July 13, 2026

I don't need any documents because I carry Guatemala in my heart.

Rigoberta Menchú, a K'iche' Maya woman from Guatemala, spoke these words in her testimonio, dictated to anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray in 1982. At the time she was living in hiding, often without official identification, after the Guatemalan army killed her parents and siblings during the civil war's violence against indigenous communities. Lacking papers to certify her existence or nationality in the eyes of the state, she insisted that her belonging and her commitment to her people came from something no government could issue or revoke. The line speaks to integrity because it locates identity and conviction inside a person, not in whatever the outside world chooses to recognize.