Ring of Fire, a turbulent zone of frequent seismic and volcanic activity along the islands and continents rimming the Pacific Ocean. Fuego and its neighbor volcano, Acatenango, form a complex known as La Horqueta (The Pitchfork). People hike and climb the summit of the much quieter and safer Acatenango for a view of the constantly rumbling Volcán de Fuego.

June 24, 2013

Pyramids, palaces, ball courts, and houses from an ancient Maya city overgrown by centuries of thick jungle vegetation have been discovered in a remote area of southeastern Mexico by scientists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. Occupied from about A.D. 600 until 900, the city has been newly renamed Chactun. The scientists reported that the city, which covered about 54 acres (22 hectares), is the first ancient Maya complex found in a now heavily forested area of Campeche province in the western Yucatán Peninsula. Also found at the site were plazas and altars as well as stone monuments called stelae. The name “K’inch B’ahlam,” which may refer to one of the city’s rulers, was carved on one stele.

The scientists discovered Chactun while examining aerial photographs of the area. Visiting the site required hacking their way along paths once used by loggers and workers who tapped the area’s rubber trees.

The Maya civilization reached its peak from about A.D. 250 to 900. During that time, known as the Classic Period, it was centered in the tropical rain forest of the lowlands of what is now northern Guatemala. By about 900, most of the Maya abandoned the lowlands and moved to areas to the north and south, including Yucatán and the highlands of southern Guatemala. In those areas, they continued to prosper until Spain conquered almost all of the Maya in the mid-1500′s. Scholars are still trying to discover the reasons for the collapse of Classic Maya society in the lowlands. Some experts point to a combination of such factors as overpopulation, disease, exhaustion of natural resources, crop failures, warfare between cities, and the movement of other groups into the Maya area.

In a study published in November 2012, a research team headed by environmental archaeologist Douglas Kennett of Pennsylvania State University concluded that a 100-year drought played a major role in the collapse of the Classic Maya society. The drought, which plagued the lowlands from 1020 to 1100, had followed a drying period that began in about 660. According to Kennett, Maya writings from this period link the drought to widespread famine, disease, and wars, among other disruptive events.

Additional World Book article include:

• Chichén Itzá
• Copán
  
• Mexico (History of)
• The Ancient Maya: Deciphering New Clues (a special report)
• Archaeology (1924) (a Back in Time article)