Aug 18 2007
Nobel Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchu denies discrimination at Cancun hotel
From Latina.com:
A Cancun radio journalist had reported Tuesday that he’d seen the Nobel Peace Prize winner forcibly removed from the five-star Fiesta Americana Coral Beach hotel when staff thought she was a local peddler woman, due to the traditional Maya clothing she wears.
But then, Menchu and her sister Anita said none of it had happened. “This was purely an invention of the press,” Anita told Latina.com today in an exclusive interview. “Nothing at all happened in the hotel, and we didn’t even know about the rumor until we got on the plane to go back to Mexico City.”
For his part, the reporter to whom the story was originally attributed, David Romero Vara of Cancun’s Enfoque Radio, admitted on air today that nothing happened to Menchu, and that the only ones who were removed forcibly from the hotel were his station’s reporters.
Hotel staff said they were allowing photographers and reporters only to enter a certain area. It is unclear whether Enfoque’s staff attempted to enter into a restricted area.
