Latin America Quotes

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice...”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“A revolution is coming – a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough – but a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.

[Report to the United States Senate on his trip to Latin America and the Alliance for Progress, May 9-10 1966]”
― Robert F. Kennedy

“Israel's demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as a 'strategic asset,' as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon doctrine, Israel and Iran were to be 'the guardians of the Gulf,' and after the fall of the Shah, Israel's perceived role was enhanced. Meanwhile, Israel has provided subsidiary services elsewhere, including Latin America, where direct US support for the most murderous regimes has been impeded by Congress. While there has been internal debate and some fluctuation in US policy, much exaggerated in discussion here, it has been generally true that US support for Israel's militarization and expansion reflected the estimate of its power in the region.

The effect has been to turn Israel into a militarized state completely dependent on US aid, willing to undertake tasks that few can endure, such as participation in Guatemalan genocide. For Israel, this is a moral disaster and will eventually become a physical disaster as well. For the Palestinians and many others, it has been a catastrophe, as it may sooner or later be for the entire world, with the growing danger of superpower confrontation.”
― Noam Chomsky

“It is easier to start a war than to end it.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it," he said with deep bitterness. "I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“The people of the United States will do anything for Latin America, except read about it.”
― James Barrett Reston, Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting

“[W]e understood perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth. . . . [The revolution] demands they understand that pride in serving our fellow man is much more important than a good income; that the people's gratitude is much more permanent, much more lasting than all the gold one can accumulate.”
― Che Guevara

“I think all artists struggle to represent the geometry
of life in their own way, just like writers deal with
archetypes. There are only so many stories that you can
tell, but an infinite number of storytellers.”
― Henry Mosquera, Sleeper's Run

“[T]hat is practicing charity, and what we have to practice today is solidarity. [Applause] We should not draw closer to the people in order to say: "Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you with our science, to demonstrate your errors, your lack of refine­ment, your lack of elementary knowledge." We should go with an investigative zeal and with a humble spirit, to learn from the great source of wisdom that is the people.”
― Che Guevara

“We Americans have come to feel that it is our mission to make the world free. We believe that we are always the good guys, everywhere-in Vietnam, in Latin America, wherever we go. We believe we are the good guys at home, too. When the Kemer Commission told white Amerca what black America had always known, that prejudice and hatred built the nation's slums, maintain them and profit by them, white America would not believe it. But it is true. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies of poverty and racism in our own country and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed as hypocrites in the eyes of the world when we talk about making other people free.

(From Voices of Multicultural America)”
― Shirley Chisholm

“if we center our efforts on war prepa­rations, we cannot build what we want, we cannot devote ourselves to creative work. All work, all capital invested in preparing for military action, is labor lost, money lost. Unfortunately, it has to be done, because others are preparing. But the money I am most saddened to see leave the National Bank coffers-and I say this with all honesty and pride as a soldier-is money to pay for some weapon of destruc­tion.”
― Che Guevara

“Not underdeveloped, as they call us, because we are not underdeveloped. We are simply badly developed, badly developed because imperialism long ago took over our raw materials and set out to exploit them according to its own imperial needs.”
― Che Guevara

“To the powerful masters we repre­sent all that is absurd, negative, irreverent, and disruptive in this America that they so despise and scorn. But on the other hand, to the great mass of the American people (I'm referring to Our America, which is everything south of the Rio Bravo)-these peoples derisively called "mestizos"-we represent everything noble, sincere, and combative.”
― Che Guevara

“But what sort of "national bourgeoisie" was ours, composed of landlords, big wheelers and dealers and speculators, frock-coated politicos and intellectuals of borrowed cultures? Latin America quickly gave birth to bourgeois constitutions well varnished with liberalism, but there was no creative bourgeoisie in the European or U.S. style to accompany them, one which would undertake as its historical mission the development of a strong national capitalism. The bourgeoisies of our countries came into being as mere instruments of international capitalism, liberally oiled cogs in the global mechanism that bled the colonies and semicolonies.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“Todos aprendemos sin palabras las más importantes lecciones de la vida.”
― Alfonso Barrera Valverde, El país de Manuelito

“Se sabe que el más cuerdo de los sitios es aquel donde todos tienen libertad de cometer sus mejores locuras.”
― Alfonso Barrera Valverde, El país de Manuelito

“Pero lo más auténtico, lo que no confesaba a nadie, era que salía a buscar lo desconocido. Se preguntó si los hombres hacen alguna vez algo diferente.
- Deben existir marineros que descubren islas - se dijo.
Quedaba más allá de toda duda que si los niños y jóvenes se empeñan en aventuras, ello sucede porque en la rosa de los vientos hay una dirección fundamental, a más de los puntos cardinales. Y esa dirección tiene su propio nombre: el misterio.”
― Alfonso Barrera Valverde, El país de Manuelito

“Gerilimden sarhoşa dönen, sessizliğin mucizevi derinliğinden etkilenen ve ölüm tutkusuyla kenetlenmiş kalabalığı hiçbir şeyin yerinden kıpırdatamayacağına inanan Jose Arcadio Segundo, ayaklarının ucuna basarak, başını önündekilerden daha yukarı kaldırdı ve ömründe ilk kez sesini yükseltti:
-Sizi gidi hergeleler! diye bağırdı.
-Verdiğiniz o bir dakikayı alın da kıçınıza sokun!

Onun bağırmasından sonra olanlar kimseyi korkutmadı. Herkes hayal gördüğünü sandı. Yüzbaşı ateş emri verdi ve on dört makineli tüfek o anda emri yerine getirdi. Ama bütün bunlar gülünç bir oyun gibi görünüyordu. Sanki makineli tüfeklere boş kapsül doldurulmuş gibiydi. Çünkü tüfeklerin tarrakası duyulduğu ve ardı kesilmeden kurşun tükürdüğü görüldüğü halde, kalabalıkta en ufak bir tepki yoktu. Bir anda taş kesilmiş gibi duran kalabalıktan ne bir ses, ne bir soluk duyuluyordu. Birden istasyon tarafından yükselen bir ölüm çığlığı büyüyü bozdu. Duyulan, Aaah, anacığım, avazesi yeri göğü titreten bir ses, volkanik bir soluk, dünyalar değiştiren bir kükreme olup bomba gibi patladı kalabalığın ortasında. Panik içinde bir anda kaynaşan kalabalık, kadınla kucağındaki çocuğu yutup sürüklerken, Jose Arcadio Segundo, ancak öteki çocuğu yakalamaya fırsat bulabildi. Yıllarca sonra o çocuk, kendisini bunak bir ihtiyar yerine koymalarına aldırmaksızın o günü anlatacak, Jose Arcadio Segundo'nun kendisini nasıl havaya kaldırdığını, kalabalığın dehşeti üzerinden yüzercesine geçirerek yakındaki bir sokağa nasıl götürdüğünü ballandıra ballandıra anlatacaktı. Çocuk, herkesten yukarıda olduğu için, o anda alandaki çılgına dönmüş kitlenin köşeye doğru koşuştuğunu ve makinelilerin ateş açtığını görebilmiş, aynı anda birkaç kişinin birden, -Yere yatın! Yere yatın! diye bağırdıklarını duyabilmişti.

Öndekiler, ilk kurşun dalgasıyla taranmış ve yere yıkılmışlardı bile. Sağ kalanlar yere yatacakları yerde ufak alana çekilmeye çalıştılar. Ne var ki, karşı sokaktaki makineliler de yaylım ateşine başlamışlardı. İki ateş arasında sıkışan kalabalık, iki yöne atılan bir ejder kuyruğuna benziyordu. Kitle devasa bir girdap gibi dönmeye başladı. Hiç kesilmeyen makinelilerin ateşiyle kat kat soyulan soğan gibi ortaya doğru azalıyorlardı. Çocuk, açıkta diz çökmüş bir kadının, gizemli bir güçle kurşunlardan korunarak, kollarını haç biçiminde tuttuğunu gördü. Jose Arcadio Segundo yüzü kana bulanarak yere yıkıldığı anda, çocuğu oraya bıraktı. Hemen sonra da büyük kalabalık, o boşluğu, diz çöken kadını, kurak gökyüzündeki ışığı, Ursula Iguara'nın yığın yığın hayvan biçiminde şekerleme sattığı bu orospu dünyayı örtüverdi.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Bolivar prophesied shrewdly that the United States seemed fated by Providence to plague America with woes in the name of liberty. General Motors or IBM will not step graciously into our shoes and raise the old banners of unity and emancipation which fell in battle; nor can heroes betrayed yesterday be redeemed by the traitors of today. It is a big load of rottenness that has to be sent to the bottom of the sea on the march to Latin America's reconstruction. The task lies in the hands of the dispossessed, the humiliated, the accursed. The Latin American cause is above all a social cause: the rebirth of Latin America must start with the overthrow of its masters, country by country. We are entering times of rebellion and change. There are those who believe that destiny rests on the knees of the gods; but the truth is that it confronts the conscience of man with a burning challenge.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“The most heartening response came not from the book pages in the press
but from real incidents in the streets. The girl who was quietly reading Open
Veins to her companion in a bus in Bogotá, and finally stood up and read it
aloud to all the passengers. The woman who fled from Santiago in the days of
the Chilean bloodbath with this book wrapped inside her baby's diapers. The
student who went from one bookstore to another for a week in Buenos Aires's
Calle Corrientes, reading bits of it in each store because he hadn't the money to
buy it.
And the most favorable reviews came not from any prestigious critic but
from the military dictatorships that praised the book by banning it. For example,
Open Veins is unobtainable either in my country, Uruguay, or in Chile; in
Argentina the authorities denounced it on TV and in the press as a corrupter of
youth, As Blas de Otero remarked, "They don't let people see what I write
because I write what I see.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“The most heartening response came not from the book pages in the press but from real incidents in the streets. The girl who was quietly reading Open Veins to her companion in a bus in Bogotá, and finally stood up and read it aloud to all the passengers. The woman who fled from Santiago in the days of the Chilean bloodbath with this book wrapped inside her baby's diapers. The student who went from one bookstore to another for a week in Buenos Aires's Calle Corrientes, reading bits of it in each store because he hadn't the money to buy it.
And the most favorable reviews came not from any prestigious critic but from the military dictatorships that praised the book by banning it. For example, Open Veins is unobtainable either in my country, Uruguay, or in Chile; in Argentina the authorities denounced it on TV and in the press as a corrupter of youth, As Blas de Otero remarked, "They don't let people see what I write because I write what I see.”
― eduardo galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“Del frío de la madrugada nadie sabe tanto como los ríos. Lo supieron también, por una vez, los tobillos de Manuelito, pero ninguna sensación es mejor que la libertad.”
― Alfonso Barrera Valverde, El país de Manuelito

“Una lágrima caída sigue siendo propia de quien la llora.”
― Alfonso Barrera Valverde, El país de Manuelito

“Pero los descubrimientos necesitan ser traducidos en palabras, a fin de razonar lo que uno siente.”
― Alfonso Barrera Valverde, El país de Manuelito

“No sabía hasta aquel instante que las cascadas y las cataratas son fundamentalmente eso: ruidos enormes que están cayendo sobre sí mismos, sobre el agua y el tiempo, sobre los minutos y los segundos, sobre los siglos, sobre pedazos grandes y pequeños de eternidad.”
― Alfonso Barrera Valverde, El país de Manuelito

“Manuelito, por su cuenta, aprendía que los sitios conocidos son más hermosos cuando se miran así, con la mano tomada por alguien a quien se quiere.”
― Alfonso Barrera Valverde, El país de Manuelito

“Control of Latin America was the earliest goal of US foreign policy and remains a central one partly for resources and markets but also for broader ideological reasons. If the United States could not control Latin America it could not expect to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world”
― Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects

“Hispanic" and "Latino" are terms whose descriptive legitimacy is premised on a startling lack of specificity. The categories encompass any and all individuals living in the United States who trace their ancestry to the Spanish-speaking regions of Latin America and the Caribbean; Latinos hail from Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and beyond-more than twenty countries in all. Such inclusivity is part of the problem: "Hispanic" and "Latino" tell us nothing about country of origin, gender, citizenship status, economic class, or length of residence in the United States. An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala is Hispanic; so is a third-generation Mexican American lawyer. Moreover, both categories are racially indeterminate: Latinos can be white, black, indigenous, and every combination thereof. In other words, characterizing a subject as either "Hispanic" or "Latino" is an exercise in opacity-the terms are so comprehensive that their explanatory power is limited. When referring to "Latinos in the United States," it is far from immediately clear whether the subjects under discussion are farmworkers living below the poverty line or middle-class homeowners, urban hipsters or rural evangelicals, white or black, gay or straight, Catholic or Jewish, undocumented Spanish monolinguals or fourth-generation speakers of English-only.”
― Cristina Beltrán, The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity

“Inside, it’s a cauldron of energy with heads swinging in screw-faced joy to percussive Latin rhythms. The Panamanians are a good-looking, loose-hipped race, and they know it.”
― Michael Chapman Pincher, Long Lost Love: Diary of a Rambling Romeo: Outclassing the Men: Fearless females take the lead on this Epic Voyage

“Jerry turns right and jostles through a crowd onto Casco Viejo, where the smell of fried plantains and sweet coconut lingers on the warm night air. He heads us down a narrow street of elegant colonial buildings tucked inside the centuries-old city walls. Everywhere, we pass bars and brothels open to restless newcomers seeking another raucous night.”
― Michael Chapman Pincher, Long Lost Love: Diary of a Rambling Romeo: Outclassing the Men: Fearless females take the lead on this Epic Voyage