Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA

Rigoberta Menchú Kicked Out of a Hotel in Cancun

The Guatemalan Presidential candidate was confused with a street vendor

AGENCIAS-Cancun 8/16/2007

Translated by Remle Crowe

The Guatemalan Presidential candidate and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Rigoberta Menchú was kicked out of a hotel in Cancun on August 14 according to the Mexican media.

Apparently, she was thrown out of the Coral Beach Hotel by hotel security, where she had come to give an interview with a local television station. Hotel employees confused Menchú, who was dressed in her usual Mayan attire, with a street vendor and they proceeded to remove her from the hotel facilities. David Romero Vara, a newsman for the television station, said that he witnessed the security officers try to forcefully remove Menchu from the reception area of the five star hotel.

Menchu came as a special guest of Mexican President, Felipe Calderón, to the conference of the National Association of Companies for Water and Sanitation.

Nevertheless, according to Union Radio, a Mexican radio station, this isn’t the first time that the Nobel Peace prizewinner of 1992 has been confused with a street vendor because of her attire and expelled by security officers from a resort in Cancun. The Presidential candidate from the center-left party “Encounter for Guatemala” (EG) expressed that she hopes for protests against attitudes of “racism, ignorance, and machismo” during the Presidential elections in Guatemala that will take place on September 9th.

 

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