Woman with llama, Cuzco. Author: Beverly Goldberg. All Rights Reserved.
It was 1983. Rigoberta Menchú was only 24 when she began recounting her life experiences to anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos, a woman who would later launch her into a world of speeches and spotlights, far from the misty forests of her home in Laj Chimel, Guatemala.
Already a famous activist in Central America, her testimonial autobiography made her embroidered Mayan coronet internationally recognisable. She arguably became the first globally visible indigenous female political figure to come from Latin America.
