Palabras

These are quotes that have meant a lot to me in the time I’ve been writing this blog.

The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

 - Che Guevara

We must embrace a new type of socialism, a humanist one, which puts humans, not machines and not the state, above everything.”

 -Hugo Chavez

If you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. If you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.”

 - Manuel Alcantara

The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”

 - Che Guevara

The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.”

- Ulysses S. Grant

There’s a magical tie to the land of our home, which the heart cannot break, though the footsteps may roam.”

- Eliza Cook

‘To civilize’ is a key expression. In Mexico, civilizing has always meant de-Indianizing, imposing the ways of the West.”

- Guillermo Banfil Batalla

It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory.”

 - Che Guevara

The problem with South America is that we have looked to the United States and Europe and admired their wealth, and we have looked to China and admired its growth, but we haven’t thought about what we should be doing ourselves. It is like someone who envies his neighbour’s new television set instead of trying to figure out how to buy his own TV.”

 - Luiz Inacio (Brazilian President)

La raza!  
Méjicano!
 Español!
 Latino!  
Chicano!
Or whatever I call myself,  I look the same  I feel the same  I cry
 And  Sing the same.  I am the masses of my people and  I refuse to be absorbed.
 I am Joaquín.  The odds are great  but my spirit is strong,  My faith unbreakable,  My blood is pure.  I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ.  

I SHALL ENDURE!  I WILL ENDURE!”

- Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, Yo Soy Joaquín

If you know your history
 then you know where you’re coming from 
Then, you don’t have to ask me
 who the hell do I think I am

- Robert Nesta Marley

The economy of America cannot advance, would not have been able to advance, at the same rate as it has without Mexican labor.”

- Felipe Calderón

A lot of these people who are illegal want to come and plant their culture inside of ours. We’re having to, now, speak Spanish, and try to understand them. We’ve never had to understand anybody.”

 -Phil Valentine, Tennessee nativist activist DJ

A basic characteristic of every colonial society is that invading group, with a different culture from the dominated, ideologically affirms its immanent superiority on all areas of life and denies and excludes the culture of those colonized.”

 -Guillermo Banfil Batalla

We better understand the vulnerabilities that our economy and our very lives have that when we’re dependent on Iranian mullahs, and wackos in Venezuela.”

- John McCain, US Senator

We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race…..”

-John C. Calhoun

The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic, which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson,  prior to the American Invasion of México

No question in my mind these are tough times for America. But there’s no question in my mind we’ll prevail. Right is on our side. And we’ll prevail, because we’re a fabulous nation, and we’re a fabulous nation because we’re a nation full of fabulous people.”

- George W. Bush

I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn’t study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.”

- Dan Quayle

I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.”

- General Jacob H. Smith

Building church and university 
deceiving the people continually
 them graduating thieves and murderers 
they’re sucking the blood of the sufferers

Tell the children the truth

- Bob Marley

At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”

- Federica Garcia Lorca

Action from principle—the perception and the performance of right —changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.”

- Henry David Thoreau

In Mexico, there are movements, there are revolutions and change, but for the indigenous nothing changes.”

- Subcomandante Marcos

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”

 - Che Guevara

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

- Henry David Thoreau

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”

- Pablo Neruda

For all the horror it has created around the globe in the course of the past century, the United States’ war machine should be dismantled, since under the current conditions it is a threat against the entire mankind, particularly against our children.”

- Hugo Chavez

People often say that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves.”

- Salma Hayek

Brothers and sisters, our democracy has been hi-jacked. Brothers and sisters, all of our total freedom in this country is over, so long as it is controlled by corporations. Brothers and sisters, we are not going to allow these streets to be taken over by the Democrats or the Republicans!”

-Zach de la Rocha

The recent history of Mexico, that of the last five hundred years, is the story of permanent confrontation between those attempting to direct the country toward the path of Western civilization and those, rooted in Mesoamerican ways of life, who resist. The first plan arrived with the European invaders but was not abandoned with independence. ”

-Guillermo Banfil Batalla

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it becauseone’s conscience tells one that it is right.”

- Martin Luther King Jr

It is important for me, as a popular artist, to make clear to the governments of the United States and Mexico that despite the strategy of fear and intimidation to foreigners, despite their weapons, despite their immigration laws and military reserves, they will never be able to isolate the Zapatista communities from the people in the United States.”

- Zach de la Rocha

If Jesus were alive today, He would be a guerrillero.”

- Camillo Torres

There are no frontiers in this struggle to the death. We cannot remain indifferent in the face of what occurs in any part of the world.”

 - Che Guevara

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

 -Emiliano Zapata

Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it; I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons should I make a whore of my soul.”

-Thomas Paine

How long have we sailed and battled in this sinister ship?  
How long have we been flayed over its corporate altars?
 How long have we fed and hosted the invisible captain priest?  
O village of streams, ponds, deltas, lakes, rivers and oceans 
O village of deserts, mountains, jungles, islands and plains 
O village of women, children, men, animals, fishes and birds
O village of Blacks, Indians, poor people, Latinos and Asians
O village of borders, colonies, barrios, cells and reservations 
O village of miners, factory workers, process operators and slaves  How long have we been denied our name, our song, our power?  

How long have we been buried in our own ashes, in our blood?
  How long have we been kept alive in the pockets of the Master?”

- Juan Felipe Herrera

La sangre hace su oficio.”

(”The blood does its own work.”)

- María de la Luz (Lucha) Quintana

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