Juan González Quotes

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

This happens under capitalism all the time, every thirty years they have a depression, or every twenty years. The system falls apart. The system's not made for working people, it's made for the rich. And so, what we have to do is transform the system, change it and take society to a higher level.

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.

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 in the Young Lords Party also follow the teachings of Don Pedro. We know that since the amerikkkan invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898, the united states has controlled the press, radio, television. They control the schools. Every day, our people are bombarded with more and more amerikkkan propaganda. More than 25,000 amerikkkan troops occupy our territory. With those forces of repression, it is impossible to talk of free elections. As the National Liberation Front of Vietnam says-first, the amerikkkans should get out, then we will be able to have free elections.

The Young Lords Organization is a revolutionary political party fighting for the liberation of Puerto Ricans and all oppressed people. We are the answer to the 400 year need of Latinos for a political party to lead our struggle for liberation. From the first invasion of Borinquen by christopher columbus in November 1493, our people have been resisting the foot on their back. The Tainos fought the Spanish adventurers and money-hungry pirates. The people of the Yoruba Nation, kidnapped from their African homeland, resisted the Spanish slave traders, and consistently rebelled for their freedom.

Jimmy Breslin once wrote that the Lords produced more good journalism—journalists than Columbia J School. The Lords were a loud, brash, radical and talented group of Puerto Ricans. We became a thorn in the side of the establishment and the police in this town, and in cities throughout the East Coast for a brief time, and influenced a generation of young Latinos to demand more equitable treatment for our community. But of all the radical groups of the '60s—and there were many back then—we probably received the most sympathetic press coverage. Even as youngsters, we understood the power of the press, and we consciously cultivated good coverage. We were helped by the first brilliant crop of young black and Latino reporters in the city's media, to whom we fed exclusives and who in turn repaid us with more all-around and sound coverage—people like a young Ed Bradley at WCBS, Gil Noble at WABC, Gloria Rojas at WNBC, Rudy Garcia at the Daily News, and of course liberal white writers like Jack Newfield at The Village Voice. And we published our own newspaper, Palante, that I edited for a while. So it was no accident that when the Lords fell apart in the mid-1970s, several of us ended up going into journalism—Pablo Guzmán, Felipe Luciano, Geraldo Rivera, our first lawyer—everybody knows Geraldo—and myself, or that when we landed there, we were all drawn to uncovering injustices and digging deeper than some journalists were accustomed to.

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.

Until Puerto Rico is decolonized, American democracy will not be complete.

The new slavery arrived with the amerikkkans and the only ones in this century who truly confronted that empire was the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, and for a time, the Socialist Party. Don Pedro was the defender of our nationality. Don Pedro assured with his struggle that at a later time in the future, men and women, poor and humble, capable of liberating Puerto Rico, would arise.

This government, instead of protecting us, kills us. We have no choice at this time, but to pick up those guns and say to all of our nation-ARM YOURSELVES TO DEFEND YOURSELVES. We were not born violent. We do not enjoy killing. We just want peace and freedom. But our daily lives are violent. This country is violent. The enemy leaves us no choice. Either we sit by, saying "ay bendito" as our nation dies, or we stand up, organize, prepare for the revolution we know is coming.

Revolution is the most serious of jobs. It is not an ego-trip or a party. When the people join in revolutionary war, they do so because they have been convinced by both actual conditions and political education that there is no other way out, that their lives and those of their family, are threatened.

Juan Seguín is the forgotten father of Latino politics in the United States. The story of his life and career has left Mexican Americans with a somewhat different political legacy than that which Washington, Jefferson, and the Founding Fathers bequeathed to white Americans, or which Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth, and W. E. B. Du Bois symbolize for black Americans. How our nation comes to terms with that legacy will determine much of American politics during the twenty-first century.

Many independentistas who write or speak about Puerto Rico, fail to mention these two realities that are vital in order to understand our history-the period of slavery, during which one part of our nation treated another part as if they were not human; and the division of the nation when the yankees deceived us and forced us to go the u.s.