Poets From Puerto Rico

"Julia de Burgos is the eldest of thirteen children, a bottomless spring of emotion, a boundless heart full of desires, a beautiful and eloquent woman who generously spills her spirit onto page after page...Julia de Burgos, the glowing poet of sensual rivers and waves crashing against sea walls, is drowning slowly in despair. I who am also poeta, puertorriqueña, needing both love and art, fighting political battles by day and demons by night, I have stood at the brink of that river of sorrows, tempted by oblivion. I live in a far more generous life, created for me by the labor of countless women, thirty years of collective agitation, thirty years of wrestling with the culture and consciousness of women and men. I do not face her terrible choices, the punishments meted out to passionate creative women of her day."

"In looking at the Puerto Rican movement as a whole and the positive contributions that we made in the seventies and early eighties, first we need to point out that we built on our legacy of struggle. We stood on the shoulders of such Nationalists as Ramón Emeterio Betances, Pedro Albizu Campos, Lolita Lebrón, and such communists as Luisa Capetillo, Jesús Colón, Bernardo Vega, Julia de Burgos, Juana Colón, Evelina Antonetti, Antonio Corretjer, Genoveva Clemente, Gerena Valentín, and many others."

"As my good friend the poet Susana Cabañas says in the last lines of her poem "Elegía a Julia de Burgos" ("Elegy to Julia de Burgos"): "Yo rehuso convertirme en otra estadística./Seré yo y será borinquen/Libre!" ("I refuse to be turned into another statistic/I and Borinquen will be/Free!""

"Julia de Burgos wrote: "That my grandfather was a slave/is my grief;/had he been a master/that would have been my shame.""

"we wander through the streets of our memory/looking for julia de burgos/in the concrete of our tongue"

"For Esmeralda Santiago, the impetus to develop a new tradition of Puerto Rican authors comes from her beginnings in literature, back in her childhood when she spent time in the backyard of a family member’s house in el campo. There, she listened to relatives tell trovas – oral tradition in rhyme. She also credits her dad’s love for poetry and Puerto Rican authors Julia de Burgos, Manuel Alonso, and Luis Palés Matos with sparking her interest."

"Julia de Burgos, the poet of love and nationhood"

"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."

"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."

"Commonwealth status provides us with a means adapted to the high end of creating an excellent civilization here in Puerto Rico. There is talk as to whether the Commonwealth status is or is not permanent. Strictly speaking, nothing in the world is permanent; but, accepting this as a relative term, I will say that the Commonwealth status shall be as permanent as the people of Puerto Rico may desire. It is fruit of our people's freedom of thought, and its permanence or impermanence should be the fruit of our people's continuing freedom to make decisions."

"The objective is, I repeat, a good civilization based on the abolition of poverty. A political status that puts obstacles in the path of that ideal cannot be, so long as it creates obstacles, the status that gives real freedom to the people of Puerto Rico."

"The history of Puerto Rico in the past decades has been that of two drives seeking to merge into one: the drive to abolish poverty and the drive of the people toward the ideal image of themselves."

"But it is repulsive to observe that democracy, precisely because of its principles of human freedom, frequently finds itself in the position of jailing poor people who are not morally perverse, while letting go free the big corruptors, the big racketeers, the big criminals of the numbers racket. Democracy should assiduously search for a way to prevent this. Its great respect for human freedom must not be used as a tool to guarantee impunity to these racketeers and criminals."

"Progress in technology is necessary for the economic development of our country in the direction of higher and higher levels that will benefit all Puerto Ricans. But to find relief for the human suffering temporarily caused by this very progress is a necessary duty."

"a man we can regard as a spiritual fellow countryman, a man eminent in music, eminent in human virtues, eminent in liberty. Of all his qualities the least is music-and he is one of the great musicians of the world: Maestro Pablo Casals!"

"Our society, in its endeavor to improve spiritually, to enlighten its understanding, to understand itself better, must restore to the teacher his legitimate position."

"If a good civilization is the final goal, and if we are to devote to it the larger part of this new decade, we must set above all other duties the duty of education education in the school and out of the school: the improvement of all means of communication, such as schools, universities, radio, television, and the press."

"We devoted the decade that started in 1940 to beginning the struggle to abolish poverty. To do that we set aside political status as an issue. During the decade that started in 1950 we directed our energy especially toward the creation of a new political status vitally adapted to the economic needs of Puerto Rico. During the decade that is now starting I propose that we devote special attention to what kind of civilization, what kind of culture, what deep and good manner of living the people of Puerto Rico want to make for themselves on the basis of their increasing economic prosperity."

"The nationalists have no political power. They have no votes and they hate votes. Votes to them are as repugnant as holy water to the devil."

"The issue in Puerto Rico is not between colonialism and independence. We are not a colony of the United States. We are citizens of the United States and our Island is associated on a basis of freedom with the United States. We are members of the independence of the United States."

"This crime confirms my conviction of the connection of these mad, grotesque, and futile nationalist violence-makers in Puerto Rico with communistic propaganda strategy all over the world."

"We have a genuine admiration and affection for President Truman, not only because of his leadership in these troubled times of the world, but in a more intimate sense, because of his constant, fair-minded, generous attitude in helping Puerto Rico to help itself."

"If you want to sell your vote, go ahead; it's a free country. But be sure you get something for it... You can't get both justice and the two dollars."

"At present, the Board of Education is eager to help the bilingual reader and to encourage the entire student body. It has transplanted "Operation Understanding," one of the slogans of Puerto Rico's former governor, Luis Muñoz Marín, to the mainland."

"let us dedicate this new decade to the grand enterprise of a great education for Puerto Rico."

"The public philosophy of our people should be much more than their political status; much more than their technology and their economy. It is or should be the deepest expression of their unity and their soul."

"once the basic needs and comforts are provided for, this growing economic energy should be used to create more personal freedom in all its multiple aspects. We have already pointed out what these are: more universities, more museums, more laboratories and libraries, more opportunities for adults to continue their education beyond the mere attainments of techniques for earning a living, more individuality in decisions, better neighborly feeling, better neighborhoods, greater appreciation of, rather than imitation of, the neighbor-in short, more serenity."

"A good civilization, it seems to me, is one which continues to work energetically to create more wealth, but directs this wealth toward the fulfillment of deeper values. Once certain basic needs are satisfied and certain basic comforts are available to all, it turns its attention to the attainment of more meaningful and lasting satisfactions than the mere possession and consumption of merchandise."

"a good civilization, our true final goal."

"The man who knows something today that he did not know yesterday is today, in that degree, a freer man than he was yesterday, because ignorance is servitude and knowledge is freedom. Parents who know today that they can provide their children with an adequate education are much freer than they were yesterday, if yesterday they lived in uncertainty as to whether or not they could educate their children. If a family knows it can move from a slum to a public housing development and later, as its economic condition improves, to a home of its own, it has greater freedom of spirit than one that despairs of ever being able to improve its lot... In a rapidly growing economic system such as Puerto Rico has and should continue to have, with increasing opportunities for greater economic well-being, all who now have hope, rather than despair, are freer because of this hope."

"Political liberty-under any political status-is in itself only one of the many expressions of human liberty."

"The distribution of this great wealth-the way in which it is apportioned to profits, wages, and professional salaries, education, health, continuing economic development, social security, recreation, housing, communications is extremely important...I propose that economic justice be maintained or improved as part of the agenda of the future."

"I believe that if Puerto Rico had been a federated state of the Union in, say, 1945, at the end of World War II, it would never have been able to attain the economic development, with its consequent social progress, which has been observed and admired by the whole world all these years"

"the best political status for a country has the consent of its people and helps, or at least does not greatly hinder, the growth of its economy. It participates in the development of what is good in its culture-the culture that the people desire for themselves on the basis of this economy."

"A government is not an end in itself. It is a means for the appropriate organization of a political community. Neither is a political status for the same reason-an end in itself."

"When the economic development of Puerto Rico reaches a point where any other political status may be consistent with a prosperous life and a good civilization, the people of Puerto Rico may then take up the question of political status. For they will then be free, truly free, of the coercion of destructive and inexorable economic realities, to decide whether they wish to continue using Commonwealth as a means toward the ideal of the good life, or whether they prefer to use any other status as a means to this end. What I am saying is that a political status should not be a straitjacket, a fetish, an unreasoned prejudice, but a great means toward much deeper and more significant ends."

"Always follow the line of thought of the intuition negating envy."

"Metaphors and similes are the beginning of the democratic system of envy."

"Liberty is not an option. It is a human right."

"Without liberty there is no wealth."

"Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion. (p.8)"

"Creation means discovery of a new reality that exists but that has not yet been noticed. The word is alive again. The speaking word. The verbs are in revolt—a revolt of the masses against the representation that has always been the main weapon of the state. (p.121)"

"What is dignity? The measure of liberty."

"If I respected languages like you do, I wouldn't write at all. El muro de Berlín fue derribado. Why can't I do the same? Desde la torre de Babel, las lenguas han sido siempre una forma de divorciarnos del resto de la humanidad. Poetry must find ways of breaking distance. I'm not reducing my audience. On the contrary, I'm going to have a bigger audience with the common markets — in Europe — in America. And besides, all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds. I feel like Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, and I even feel like Garcilaso forging a new language. Saludo al nuevo siglo, el siglo del nuevo lenguaje de América, y le digo adiós a la retórica separatista y a los atavismos."

"You cannot measure IQ through poetry."

"—Poets and anarchists are always the first to go. —Where. —To the frontline. Wherever it is."

"Only what is fated to die is capable of living. Only what dies lives. Why do you think Christ was killed? They killed him to prove that he wasn’t a god. But in killing him, they immortalized the perishable and transformed man into a god."

"If you look for an identity you find inequality. If you look for similarities you separate one truth from another."

"Gods are condemned to live the dream of the imperishable."

"What does winter or autumn or spring or summer know of memory. They know nothing of memory. They know that seasons pass and return. They know that they are seasons. That they are time. And they know how to affirm themselves. And they know how to impose themselves. And they know how to maintain themselves, What does autumn know of summer. What sorrows do seasons have. None hate. None love. They just pass."