Alan García Quotes

And thirdly, [we have] to defeat the absurd pantheist ideologies that believe that the walls are gods and the air is a god. In the end, to return to such primitive forms of religiosity where one is told, “don’t touch this hill because it is an Apu and is filled with millennia-old spirit,” and who knows what else. Well, if we reach that point, we wouldn’t do anything, much less mining. Don’t touch those fish because they are creatures of god and expressions of the god Poseidon. We would return to this, let’s say, primitive animism. Right? I think that we need more education [of these people], but that is long-term work that just can’t be fixed right away.

The United States, ever since its founding fathers, has had an ideal, a mission to the world. In the '40s, it sacrificed the lives of many young people to achieve the freedom of the world. Nowadays, we need to focus on democracy and free trade.

Either we come to mutual understanding about Machu Picchu, or we just have to mark them as treasure hunters.

Original Czech translation: Buď dospějeme k vzájemnému pochopení ohledně Machu Picchu, nebo je prostě budeme muset označit za vykrádače pokladů.

As quoted in "Vraťte, co jste ukradli, vyzývá Peru Yaleovu univerzitu" (28 September 2010), tyden.cz