Noble Rigoberta
From Mr Philip C. Dent Sir: Stephen Schwartz refers to `the lying Guatemalan propagandist Rigoberta Mench' in his article 'Ignoble Nobel' (9 October).
I don't know if Mr Schwartz in Sarajevo has a personal axe to grind, but he might do this heroic lady the courtesy of getting her name right. Her name is Rigoberta Mench6 Turn and she is a Quiche Maya who spoke out against her country's military dictator-
ship and had to flee for her life in 1981. Your contributor perhaps knows little of the history of this country during that peri- od. I refer him to an article in the Financial Times of 9 October, which reports that the military regime is estimated to have mur- dered an estimated 200,000 people during the 1970s and 1980s, most of them Indians, a record which 'amounts to genocide against the Maya' (Washington Office on Latin America).
Perhaps Mr Schwartz would care to tell us more about the 'lies' to which he refers in his diatribe.
Philip C. Dent
117 Wood Street, Barnet, Hertfordshire
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