Mexican Artist Toledo Wins "Alternative Nobel"
Date: 30-Sep-05
Country: SWEDEN
He took top honours in the prize founded in 1980 by Swedish-German stamp collector Jakob von Uexkull, who believed the mainstream Nobel prizes for peace, literature, sciences, medicine and economics ignore many modern global issues.
Other Right Livelihood awards -- and prize money worth 2 million Swedish crowns ($257,000) -- went to environmentalists Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke of Canada, Malaysian human rights activist Irene Fernandez and the organisation First People of the Kalahari and its founder Roy Sesana in Botswana.
Past winners include Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai and social activist Bianca Jagger.
Toledo was cited for protecting the "architectural and cultural heritage, natural environment and community life" of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, with its colonial-era capital and native Mexican Indian culture.