Update: This Never Happened

A Cancún Hotel Ejected This Street Vendor (Except She’s A Famous Nobel Prize Winner And Guatemalan Presidential Candidate)

Indigenous folks make great wall art, but who wants the real thing hanging around? Not the staff at Hotel Coral Beach in Cancún. They eject indigenous people on site. Like the woman they found hanging out in their lobby who they figured was a common street vendor. Who could have imagined that she was actually Guatemalan Activist, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and presidential candidate Rigoberta Menchu? In the middle of giving an interview to the press no less. Whoops! Sometimes the Mayan Riviera gets a little too real.

Nobel prize winner Menchu run out of Mexico hotel [Vivir Latino]

Thanks to commenter pinche pancha for pointing us to this link explaining that the above story was a fraud created by a radio reporter in Cancun. According to Latina online:

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.

In fact, confirmed [Menchu's sister], a quote from Rigoberta that appeared in El Pais newspaper decrying racism and machismo after the supposed incident, was in fact taken out of context from a completely different interview on a different subject.

There you have it. Never believe anything you read on the internet. Apologies to everyone involved.

Nobel Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchu Denies Suffering Discrimination at a Cancun Hotel. [Latina]