Nineth Montenegro

The Honourable
Nineth Montenegro
The Honourable Nineth Montenegro
	Official portrait
Second Vice President of the Congress of Guatemala
	In office; 14 January 2012 – 14 January 2013
President	Gudy Rivera
Preceded by	Carlos López Girón
Succeeded by	Christian Boussinot
Secretary General of Encuentro por Guatemala
	In office; 14 April 2007 – 27 February 2020
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Deputy of the Congress of Guatemala
	In office; 14 January 1996 – 14 January 2020
Constituency	National List
Personal details
Born	1958; San Marcos, Guatemala
Political party	Encuentro por Guatemala

Nineth Varenca Montenegro Cottom (born 1958 in San Marcos, Guatemala)^[1] is a Guatemalan human rights activist and a victim of state terrorism. She was the first person to face civil resistance on a national level as a result of protesting in the streets about the whereabouts of her husband, Edgar Fernando García, who had been captured illegally by the government and has been a missing person since February 18, 1984. The disappearance of her husband still remains an unsolved case, as he is considered a disappeared person.^{[citation needed]}

She is married to Mario Polanco, the current director of GAM (Spanish: Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo). ^{[citation needed]}

Militancy

In September 1984, she joined with other family members of victims of state violence and founded GAM ("Mutual Support Group"; Spanish: Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo), one of Guatemala's oldest and best-known human rights organizations.^{[citation needed]}

After receiving her teaching degree from Instituto Normal Central para Señoritas Belén, she worked as a teacher in public schools for many years. She was considered a hero and a role model for women at one of the last schools she taught at, "No 151 en la zona 7".^{[citation needed]}

Since 1979, she has dedicated herself to social struggles. As a consequence of her constant protesting, she has received thousands of death threats. She has also appeared in Amnesty International videos that portray social struggles in Guatemala.^{[citation needed]}

Politics

Montenegro was elected to Congress in 1996 and, since then, has dedicated herself to monitoring the functions of multiple public institutions, including the armed forces, where she managed to detect abnormal activity that caused the illicit enrichment of several army officials.^{[citation needed]}

Since 2004, she has dedicated herself to building her own political party, Encuentro por Guatemala, for which she received public support. Her political party united with Visión con Valores, which obtained six seats in Congress, giving her another term of office for the 2008-12 legislative session, as second vice president.^{[citation needed]} In October 2019, she lost her parliamentary immunity as a result of accusations of illegal funding of her political party.^[2]

Awards

She was named person of the year by various magazines and other media reports.

She has received international recognition in:^{[citation needed]}

The United States
Spain
Austria
France
Canada
Argentina

External links

Interview and article in Prensa Libre naming her "person of the year" for 2004 (in Spanish)
Nineth Montenegro, Congress of the Republic of Guatemala (in Spanish)

References

^ Jung, Wilma (2002). "Quem é quem na América Latina". latinoamericana.org. Archived from the original on 2008-08-20. Retrieved 2017-10-20.
^ "Nineth Montenegro sobre antejuicio: "Veo esto lamentablemente muy politizado"". 9 January 2019.

[1] Jung, Wilma (2002). "Quem é quem na América Latina". latinoamericana.org. Archived from the original on 2008-08-20. Retrieved 2017-10-20.

[2] "Nineth Montenegro sobre antejuicio: "Veo esto lamentablemente muy politizado"". 9 January 2019.

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