Rhetorical Analysis Of Rigoberta Menchu's Speech

In Rigoberta Menchu’s speech, she acknowledges her success and thanks her audience for allowing her to be as successful as she was. Along with thanking her audience, she talks about what it means to win the Nobel Prize and how she continues and will continue to support the struggle between indigenous people throughout Latin America to regain their land, culture, and autonomy. Menchu speaks on her behalf from the first person point of view as a way to thank her audience and highlight what it means for her to win the Nobel Peace Prize, throughout her speech she uses anaphora to emphasize the importance of peace, justice, and human rights, Menchu also alludes to the ongoing injustices that indigenous groups face in Guatemala. Menchu uses these

She also uses allusion to show that this is an ongoing issue and that it needs to continue to be addressed and enforced in order for change to happen. Menchu talks about the, “growing concern is comforting, even though it comes 500 years later, to the suffering, the discrimination, the oppression and the exploitation that our peoples have been exposed to”. This allusion allows her to draw connections between different historical events and allow her to draw parallels between them and the issues going on in Guatemala and Central America. This allows her to deepen her message and show the importance and significance of this topic. Menchu also says, “It is also a tribute to the Central American people who are still searching for their stability, for the structuring of their future, and the path for their development and integration, based on civil democracy and mutual respect.” She mentions other groups and movements that are fighting for justice, peace, and human rights. While alluding to these events and groups, her audience is able to understand that this is a much larger issue than it seems to be and should be addressed