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Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte (Hispanic Civil Rights) (Spanish Edition) (Hispanic Civil Rights

Enriqueta Vasquez

Top 10 Best Quotes

“When she tries to speak of Machismo, she is immediately put down and told "We know all about it, there are many many books written on the subject." She receives nothing but censorship again. She tries so hard to say, "Yes, there is much on Machismo, but can't you Machos look at the women and children who are the VICTIMS of your Machismo?" She tries so much to speak up and instead finds herself speaking to deaf ears and a completely closed mind.”

“[In Cuba] there are not a few people with too much and others with too little; instead, everyone has enough. (1969)”

“When we speak of Gringo, we do not particularly hate all white people, but we refer to their social system as ‘Gringo.’ That is what we don’t like.”

“We want an abundant society with a different kind of man," the Cubans said. In other words, people will not work for money-they will not have to sell their hard work to somebody else. They will work for the good of the land, for the good of all the people. (1969)”

“Today, Los Alamos and newspapers like The New Mexican are celebrating August 6. They call it "The 25th Anniversary of the Atomic City", or the birth of "The Atomic Age, but those are just fine words for a Day of Murder-for the single most horrible slaughter in human history. We cannot celebrate Murder with them. We will celebrate instead the awakening of ourselves and all the Sleeping Giants, rising up everywhere in the world to cry BASTA YA. Let the Manufacturers of Death celebrate the birth of their Atomic Age. We will celebrate the dawn of the People's Age. Power, at last, to the People! (1970)”

“To find a job [a single mother] will be faced with working very hard during the day and coming home and again having to work at home.”

“Then you will find the Chicana with a husband who was not able to fare so very well in the "Society" and perhaps has had to face defeat. She is the woman that really suffers. Quite often the man will not fight the real source of his problems, be it discrimination or whatever, but will instead come home and take it out on his family. As this continues, his Chicana becomes the victim of his machismo and woeful are the trials and tribulations of that household.”

“The new man is a person of the future. The idea of the new man (and new woman) is the realization that human beings have no limit for development. They have great capacity. They can be unselfish, and with[out] envidia. They can all work together for the common good. They can be freed from the pressure of getting money, and become real humans instead of work-machines.”

“The family must come up together. The Raza movement is based on Brotherhood. ¿Qué no? We must look at each other as one large family. We must look at all of the children as belonging to all of us. We must strive for the fulfillment of all as equals with the full capability and right to develop as humans. When the man can look upon "his" woman as HUMAN and with the love of BROTHERHOOD and EQUALITY, then and only then, can he feel the true meaning of liberation and equality himself. When we talk of equality within the Mexican-American movement we better be talking about TOTAL equality beginning right where it all starts. AT HOME...”

“That we have scholars and Chicana PHDers of this caliber teaching in our educational institutions fulfills a vision of what we hoped would come out of the Chicano Movement. Even more extraordinary is the fact that most scholars do not forget “la causa Chicana,” thus watering the raices of the ancient past and living Chicano epic.”

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Book Keywords:

chicana, mexican-americans, capitalism, cuba, gringo, feminism, discrimination, feminismo, systemic-racism, money, white-people, development, work, atomic-bomb, motherhood, machismo, liberation, future, home, nuclear-weapons, raza-movement, gringos, equality, chicano-movement, nuclear-bomb, raza, socialism, academia, weapons

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