For Guatemala's Rigoberta Menchú, votes aren’t everything

Rigoberta Menchu recently spoke with the Tico Times about her role in postwar Guatemala.

With two unsuccessful presidential campaigns under her belt, where she failed on both occasions to garner more than 3 percent of the national vote, it may seem like her work has fallen short of bettering the lives of Guatemala’s indigenous people. But her success may be larger than the polls suggest.

“I’ve really enjoyed the last two elections,” Menchú told The Tico Times in a recent conversation. “I haven’t reached 30 percent of the vote, but I’ve reached 95 percent of the country.”

In 2007, the Mayan activist became the first indigenous person to run for Guatemala’s top political post, and four years later she founded the country’s first Mayan political party, WINAQ.

“We were never interested in winning the elections. You can’t win without money, and no multimillionaire would support us,” she said.

Recounting an anecdote from her last campaign, she described addressing a rural town when an opposition party’s bus drove by announcing it was handing out packets of rice. Her audience disappeared.

“Elections here are a carnival, they’re not democratic. Parties use poverty, giving the poor hope by handing them food.”

Despite the irony that the majority of the people she campaigns for do not vote for her, Menchú said her political career has been a success.

“I’ve opened a door to Mayans and to women. Not only do we now have a party, but we also have one person in Congress,” she said, referring to Mayan lawyer Amílcar Pop.

But it’s not all politics.

I've been anti-candidate Menchu for awhile and remain so. While her name and personal story are sure to garner domestic and international media coverage, she's done little to build long-term support for a viable political project of the left or of the indigenous in Guatemala.

As long as the political left supports her for the presidency, they don't have much of a chance. The right aren't going to support her anyway but having her name in the news gives them the opportunity to send me photos of what they say is a photo of Menchu in guerrilla fatigues.

Some on the left tell of meeting her at cocktail parties in DC during the 1980s prior to her winning the Nobel Prize and give a different picture of her. Many on the Guatemalan left do not trust her because of her VP in the 2007 election, Luis Fernando Montenegro, a former president of Guatemala’s national coffee association (ANACAFE). He was neither indigenous nor a man of the people.

Then in 2011, the Frente Amplio de la Izquierda had more or less agreed on Yuri Melini as its presidential candidate and perhaps Walda Barrios as vice president. A few months before the election, however, in April, Menchu and Winaq said that they wanted to be part of the Frente Amplio but only if Rigoberta was its presidential candidate. And not only that, but Amilcar Pop of Winaq would have to head the national list for congress.

While there was hope that Menchu and Winaq would help the left in 2011, it looks like they set back the cause of the left. What they required to join the Frente Amplio caused all sorts of problems at the local level, all of them anticipated. They didn't seem to put the political project of the left ahead of their own personal ambitions.