Emma Tenayuca Quotes

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

Any effort of the Mexican workers to organize was met with brutal force, from the very beginning.

You had this factionalism all the time.

Theodore Roosevelt...he was an imperialist, but he had a liberal approach.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s only recently that I have been able to talk about some of the things that I saw here. I mean as far as poverty – because it was just too difficult.

I had become very, very interested in the labor movement. I mean, I had...first there were the anarchistas and so forth. And then you had, also, the influence in the CTM [Confederacion de Trabajadores de Mexico].

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.

In 1929, the Wall Street crash; in 1932, the closing of all the banks... My grandfather lost some money in one of them, and he didn’t tell anybody. The person he told, I mean...he came over to me and told me, he says, “I’ve lost everything I have.” And he was already about, I guess, 65, close to 70. So, I don’t know, I felt that had an awful effect on me.

The Klan was very, very strong here, particularly on this side of town.

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