Elizabeth Martinez

"Thanks to the inspiration of Elizabeth Martinez, who founded and published El Grito del Norte in Española, New Mexico, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, I decided to write my doctoral dissertation on the history of land tenure in northern New Mexico. Only through understanding history and land, I believed, could the present be understood."

"At first, she struck me as a film director at work, trying to create order out of chaos. She exuded an air of authority."

"She was an example of what it means to not just speak your truth but to live your truth and to be prepared to commit your life to that truth."

"She was an elegant presence and a dynamic soul who wore red and purple together like no one else."

"I thought I knew my history, but 500 Years taught me more than I could imagine. In these pages, La Chicana emerges from historical erasure as spirit-warrior, artist, and revolucionaria. This book won't rest quietly on a coffee table, but belongs on the kitchen table, in the factory lunch-room, the school library, the clinic waiting room, the painter's studio. It is a book to be used, to remember and record Chicanas struggling to make home in our Native América."

"picking up the pen for Chicanas became a "political act." ...Women also founded and edited newspapers-El Grito (Betita Martinez); Encuentro Feminil (Adelaida del Castillo and Ana Nieto Gómez); Regeneracion (Francisca Flores); and El Chicano (Gloria Macias Harrison). Through their writings, Chicanas problematized and challenged prescribed gender roles at home (familial oligarchy); at school (the home economics track); and at meetings (the clean-up committee),"

""We have practiced a different kind of leadership, a leadership that empowers others, not a hierarchical kind of leadership." Elizabeth (Betita) Martínez echoed, "The leadership that empowers others is the leadership we need." Over fifty years ago, Luisa Moreno and Josefina Fierro de Bright provided this type of leadership."

"She was an innovative type of organizer. In all projects, she had a posse of young people working with her. She loved being around young people and they loved being around her."

"The very concept of collective responsibility for human well-being is under attack by neo-liberalism all over the world."