Emma Tenayuca Quotes

I don’t think that women will ever be completely and totally free – or any of the minorities – until you have socialism.

I just have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that if ever this world is civilized, that it would be more the work of women.

The question was always one of land, and it wasn’t tackled in Mexico until the time of Cardenas. And it wasn’t tackled in Cuba until Castro.

(Ronald Reagan is) nothing but a bag of hot air.

1938 was the hardest year because by that time the Depression had really struck every city, every place.

I read quite a bit. I would say I read, well, I didn’t read all of Das Kapital, but I read that and Price and Profit, Wage, Labor & Capital, so I had an idea of how capital was made; how it was used, and so forth and so on.

I once read that people from...among those graduates at West Point you wouldn’t find any liars and cowards: you get Poindexter; you got North. I mean, these guys filled their minds that covert actions, terrorism – the same type that we’re trying to fight

I attended one convention, that was all. The woman for whom I had the greatest admiration was, of course, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. The man for whom I had the...was not Browder, who was the secretary, but was Foster – William C. Foster...along with those heroes whom I did have – women heroes – Mrs. Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Babe Diedrickson

But where are the intellectuals: Where are the Clarence Darrows?...Where are all of those writers who went out and picketed when Sacco and Vanzetti were put in jail? You see, we do have a big movement against war. Against nuclear war, in particular. But I just don’t know...if I could see in the future somebody who could take the presidency and have a knowledge of the program... I would hate to see another Carter or another movie star, because they don’t know foreign policy; they don’t know history.

I felt at first that I was more of an anarchist than anything else. And this came from the anarchist movement here;...The Magonistas, at one time, had about...I think they had about thirty or forty papers throughout south Texas, yes. And I remember the Wobblies, too. I know Mother Flor and Mother Jones were from here, from what I have read, so they work. Then you had some labor unions here. Not too many, but you did have railroad workers; and at that time, there were quite a number of railroad workers; and at that time, there were quite a number of railroad workers who were Mexicans.

Look, it was not the Black, the savages or the Indians who brought about a government such as the Hitler regime...I think after four, almost five hundred years of European domination that this next period would be one of revolt against European domination. And there are lots of lives being lost in Nicaragua and these other places.

Remember, at that time here, ’24, the Palmer raids, the Ku Klux Klan

We’ve been spending too much money on armaments. We haven’t had any peace since World War II. We had troops in Korea, Vietnam, South American, Europe. We cannot continue to do that.

El Espanol que yo hablaba era un Espanol que los Conquistadores trajeron aqui, verdad, porque era “vide por vi; ansina por asi”, and when I went to school and started to learn Spanish, I had an awful time, because some of these teachers were not from the city or from Texas. They were from the east, you see. And they’d tell me, “Senorita, usted no sabe hablar el Espanol, verdad?” And they mixed it up with this Texas-Mex and that sort of thing.

The Workers’ Alliance was an organization for the unemployed. And I think it did a tremendous job, because all of the housing projects that are here are due to the Workers’ Alliance...they were organized by the Communists and Socialists.