From: <clari@NEWS.COM>
Subject: Spat over Nobel nominees illustrates country's racial tensions
Reply-To: Multiple recipients of list MEXICO-L <MEXICO-L@TECMTYVM.BITNET>
Organization: NEWS Netnews Service
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 23:05:58 GMT

 _Vast _gulf _in _Guatemala _between _whites, _Mayans


 GUATEMALA CITY (UPI) -- The emergence of Indian activist Rigoberta
Menchu Tum as a strong contender for this year's Nobel Peace Prize has
so rattled Guatemala's ruling elite that it has scrambled to produce a
Nobel candidate of its own.
 Should Menchu win, world attention would focus on Guatemala's abysmal
human rights record at a time when President Jorge Serrano is attempting
to give the country a modern, democratic veneer after a decade of war
and military rule.
 As a result, official Guatemala has ignored Menchu and thrown its
support behind Elisa Molina de Stahl, a white, well-to-do philanthropist
who works on behalf of Guatemala's deaf and blind.
 Observers say the maneuver also reflects a racist streak against the
Mayan Indian population, which for decades has been brutalized by the
military and excluded from the economic and political power structure.
 Serrano could have embraced Menchu's candidacy to provide an opening
to Guatemala's 23 Indian groups. But instead he ``put in a thinly
disguised counter-candidate. It was ridiculous,'' said a Western
diplomat.
 The resumes of Menchu and Stahl reflect the vast gulf between the
world of Guatemala's upper-class whites and mestizos and the Indians,
who make up 50 percent of the country's 9 million population.
 Known as ``Dona Elisa,'' Stahl graduated from U.S. schools and speaks
Spanish, French and English. She wears attractive dresses and has
impeccable credentials among Guatemala's social circles.
 Stahl has devoted her life to social welfare causes and was nominated
for the Nobel Prize by legislators in the National Congress.
 Menchu grew up picking coffee for 20 cents a day in an impoverished
Quiche province Indian village. Most of her family was killed -- as were
thousands of Indians -- during the 1980s as the army waged a counter-
insurgency campaign to wipe out leftist guerrillas.
 Menchu fled to Mexico, and from exile has spent the past decade
promoting Indian rights. She still wears the traditional ``huipil''
woven blouses native to her village in the Guatemalan highlands.
 ``Rigoberta is the first woman to take up the fight. She is our
sister,'' said Lucia Quila, an Indian leader and member of the National
Coordination of Guatemalan Widows.
 Last year, Nobel laureates Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and
Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina nominated Menchu for the 1992 Peace
Prize. The winner will be announced in October by a panel of judges in
Oslo, Norway.
 Arthur Sydnes, a Norwegian diplomat based in Central America, said
Menchu is considered one of the favorites since 1992 marks 500 years of
Indian resistance and survival following the arrival of Columbus in the
Americas.
 In addition, awarding the prize to Menchu would put Guatemala's human
rights record under closer scrutiny.
 The country has been ruled by elected civilian governments since
1986, and in recent years the civil war has died down. Yet
assassinations, disappearances, torture and other abuses are common,
giving Guatemala one of the worst human rights records in the world.
 U.S. Ambassador Thomas F. Stroock has loudly denounced abuses and has
helped threatened Guatemalans obtain asylum in the United States. The
Bush administration cut off military aid to Guatemala two years ago
after the army tortured and murdered a U.S. resort owner.
 Political analyst Julio Cesar Godoy charged that Menchu is supported
by communists who want to embarrass Guatemala. Serrano accused Menchu of
collaborating with the guerrillas. He gave his blessing to Stahl by
awarding her the Order of the Quetzal, the nation's highest honor.
 Commenting on the flap, a recent newspaper cartoon depicted an Indian
woman asking Menchu what she had received from the government. Menchu
replies: ``The arrest order.''
 In an editorial, Prensa Libre, Guatemala's largest newspaper and one
of Stahl's main supporters, denied that her candidacy was part of a
campaign against Menchu.
 ``It is improper to think the candidacy of Mrs. Stahl was launched to
counteract Miss Menchu's. That is an invented story,'' the editorial
said. ``We support Mrs. Stahl but Miss Menchu's candidacy declares all
of our respect.''
 Controversy over the Nobel Peace Prize, however, is nothing new.
 Besides recognizing figures who have made breakthroughs in the search
for peace, the prize is awarded to promote peace in troubled lands. Past
laureates -- from Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa to the exiled
Dalai Lama of Tibet -- have caused great discomfort to their governments.
 Although Menchu often seems like the scourge of the officaldom, she
has wide support among students, intellectuals and Indians.
 ``It was incredible,'' said Nicaraguan Indian activist Marlin
Cunningham, recalling Menchu's visit to Guatemala last October.
``Thousands of Indians came down from the mountains to see her.''