Latin American Revolutionaries

"We treat the children like children. It is the powerful with their war that treats them like they are adults. We talk to them. We teach them that the word, together with love and dignity, is what makes us human beings. We don't teach them how to fight. Well, yes, but only how to fight with their words. They learn. They know that the reason we are in all this is so that they won't have to do the same. And they talk and they also listen. Contrary to what you say, we teach the children that words don't kill but that yes it is possible to kill words and, along with them, the act of being human."

"Love is like a teacup that every day falls to the ground and breaks to pieces. In the morning the pieces are gathered and with a little moisture and a little warmth, the pieces are glued together, and again there is a little teacup. He who is in love spends life fearing that the terrible day will come when the teacup is so broken that it can no longer mended."

"Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying "Enough!" He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable — this is Marcos."

"La libertad es como la mañana. Hay quienes esperan dormidos a que llegue, pero hay quienes desvelan y caminan la noche para alcanzarla."

"We teach them that there are so many words like colors and that there are so many thoughts because within them is the world where words are born. That there are different thoughts and we should respect them. That there are those who pretend their way of thinking should be the only way and they persecute, jail, and kill (always hidden behind the reasons of the State, illegitimate laws, or "just causes") thoughts that are different then their own. And we teach them to speak the truth, that is to say, to speak with their hearts. Because the lie is another form of killing words."

"Antonio dreams of owning the land he works on, he dreams that his sweat is paid for with justice and truth, he dreams that there is a school to cure ignorance and medicine to scare away death, he dreams of having electricity in his home and that his table is full, he dreams that his country is free and that this is the result of its people governing themselves, and he dreams that he is at peace with himself and with the world. He dreams that he must fight to obtain this dream, he dreams that there must be death in order to gain life. Antonio dreams and then he awakens…. Now he knows what to do and he sees his wife crouching by the fire, hears his son crying. He looks at the sun rising in the East, and, smiling, grabs his machete. The wind picks up, he rises and walks to meet others. Something has told him that his dream is that of many and he goes to find them."

"The storm is here. From the clash of these two winds the storm will be born, its time has arrived. Now the wind from above rules, but the wind from below is coming…. The prophecy is here. When the storm calms, when rain and fire again leave the country in peace, the world will no longer be the world but something better."

"We teach them to speak and also to listen. Because when people only talk and don't listen, they end up thinking that what they say is the only thing that is worth anything. ... Speaking and listening to words is how we know who we are, where we come from, and where our steps are going. Also it's how we know about others, their steps, and their world. Speaking and listening to words is like listening to life."

"(What’s your go-to classic? And your favorite book no one else has heard of?)...Subcomandante Marcos’s writings in conjunction with the 1994 Zapatista revolution showed me how lyrical and literary political writing could be, so the anthologies of his manifestoes and essays are up there in my pantheon"

"In previous armies, soldiers used their time to clean their weapons and stock up on ammunition. Our weapons are words, and we may need our arsenal at any moment."

"Many Mexicans today remember Villa with pride for the part he played in the revolution, and for standing up to the American superpower. Yet, this is to ignore the reality that Villa was a homicidal warlord for whom the revolution served as a convenient excuse to justify his crimes. At his death, Villa was reputed to have said, ‘Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something’"

"Also in the north were tough, mounted guerrilla fighters—bandits who took up the cause of the revolution, in some cases as paid mercenaries. The most brilliant of these was Pancho Villa. Villa was the only revolutionary leader to get good American press. Even Madero was criticized bitterly for suggesting a minuscule tax on the Mexican oil that was controlled and imported to the United States by American oil companies. But Pancho Villa had little of the "anti-Americanism" of which Washington suspected all the others. He did personally rape hundreds of women and murder according to whim, and he was a racist who killed Chinese people whenever he found them working in mining camps. His lieutenants were even more murderous and sadistic, devising hideous tortures. But General Villa was not anti-American. Ten thousand men rode with Villa, mostly in the northern state of Chihuahua. They robbed and raided, did as they wanted, and once won a spectacular military victory for the revolution at Zacatecas."

"In 1913 John Reed, a young Harvard graduate already making a name for himself as a radical muck-raking journalist, spent four months with the rebel Mexican leader Pancho Villa. Reed happened to show him a pamphlet with the latest rules of war which had been agreed at the Hague Conference of 1907. Villa, reported Reed, spent hours going over it: ‘It interested and amused him hugely.’ Villa wanted to know more about the conference and whether there had been a Mexican representative there. Above all he found the whole endeavour absurd: ‘“It seems to me a funny thing to make rules about war. It is not a game. What is the difference between civilised war and any other kind of war?”’ Villa had put his finger on one of the several paradoxes that confront us when we think about war. How can we talk at all about controlling and managing something where violence is the tool and the domination, if not the total destruction of the enemy, the goal?"

"Dubbed El Centauro del Norte (‘The Centaur of the North’), Pancho Villa has acquired a quasi-romantic reputation as a Mexican folkhero that masks his true legacy. Villa's intelligence, charisma and military effectiveness made him a major player in the revolutionary politics of his day, but his violence, ambition and cold-blooded brutality mark him out as the archetype of the South American caudillo."

"(Q: Did people in your family tell stories about their own lives?) Some of the stories had to do with animals. My father told about black ghost dogs, espantos, and Mamágrande Ramona told rabid coyote stories and stories of Pancho Villa coming across the border and raiding the pueblos."

"The brutality and uncouthness of many of the revolutionary leaders has not prevented them from becoming popular myths. Villa still gallops through the north, in songs and ballads; Zapata dies at every popular fair. … It is the Revolution, the magical word, the word that is going to change everything, that is going to bring us immense delight and a quick death."

"I am not an educated man. I never had an opportunity to learn anything except how to fight.."

"I, Pancho Villa, was a loyal man that destiny brought the world to fight for the good of the poor and that I will never betray nor forget my duty.""

"Companions of arms and lords. Do not believe that the one who is going to speak to them is a philosopher, I am a man of people, but you will understand that these men when they speak, speak with the heart."

"The country must be governed by someone who really loves his people and his land, who shares wealth and progress. I have all that, only that I am ignorant. ""

"Tengo el deber de informarle que Pancho Villa se encuentra en todas partes y en ninguna a la vez."

"Hated by thousands and loved by millions."

"Men will not forget that Pancho Villa was loyal to the cause of the people."

"Within the framework of capitalism it is impossible to solve the challenges of fighting against poverty, misery, exploitation and inequality."

"Every factory must be a school to educate, like Che Guevara said, to produce not only briquettes, steel, and aluminum, but also, above all, the new man and woman, the new society, the socialist society."

"I call on private businessmen to work together with us to build the new economy, transforming the capitalist economic model into a social, humanist and equality economy."

"It doesn't smell of sulphur any more. No, it smells of something else. It smells of hope, and you have to have hope in your heart."

"I nationalize strategic companies and get criticized, but when Bush does it, it's OK. … Bush is turning socialist. How are you, comrade Bush?"

"Democracy is not just turning up to vote every five or four years, it’s much more than that, it’s a way of life, it’s giving power to the people."

"Mr. Chávez is my brother, he is a friend of the Iranian nation and the people seeking freedom around the world. He works perpetually against the dominant system. He is a worker of God and servant of the people."

"We have arrived again to Venezuela, Thank God. Thanks to my beloved country."

"We're not really confronting those peons of imperialism. Our true enemy is called the North American empire and we're going to give another knockout to Bush."

"I don't want to die. Please don't let me die."

"If any international channel comes here to take part in an operation from the imperialist against Venezuela, your reporters will be thrown out of the country, they will not be able to work here. People at CNN, listen carefully: This is just a warning."

"If the "yes" vote wins on Sunday and the Venezuelan oligarchy, playing the [U.S.] empire's game, comes with their little stories of fraud, oil shipments to the United States will be halted [on Monday]."

"I'm not loved by Hillary Clinton... and I don't love her either."

"Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all, I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today - ethics, and moral...[Capitalism is] an infernal machine that produces every minute an impressive amount of poor, 26 million poor in 10 years are 2.6 million per year of new poor, this is the road, well, the road to hell."

"The stem cell debate was an introduction to a phenomenon I witnessed throughout my presidency: highly personal criticism. Partisan opponents and commentators questioned my legitimacy, my intelligence, and my sincerity. They mocked my appearance, my accent, and my religious beliefs. I was labeled a Nazi, a war criminal, and Satan himself. That last one came from a foreign leader, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez."

"Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game, 'You've got to find Chavez to kill him'."

"Fascists are not human. A snake is more human."

"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet"

"If the United States was mad enough to attack Iran or aggress Venezuela again the price of a barrel of oil could reach $150 or even $200."

"La propiedad privada es aquella que pertenece a personas naturales o jurídicas y que se reconoce sobre bienes de uso y consumo y medios de producción legítimamente adquiridos."

"If there was any armed aggression against Venezuela from Colombian territory or from anywhere else, promoted by the Yankee empire, we would suspend oil shipments to the United States even if we have to eat stones here. We would not send a drop more to U.S. refineries!"

"I extend from here my recognition of all who voted against us, recognition of their democratic weight."

"No se trata de estatizar toda la economía (...) No, nuestro socialismo acepta la propiedad privada. Solo que esa propiedad privada debe estar en el marco de una constitución y leyes y de un interés social."

"The two of them [Bush & Negroponte] are criminals. They should be tried and thrown in prison for the rest of their days. If he had any dignity, the president of the United States would quit. The U.S. president doesn't have the political or moral capacity to govern."

"Critico, aunque respeto, a mis amigos que sostienen la idea marxista leninista de que no debe haber propiedad privada, porque no la comparto."

"Dr Insulza is quite an idiot, a true idiot. The insipid Dr Insulza should resign from the secretariat of the OAS for daring to play that role."

"Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation, of the kind of misery and inequality that destroys social values. If you really look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ - who I think was the first socialist - only socialism can really create a genuine society."