Iris Morales Quotes

My parents both arrived in New York City after World War II, at different times but for the same reason the search for work. They left a country they loved, but where they could not make a living. About half a million Puerto Ricans made the same journey fleeing economic despair, the result of the US colonization of the island. Government officials blamed the people for the disastrous economic situation claiming that the problem was "overpopulation." They promoted the mass exodus of Puerto Ricans and implemented policies that sterilized thousands of poor and working women. The Young Lords are the sons and daughters of this Great Migration. As young people growing up in the United States, we witnessed how our parents were exploited, degraded, and humiliated. We felt their suffering, and we too had experiences with poverty and racism. All of this propelled us into action to fight for justice.

The move to Puerto Rico was the biggest political mistake, not only flawed in conception, but also paternalistic and arrogant toward islanders. Puerto Ricans had fought against US imperialism since 1898 and Spanish colonialişm before that. The Young Lords Party from its East Harlem headquarters would not be the savior. The proponents of the Puerto Rico project failed to appreciate the difference between providing support to Puerto Rico's national liberation movement and trying to take it over.

one of the first acts of the Young Lords in Chicago was to join the Rainbow Coalition-uniting with our allies, our brothers and sisters, in the Black Panther Party, the Brown Berets, the Young Patriots, and Rising Up Angry. The Young Lords understood the importance of collaboration and of building a broad people's movement in order to transform society.

In September 1970, when the Young Lords Party opened a branch on the Lower East Side, several lesbian and bisexual members joined the organization. An informal Gay Caucus formed and a couple of the Central Committee leaders met with the women, collectively and individually, to discuss issues of sexual identity and orientation. However, these topics were not brought into the YLP's general political discourse. Members neither discussed nor hid their sexual orientation; it was an in-between space of coexistence. The truth is that the idea of equality with gays was less acceptable to the community than women's equality.

The Puerto Rican Nation must continue. We must open our eyes to the oppressor's tricknology and refuse to be killed anymore. We must, in the tradition of Puerto Rican women like Lolita Lebrón, Blanca Canales, Carmen Pérez, and Antonia Martínez, join with our brothers and, together, as a nation of warriors, fight the genocide that is threatening to make us the last generation of Puerto Ricans.

Machismo was highly compatible with these ideas. Traditional Puerto Rican society relegated women to the private sphere: taking care of men, children, siblings, and the elderly, and accomplishing all domestic chores, including cooking and cleaning. Machismo was a complex set of beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors passed down by families from one generation to the next. Men exercised total control over the family; verbal and physical violence to keep women "in their place" was condoned. Manliness, defined by sexual virility, fostered a double standard of sexual freedom for men and monogamy for women.

I revisit the past to arrive at the present. We are again in an important historical moment, a time to mobilize masses of people in order to transform society for the benefit of poor and working people, for the advancement of all humanity.

Seeing the society that the Cuban people were attempting to build inspired me to believe it was possible to arrange a nation’s priorities to meet the needs of the majority of its people instead of just those of its corporations and super rich

We must study and reclaim our past so that we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are, and where we are going.

It is important for us to know the history of third world women who fought and are fighting for the freedom of our peoples. We usually don't know anything about yhem because even today people believe women have no role in revolution. The world and especially the vietnamese have shown that revolution is the duty of both men and women.

The idea of "divided nation" insisted that, in spite of the transformative impact of the Great Migration, Puerto Ricans were still one people. It charged the United States with creating the economic conditions that forced Puerto Ricans to migrate and families to separate…"Divided nation" merged ideas of identity and national liberation to advance the proposition that the primary duty of every Puerto Rican was to decolonize the island.

By the late sixties, Puerto Ricans had settled across the United States with the vast majority living in the Northeast. The passage of time, cold winters, and freezing snowstorms dimmed memories of the Caribbean sun. Puerto Ricans built new lives, established homes, raised families, and developed another language, "Spanglish." Growing up "in the belly of the beast,"13 we witnessed the exploitation and suffering of our parents as they worked hard to survive and create opportunities for us. We also experienced poverty and racism as Puerto Ricans and as blacks. In school, we were reprimanded when our parents could not speak English and were met with contempt when we spoke Spanish. We faced societal disdain in neglected neighborhoods where government services were almost non-existent. We were a new generation living side by side with African Americans, developing internationalist perspectives, and we joined with others in similar circumstances to fight for human rights.

When I met Cha Cha Jiménez and other Young Lords, I was impressed with their political ideals and militancy–with their sense of urgency and need for action.

Opinions about the responsibility of US Puerto Ricans to the island's liberation struggle had been the subject of debate for some time.

We considered ourselves "revolutionary nationalists." This idea expressed the intersecting and complex histories of Puerto Ricans exploited both in a US island colony and in the urban ghettos of the United States. Puerto Ricans suffered colonialism, class exploitation, and racism, and the Young Lords pointed to the US capitalist-imperialist system as the source of the problem. This view was distinct from that of other nationalists, who did not necessarily focus on a class analysis or on organizing the most economically disenfranchised, and from that of cultural nationalists, whose concerns were to promote and preserve Puerto Rican culture rather than transform the socio-economic-political system. For the Young Lords, revolutionary nationalism also meant internationalism-collaboration with people similarly exploited in the United States and throughout the world. The first point of the Young Lords' Thirteen-Point Program and Platform declared, "We want self-determination for Puerto Ricans: liberation on the Island and inside the United States." These were dual and simultaneous demands. The Young Lords not only organized for the rights of Puerto Ricans in the United States but also mobilized thousands to support the decolonization of Puerto Rico