Elizabeth Martínez Quotes

We can look to Mexico, where a vision for social change has been powerfully affirmed by the Maya people of Chiapas. They named their vision "Zapatismo," in memory of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, and startled the world with an armed uprising on January 1, 1994…The Zapatista vision does not find the answer to injustice in the replacement of one domination by another, but in a vast change of the political culture from the bottom up that will create a revolutionary democracy.

A term originally created by leftists in humorous self-mockery, "PC" is now used to evoke Stalinist demands for conformity. Thus PC-baiting has become a post-Cold War substitute for anti-communism, and a dangerously reactionary political expression.

… I had my own personal experiences with prejudice. I was the only child of color in primary school, junior high and high school. I went through all those years feeling like a freak in one all-white school after the other. The family next door wouldn't let their daughter play with me because I was Mexican. I got on a bus once in D.C. with my father, who was very dark, and they told us to go to the back of the bus, where black people had to sit in those years. All this created in me a feeling of empathy and solidarity with people of color and formed the roots of my commitment to fighting for social justice and against racism.

the women's liberation movement has rejected traditional family. For us, the family has been a source of unity and our major defense against the oppressor.

The truth is that we need to reexamine and redefine our culture. Some of us do not believe that in our culture, femininity has always meant: weak, passive delicate looking... in other words, qualities that inflate the male ego. The women of La Raza is traditionally a fighter and revolutionary.

White radicals of the 1960s-many of them called "the New Left"-learned tactics from African Americans, who had learned some of theirs from Asians (Gandhi) and who also adopted tactics from white workers of an earlier era. Native Americans took tactics from Blacks. Asian-American youths were inspired by young Puerto Rican activists. Chicano organizations copied from the Black Panther Party, as in their breakfast program. Yet the "New Left" is usually staked out with Eurocentric boundaries in our books on the 1960s. Even many people of color define the New Left as white, and would deny that their activism had anything to do with a new, old or any other kind of Left. The New Left was indeed born primarily white. But its vision of a society in which the exploited and oppressed become an empowered collectivity did inspire people across racial and national lines. That vision generated an international political culture that stirred youth from Paris to Mexico to Tokyo and lives on today. Who cannot be reminded of that New Left ideal, "participatory democracy" (a phrase used by Students for a Democratic Society), when hearing of how 3,000 Chinese students voted on every major decision in Tiananmen Square in May 1989?

an obsession with self-definition can become a trap if that is all we think about, all we debate. If liberation terminology becomes an end in itself and our only end, it ceases to be a tool of liberation. Terms can be useful, even vital tools, but the house of La Raza that is waiting to be built needs many kinds. (“A Word About the Great Terminology Question ”)

it's vital to avoid a longtime error of leftist politics, starting with Marxism: failure to understand the powerful role in human society of subjective forces such as spirituality. That failure has opened the door wide to right-wing manipulation of spiritual hunger. That failure undermines the possibility of mobilizing masses of Latinos/as for whom faith has been an affirmation of heart in a heartless world. The bottom line in any organizing for social justice needs to be respect for others' needs, including spiritual needs.

ours is an age of intensified empire-building in which no war is unthinkable.

Manifest Destiny saw Yankee conquest as the inevitable result of a confrontation between enterprise and progress (white) versus passivity and backwardness (Indian, Mexican)...The concept of Manifest Destiny, with its assertion of racial superiority sustained by military power, has defined U.S. identity for 150 years. Only the Vietnam War brought a serious challenge to that concept of almightiness. Bitter debate, moral anguish, images of My Lai and the prospect of military defeat for the first time in U.S. history all suggested that the long-standing marriage of virtue and violence might soon be on the rocks.

When the Chicano movement began, we saw Chicanas and others in New Mexico working to get back land lost with the 1846-48 US war, thousands walking out of high schools to protest the racism, and many putting on Brown Berets to defend their communities. We joined the United Farm Workers as campesinas and boycott supporters. Thousands of us marched against the Vietnam war on August 29, 1970, only to be chased and struck down by tear-gassing police who also killed three Chicanos that day

The most striking change during the past 20 years can be seen in attitudes toward homophobia. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, an almost total silence hung over gay and lesbian advocacy. No openly gay person could be a movement leader. Today homophobia persists; most progressive, straight Chicanos as well as Chicanas still fail to see gay and lesbian rights as another struggle of other oppressed people. Too many still fail to see homophobia as a sometimes murderous force of discrimination. But the situation has improved, especially in some major cities, in academia and among youth.

They perceive how our oppressor uses "machismo" against us-for example, by appealing to a Chicano's sense of supposed manhood in order to get him to kill Vietnamese. Sexism is a useful tool to the colonizer; the men are oppressed but they can beat and mistreat women, who thus serve as targets for a frustration that might otherwise become revolutionary. Some men understand very well that the full participation of women is needed if our people are to win the liberation struggle.

Sometimes we also find a tendency to view everything that's indigenous as good and anything "European"-such as Spain-as evil. That view overlooks such historical realities as the Aztec empire's oppressive domination of other indigenous societies and its class system, which privileged priests and the military. That view also forgets Spain was not a typically European nation after 600 years of rule by the Moors, an Arab/Berber people from Africa.

Cornel West, the African American philosopher and writer, spoke recently in San Francisco talking about the importance of linkages. For example, he said gay and lesbian rights are an issue in the African American community. They aren’t separate, outside of the community. Just because the issue is not welfare, or racism, or gangs, that doesn’t mean it’s not a Black community issue. I think that’s a very useful and important way to look at things. I know a lot of Latinos wouldn’t agree that gay and lesbian rights are a Latino issue. But we need to work for this understanding and make it clear that the issue is not a problem for a bunch of people outside the Latino community who happen to be gay or lesbian. It’s inside our community. Taking that kind of position is the only way that in fact makes sense.