Denise Oliver-Velez Quotes

But the racism in the island, nobody wanted to deal with because I was told "no hay racismo en Puerto Rico." But that was not true. Color, caste, class, were major contradictions, even within left-wing political groups.

Because of the Black Power movement inside of the united states, American Blacks are now able to hold their heads up high and be proud of their past. It is necessary that we study Puerto Rican history, much of which is African history, so that we can move on ridding ourselves of the barriers that exist between Afro-boricua and jibaro.

We must follow the examples of Lolita Lebron, Pedro Albizu Campos, Julio Roldan, C.A.L. and MIRA. We must struggle against the american pigs and Puerto Rican vendepatrias.

Puerto Rico is being turned into the "showplace colony" of the united states. American corporations are everywhere, all over the island, using Puerto Rican people as cheap labor. Everything that cannot be sold in the states is dumped in Puerto Rico-plastic palm trees in people's homes instead of the real thing that grows outside, makeup that is not needed, wool maxi-skirts and boots to be worn in 80 degree weather. And the people are brain-washed into buying this shit. The radio blasts American music and advertisements-"radio San Juan-turns me on." We turned it off. You get better service if you speak English, the tourists act like they owned the island and the Borinquenos are just there to be servants and part of the scenery.

So many things were changing in our world. We looked, and we searched in revolutionary literature. Maybe we found a few pieces, but there really wasn't much because the world had never really dealt with this. We did take as heroines of our struggle Lolita Lebrón and Blanca Canales because they had been in the Nationalist Party struggle in Puerto Rico. We looked to women like Angela Davis. There were two women in the Panther 21 case at the time, Afeni Shakur and Joan Bird, who had been arrested with the brothers. We were proud that women were going on posters. That was real important because this was new. The face of the civil rights movement had been male.

We should not be afraid to criticize ourselves about racism. We are all racists, not because we want to be, but because we are taught to be that way, to keep us divided, because it benefits the capitalist system. And this applies to racism toward Asians, other Brown people, and toward white people. White people are not all the oppressor-capitalists are. We will never have socialism until we are free of these chains on our mind.

I think that the mainstream media has been focusing on the chat, you know, the exposure of the things said in a private chat. But on the island, people are demanding: One, they want the junta, the fiscal control board, out; two, they have been raising issues about violence against women; three, they’ve been talking about the fact that Rosselló brought an American woman in to revamp the educational system on the island, turn it into charter schools and shut down public education. And parents and teachers are protesting.

I've walked through the streets in East Harlem, and people have said, "Dónde está los Young Lords?" Where did they go? People miss the Young Lords. They had been an integral part of that community in the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Philadelphia, New Haven, Hartford, and New Jersey.

That last migration in 1947 spawned a generation who had one foot in the United States, and maybe they had dreams of Puerto Rico, but the reality of their existence was here.

One other thing I really want to bring up is that, in September, 900,000 people on the island are due to lose their medical coverage. And that’s going to be—we’re talking about 4,000 people who died in the hurricane. Imagine 900,000 people, where a lot of them are elderly and they’re not going to be able to get their insulin. Children won’t get their asthma medications. I mean, the number of deaths is going to be phenomenal. And I don’t want to see us go, “Oh, this is so terrible. Look at all the dead people in Puerto Rico. Let’s maybe do something now.” So people are raising these issues ahora, now, in Puerto Rico and also in the diaspora.

Many marriages broke up because we were trying to be different, and we didn't know how to maintain marital ties, or even know how to define what marriage was. We looked at it as chains, cadenas. You're not free! You're this new, liberated woman, but your husband keeps telling you what to do.

if there is no unity within an organization as long as there is a disparity between men and women in the struggle, there will not be that ability to strive for change in the world.

The role of women, initially, in a cultural context, was, on one hand, to be passive. That’s what we were programmed into believing. But when we started studying history—and Juan, as minister of education, made sure that we learned about radical women leaders in Puerto Rico. And so, for most of us, including those of us who had been to college, we had never heard of people like Mariana Bracetti. We had never heard of even Doña Fela, who was the mayor of San Juan for so many years. And we began to examine—remember, the women’s movement was also—the second wave—was also coming along. We laid out our newspaper at The Rat, which was taken over by women. So, we began to push back against the ideas of—in the program, it said revolutionary machismo. And we said, “That’s really ridiculous. Machismo is not revolutionary; it’s oppressive.” And the young men in the organization joined with us women, and we made that change.

Divorce is now par for the course in most families. Women are still trying to cope with how to run an organization, work a job, go to school, raise a family, and almost become superwomen. Maybe generations to come won't have to deal with these issues because we dealt with them then, and we're dealing with them now.

all of our people are prostitutes for the American capitalists.