ABSTRACT
In January 1982 Rigoberta Menchu went on her first tour of Europe, as a representative of the January 31st Popular Front. Even if Rigoberta’s school career did not give her the liberty to become a Committee for Campesino Unity activist before she fled the country in 1980, it puts her on the cutting edge of revolutionary organizing during this period, and not just in Guatemala. In her hometown she was a schoolgirl and in San Cristobal an outgoing young refugee. In 1966 the couple went to Havana for the Tricontinental Conference, an international assembly of Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians, which issued a declaration of revolutionary war throughout the Third World. Asked to stay on by the Cubans, Elisabeth and Regis went into military training. Rigoberta showed up at her door accompanied by Tremblay, in the cold of winter, wearing the same light clothes she would back home.
