480 UNIT 4 MESOAMERICAN CULTURAL FEATURES
Figure 13.3 “Orgía: noche de los ricos”
[Orgy: Soiree of the Rich], fresco by
Diego Rivera in the Ministerio de
Educación Pública in Mexico City.Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México (UNAM).On the other hand, Indian themes early on found their way into Guatemalan
literature, as evidenced in Miguel Angel Asturias’s Men of Maize(1949), which is
based on symbolic ideas that come from the Popol Wuh.He received the Nobel Prize
in Literature for this work, among others, in 1967. More recently, Rigoberta Menchú,
herself a Mayan, received the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in promoting so-
cial and political justice for the nation’s still-oppressed Maya Indian population.
Her book I, Rigoberta Menchú(1983), an autobiography that documents her life and
the dawn of her political consciousness, was a key item of evidence that entered
into the decision-making process that led to this great honor. It is symptomatic of
the political differences between Mexico and Guatemala that Rigoberta Menchú
and her work achieved international fame not for their celebration of traditional In-
dian themes as a rediscovered part of national identity, but for the author’s vivid per-
sonal testimonial of the tragic victimization of Indians by the ruling white
government in the current climate of civil violence (for more on Rigoberta Menchú,
see Box 8.3, Chapter 8).DACS 2015©