ABSTRACT
The Nobel campaign began abroad for foreign audiences, but its ultimate target was Guatemalan society. For years, Rigoberta Menchu had been presented internationally as an Indian leader, but at home she was largely unknown to the people she was supposed to represent. With the Nobel nomination in the air, Rigoberta finally became a national figure in October 1991, at the awkwardly but precisely titled Second Continental Conference on Five Hundred Years of Indigenous and Popular Resistance. The quincentenary conference became the platform to campaign for the Nobel inside Guatemala. The Nobel campaign opened new ground for the popular movement, in places where peasants still lived in fear. The Nobel committee could have honored an organization, as it has with Amnesty International and the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces. Over in Europe, the social democrats whose sentiments define the acceptable in Nobel awards were receptive.
