She won the Nobel Peace Prize, hunted down former dictators through international courts, and then watched major newspapers question the literal truth of the autobiography that made her famous. Rigoberta Menchu’s life forces us to confront how history gets recorded and who has the power to record it.

This episode traces her rise from a persecuted Kʼicheʼ Maya community in Guatemala to the highest levels of the global stage. We explore the brutal civil war that claimed her family, the controversy over her memoir, and how she pivoted from storyteller to sophisticated legal and political operative.

• The Cold War backdrop and scorched-earth campaigns targeting the Maya
• Dictating her memoir in Paris and bypassing state censorship worldwide
• The 1992 Nobel Prize functioning as both diplomatic shield and skeleton key
• David Stoll’s investigation and her defense of collective testimony
• Using universal jurisdiction in Spain to indict former Guatemalan dictators