Nobel laureate starts PeaceJam with speech at FSU

On Friday at 6 p.m. hundreds of Florida State University students and Tallahassee community members overfilled the FSU College of Medicine auditorium to listen to the words of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchu Tum.

The event kicked-off the PeaceJam Southeast conference that met at FSU this past weekend. PeaceJam is an international educational program based out of Denver, Colo.,  that is built around Nobel Peace Laureates “who work personally with youth to pass on the spirit, skills, and wisdom they embody.”

The FSU Center for Leadership and Civic Education is the arm of the university that sponsors PeaceJam.

“Saturday and Sunday all weekend, and all over campus, there’ll be about 550 high school and middle school students from all over the Southeast region of the United States,” said Rody Thompson, local director of the PeaceJam program.

The remainder of the conference was closed to these high school and middle school students attending, and the mentors affiliated with the PeaceJam program. This pubic talk, however, gave the rest of the community a chance to hear a Nobel Laureate speak.

“We allowed our students and community members a very rare opportunity to hear somebody of this caliber speak and to get to meet somebody who is a Nobel Peace Laureate,” said Jaime Bayo, PeaceJam intern and program host for the event . “And also, we got to get the word out there about PeaceJam and what we do here at FSU.”

This is the second annual PeaceJam. Last year was the first time FSU hosted the event. Every time FSU hosts the PeaceJam conference, a Nobel Laureate comes to speak. The remainder of the conference revolves around educating youth about the laureate’s accomplishments in hopes of inspiring young people in the process.  Last year, FSU hosted Betty Williams. This year, Rigoberta Menchu Tum of the Maya Quiche in Guatemala was honored.

“Many of the young people in our country are struggling with the identity of peace,” opened Rudy Balles, an associate of the PeaceJam headquarters in Denver who introduced Tum. “We are very honored to bring one of the greatest leaders of our time of indigenous people.”

Tum grew up during a 30 year period of war in Guatemala, a time in which over 200,000 Guatemalans were murdered and the military brutally attacked the Mayan people. The war and its militants destroyed 450 Indian villages, creating one million refugees. The war not only ravaged Tum’s country, but her family.

“My father was burned alive,” she said in her speech translated by Dr. Delia Poey. “My mother was tortured and humiliated and assassinated. One of my brothers was executed, another one was burned alive. I lost a lot of friends in the armed conflict in Central America and in Guatemala. And I lived in exile.”

In response to the unjust governmental practices and human treatment, Tum and others spoke out. After seemingly perpetual moving and hiding, she eventually became the world spokesperson for her people. In 1992, she became the first Native American and the youngest woman ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of the rights of indigenous people around the world.

“All of us for as long as we live have a mission for humanity,” said Tum. “And this is what I come to share with the young people. You can have creativity. You can have passion for humanity. You can’t only theorize humanity.  Humanity is our own capacity to do something beyond ourselves, in other words to transcend, and you are the new generation that will transcend.”

The event was so widely attended that the coordinators had to add an overflow room at the last minute, in which the lecture was fed in through a video feed in order to accommodate the abundance of attendees. Even then, seats were filled to capacity, as numerous people stood against the walls of the extra room determined to hear Tum’s words.

“There were so many people who came out to listen,” said Leslie Oxford, an FSU freshman who attended the lecture. “That really blew my mind.”

Over this past spring break, Oxford visited a village in Chichicastenango, Guatemala on a mission trip with the FSU Wesley Foundation. The crew of new FSU students that attend the campus ministry spent the 10 days of their spring break working on a construction project and interacting with community that belongs to the same Quiche tribe that Tum belongs. Oxford’s own personal experience gave her deeper appreciation of Tum’s lecture.

“It’s true the way she was speaking about it,” Oxford said. “Guatemalans are so happy and vibrant, and they love life. But at the same time, they feel hurt very deeply, and I almost feel like they don’t talk about it enough. I was very encouraged that she actually talked about the pain that Guatemala has been through.”

Sean Chinn, a fellow FSU freshman, came out to the event in hopes of gaining a deeper understanding of leadership, as demonstrated through Tum’s example.

“I think college students can finally understand that leadership isn’t a positional thing,” said Chinn. “It’s not based on your title, or where you start, but it’s where your leading people and how you lead them.”

Julie LeBlanc, an FSU junior and employee of the FSU Center for Leadership and Civic Education involved with the PeaceJam activities this weekend, saw the lecture as an opportunity to consider what peace really is.

“We talk about peace, and in a sense ‘peace’ has just become a buzzard,” LeBlanc said. “But I think when you really get down to the nitty gritty and look at it, really look at what peace is, it really starts with an individual. It starts with everyday actions, and I think it’s a really good self-reflective process to look and see that peace isn’t just a peace-sign, or a symbol. It’s really who you are and it speaks to your character.

In her speech, Rigoberta described peace as being achieved through a balance:

“Peace is not just no war,” she said. “Peace is finding that equilibrium against hate.”

Oxford saw this quest for equilibrium much as LeBlanc did, emphasizing the importance of individuals “just knowing about things that are going in the world, and being aware of social injustices happening in front of you.”

For her, like LeBlanc, the action of making peace is not as intimidating as it might appear.

“So many times people just don’t even notice the small things, and everything starts off with a small deed or action.”

The event’s coordinators were very thoroughly impressed with the turnout, and hopeful about the message conveyed the FSU and Tallahassee community.

“Anybody can be a peace maker,” said Jaime Bayo. “You don’t have to be a president of a country, or a powerful lobbyist or law maker. You can just be a regular, everyday person, which is what Rigoberta Menchu Tum was.”