Pedro Albizu Campos Quotes

It is not easy to give a speech when we have our mother lying in bed and an assassin waiting to take her life. Such is the present situation of our country, of our Puerto Rico; the assassin is the power of the United States of North America. One cannot give a speech while the newborn of our country are dying of hunger, while the adolescents of our homeland are being poisoned with the worst virus, slavery. While the adults of our homeland must leave Lares (their hometown) in fear and don't even have exit to foreign countries different from the enemy power that binds us. They must go to the United States to be slaves of the economic powers, of the tyrants of our country, they are the slaves who go to Michigan out of need, to be scorned and outraged and kicked. One cannot give a speech easily while this tyrant has the power to tear the sons right out of the hearts of Puerto Rican mothers to send to Korea, into hell to be killed, to be the murderers of innocent Koreans, to die covering a front for the yanqui enemies of our country, to return insane to their own people... it is not easy. Our blood boils and patience beats at our hearts and tells me that patience must end, must disappear, and that the day of Lares must be the day of Lares, that is, the day of the Puerto Rican Revolution.

The master never trusts the slave.

He who does not respect the truth does not respect his own mother.

The United States controls our economy, our commerce. Puerto Rico must determine a price for its products that is acceptable to the United States, while the United States issues their products to Puerto Rico at a rate that is comfortable to its own manufacturers and not the Puerto Rican consumer. The result is exploitation and abuses per petrated at will, resulting in poverty for our people and wealth for the United States.

This is why I am dismayed by the effort among our own people to defeat the spirit of those who struggle for our liberation. Our own people see Puerto Rican nationalism as nothing but a path of terrorism and murder; but they defeat our spirit in denouncing themselves. They defeat our spirit by ignoring the historical terrorism and murder of the United States. In the end, they help only the United States, its industry, its imperialistic objectives.

it stands to reason-it stands to common sense-that we must be a free nation in order to survive as a people. The future of those not yet bom depends on respecting the independence of Puerto Rico. That respect alone-the respecting of Puerto Rico's independence-is what Puerto Rican nationalism is all about.

Why bring the viruses, the microbes of this disease to experiment here in Puerto Rico? Oh, it's because it can spread and if it spreads here, what's the difference-they're Puerto Ricans. Didn't they kill a few thousands in Korea?

sovereignty is irrevocable, and when the United States, through its cannons, forced the Spanish plenipotentiaries to sign the so-called cession of Puerto Rico, it was committing just a typical North American stickup.

If registrations were good for Puerto Rico, the yanquis would never have inscriptions and elections here, nor would we ever have them. Registrations in Puerto Rico and elections are the trap to make Puerto Ricans keep turning the millstone.

if the United States feels obligated to intervene in Korea with all their weapons, let them mobilize themselves. Let them go fight for their interests, instead of taking advantage of Puerto Rico's defenselessness to make it go to defend the sordidness and the iniquity of their policy before the world, that is shamelessness.

...Within international rights Puerto Rico was a sovereign nation on the date in which the Treaty of Paris was drawn up, and Spain could neither give away Puerto Rico nor could the US annex it, nor the entire world disown it. This sovereignty is irrevocable and when the United States, through its cannons, forced the Spanish plenipotentiaries to sign the so-called cession of Puerto Rico it was committing a typical North American stick-up. And this co-action against the Spanish had no part of the Spanish American war, it was never a belligerent against the US or anyone else, and here the Yanquis have been at war for 52 years against the Puerto Rican nation, and have never acquired the right of anything in PR, nor is there any legal government in PR, and this is uncontestable, one would have to knock to pieces all the international rights of the world, all political rights, to validate the invasion of the US in PR and the present military occupation of our national territory.

these pretended defenders of freedom of every nation of the world except Puerto Rico are mere bandits in the current history of mankind.

Influential, independent men have made a difference in our society. Men such as musician Morel Campos; intellectuals such as Eugenio Maria de Hostos, and poets like Gautier Benitez were among the great men who built and founded this nation.

those who survive this policy of starvation become the cattle the United States needs to pick the crops in Michigan. These are the cattle the U.S. needs to be shipped as cannon fodder to Korea or to any other part of hell existing on this earth.

no army is a charitable institution, armies are established to kill, and this is in the charge of the U.S. Army.