Recordings of Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, Digitized by Hoover Archives | Hoover Institution

Recordings of Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, Digitized by Hoover Archives | Hoover Institution

The sound recordings of Rigoberta Menchú that formed the basis of her autobiographical book, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (London: Verso, 1983), compiled by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, are digitized and available for immediate access at the Hoover Archives. Menchú, a Quiché Indian woman who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1992, was interviewed by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray over the course of a week in 1982. The recordings are among the Elisabeth Burgos-Debray papers at Hoover.

In the introduction to I, Rigoberta Menchú, Burgos-Debray writes, “Every day for a week, we began to record her story at nine in the morning, broke for lunch at about one, and then continued until six in the evening. We often worked after dinner too, either making more recordings or preparing questions for the next day. At the end of the week I had twenty-four hours of conversation on tape.”