Elena Poniatowska Quotes

It is one thing to identify oneself as a citizen of a country and to love its landscape, its people, its arts and culture. It is quite another thing to assess the workings of its social and political structure—the degree of freedom and opportunity enjoyed by its people, its standard of education and quality of life. A Mexican peasant has virtually no chance of becoming anything else. The standard of education was low fifty years ago and, if anything, is even lower today.

Nellie Campobello, a great writer, published Cartucho (Cartridge) in 1931. Her explosive book was more like a grenade that laid bare the tragedy of the Mexican Revolution. In a succession of brief chapters, Nellie sketches a cruel, stark picture of the uprising as seen through the eyes of a little girl who was born before original sin. There are dead men-killed in battle or executed by firing squad-on every page. The girl eagerly watches from her window as men are shot down, and their corpses become her toys. When her favorite one is finally taken away, she misses it because it has entertained her for five days…If Nellie Campobello had not recorded her experiences, we would have been deprived of the most creative view of the Mexican Revolution ever written. Yes, I know, we have the writers Mariano Azuela, Martín Luis Guzmán, Rafael F. Muñoz, and the boring Francisco L. Urquizo, but there is no one as authentic as Nellie, no one who could say, as she did…Nellie Campobello-who wrote two novels, Cartucho and Las manos de mamá (A Mother's Hands)-was never granted the legendary status she deserves despite the fact that she is the only woman to have authored works about the Mexican Revolution. Her colleagues never acknowledged her nor paid her tribute of any kind, so much so that we are unsure exactly when and how she died.

Widows used to go around the way the poet Jaime Sabines would like them to: "There is one way, my love, that you could make me completely happy: die." Now widows are not even merry.

in Latin America reality surpasses fiction.

I have always had questions, and to this day, I don't have a single answer.

I learned, as they say, by doing. I began as an interviewer for the society pages of Excélsior—the only sort of thing a young woman could expect in those days...Since Excélsior is a daily paper, I had to produce these pieces every day with almost no time for review. Then I would read them in print and see that I had spent too much time on things of little importance and failed to ask about what mattered most. And so,with frequent embarrassment, that is how I learned. One also learns ­humility doing interviews, because people may not want to give you much time and so keep you waiting in an anteroom or are dismissive or in a bad mood, and all this has to be accepted.

The question of being encouraged or discouraged by this or that event cannot be asked if one is to go on with a certain moral conviction.

Boundaries, after all—of custom, of language, of what is and is not permitted—not only function to keep others out but also keep those inside from expanding.

I have always responded to challenges, followed apocalyptical personalities, apostles, Rasputins, Joan of Arcs who hear voices that come from Heaven, illuminated guides of humanity, holders of truth, priests.

We women treasure faces; in fact at any given moment life becomes a single face that we can touch with our lips.

We have all been made bad, we are all needy, all unwanted guests around the feast, invited at the last minute. In recognizing this lies our creativity.

Life is very resistant. People-the same cannon fodder that nourishes great universal misfortunes, "the wretched of the earth," as Frantz Fanon called them. Suddenly, during an earthquake, one of them saves a life.

To this day, if I ask so many questions, it is because I don't have a single answer. I believe I will die like this, still searching, with a question mark engraved on my eyelids.

According to the El Paso Morning Times, in 1914 there were seventeen thousand men and four thousand women in Pancho Villa's army, but there are many other statistics that show that, without the soldaderas, there would have been no Mexican Revolution.

I would like to return to earth because I love life.