Juan González Quotes

Every one of the fifty states was named after a native American people that was wiped out in that particular area-Illinois, California, Nebraska, conquered lands. Every bit of that territory is conquered land.

that's our goal, national liberation of Puerto Rico and self-determination for Puerto Ricans inside the United States.

Inside the U.S., we see ourselves allied with all Third World people, poor white and working class people.

Our people have experience with crooked politicians full of empty promises. In the 1940's, luis munoz marin and the slogan "Bread, Land, and Liberty." Where is the bread? Where is the land? Where is the liberty? munoz marin was for independence, until he got into office. Then he became a traitor, and a rich man.

we study history and we check out that very rarely have people been ever able to achieve anything in social changes unless they were capable of defending themselves and backing it up. Because if we were able to go into Nelson Rockefeller's office and I was able to go in and say, "Nelson, you and your father and your grandfather have been seized, have been robbing from working people for years. How about redistributing your wealth?" And if Rockefeller said "Juan you are right. I have been a thief and a crook and Standard Oil has been oppressing the people to work for years. Take it back, redistribute it among the people." There will be no need for war; there will be no need for violence. But the capitalists won't do that; they will defend themselves; they will defend their right to maintain that oppression and that exploitation.

while the capitalists were fighting, 200 million people turned to socialism of the Soviet Union. After the second World War, when the fascists fought a capitalist society, 600 million people turned to socialism in China. So we think maybe after the third world war, the whole world might turn into socialism.

The Revolution of Lares, more than an uprising for independence, was a rebellion against slavery.

Nowadays, our leaders prefer to search for the causes of crime and poverty in the actions or inaction of those at the very bottom of society. The obscene transfers of wealth over the past forty years from that bottom to a privileged few at the top--and from much of the Third World to financial elites in the West--are all excused as the natural evolution of the Market, when, in fact, they are products of unparalleled greed by those who shape and direct that Market.

The biggest traitor in Puerto Rican history is this lackey, Luis Munoz Marin, who shipped our people by the hundreds of thousands to New York because he could not provide jobs for them; who taught our people to be white middle class americanos, when they were poor, oppressed boricuas; who destroyed the jibaro with operation bootstrap, moving thousands off the land into the slums of San Juan, and Ponce, and let all our money go to u.s. capitalists. He was the apostle of non-violence for profit.

Education is the first step in revolution. And armed self-defense is the first step of education for armed revolution.

the majority of the American people don't even know what the United States government and the businessmen do.

Our position is that it is impossible to have [free] elections in Puerto Rico. You have 50,000 American troops who have never left since 1898. You have all the radio, t.v., and press controlled by American companies. So how is it possible to have a free election inside Puerto Rico? We maintain that we are for free election. We're for free election once the Americans are out of Puerto Rico. It's the same position that the Vietnamese people have, get out and then we will have our election to decide what our future is going to be.

we look hopefully towards the future because we see that over the last century, even though in your schools and in your textbooks, people make preludes that Marxism and ideals of socialism have been bankrupt, the reality is that all around the world, the masses of people have turned to socialism over the last century.

Hatred of oppression drives us.

we wanna build a scientific revolution. One that involves the masses of the people and doesn't permit the possibility of other oppressors rising up again as they did in the Soviet Union; as they have in all the Eastern supposedly socialist countries to oppress the people once again.