Photo: Wikileaks said President of Guatemala Alvaro Colom Called Rigoberta Menchú a "Fabrication."
The President of Guatemala, Álvaro Colom, was the latest world leader to blush and issue damage control half-apologies following an embarrassing WikiLeaks revelation.
A diplomatic document leaked to Wikileaks and published by the whistle-blowing site says the Guatemalan President described the revered Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu as a “fabrication” of French anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos. Burgos helped author the biography “I Rigoberta Menchú,” which introduced the Nobel Prize winner known as a human rights activist to the world.
The cable sent in July of 2008, revealed comments that Colom made to the then U.S. ambassador James Derham, where he said that “[Menchu is] widely disliked by Guatemalan indigenous people” and then commented on her poor results in the 2007 elections as an example of that dislike.
Menchú‘s organization regretted the comments, and praised Menchú‘s work and said that “through her life, she has been a defender of human rights, of the indigenous people’s rights, of justice, and peace.”
Menchú called the leader a “liar” on an interview with a local radio station.
