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HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE
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Ernesto Che Guevara (Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings)
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She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.
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Junot Díaz (This Is How You Lose Her)
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I have never bought into the idea that blood is thicker than water. Love and respect are meant to be earned from our children, our spouses, our families, and our friends.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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I have always been taught to be proud of being Latina, proud of being Mexican, and I was. I was probably more proud of being a "label" than of being a human being, that's the way most of us were taught.
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Erin Gruwell (The Freedom Writers Diary)
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When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves...sometimes even physically.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Shakespeare had it right all along: Love will kill you in the end.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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I remember feeling that pieces of me were scattered around the world; I belonged to her, Mother Earth.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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A mother isn’t the person who births you; it’s the person who rears you and shows you love.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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...being Latino means being from everywhere, and that is exactly what America is supposed to be about.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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The things that come to us easily, our propensities, are carried on a deep subconscious level into our next life. There are no coincidences.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Why is it women have to bring all this angst into sex? We should be more like men. In. Out. Over. Next.
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Lara Rios (Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps)
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For some, excavating the past isn’t an adventure, it’s more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Are Latino-Americans white? Black? Other? Illegal aliens from Mars? Or are we the very face of America?
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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El desarrollo es un viaje con más náufragos que navegantes.
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
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I wish she’d said something different, but patriarchy is as prevalent around the world as racism and xenophobia are. We can’t hide from it, not even here.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Latinos are here to stay. As citizen Raquel, I'm proud to be Latina.
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Raquel Welch
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Cuanto más codiciado por el mercado mundial, mayor es la desgracia que un producto trae consigo al pueblo latinoamericano que, con su sacrificio, lo crea.
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina (La creación literaria))
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Religious disintegration began with colonization.
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
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While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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In reality, Eduardo hoped the mask would make him appear vulnerable and self conscious, like a wounded animal these stupid women would fight each other over to mend.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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This thing I am feeling, I’m almost certain, is the closest I’ll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Women destroy me. I allow them to.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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El subdesarrollo no es una etapa del desarrollo. Es su consecuencia. El subdesarrollo de América Latina proviene del desarrollo ajeno y continúa alimentándolo.
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Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent)
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Los indios han padecido y padecen - síntesis del drama de toda América Latina- la maldición de su propia riqueza.
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Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent)
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What about other women of color? For Hispanic and Latina women, Indian women, Middle Eastern women, Asian women, their absence in popular culture is even more pronounced, their need for relief just as palpable and desperate.
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Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist: Essays)
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¿Qué decir de la gratitud que América Latina debe a la Coca-Cola, que cobra carísimas licencias industriales para proporcionarles una pasta que se disuelve en agua y se mezcla con azúcar y gas?
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Eduardo Galeano
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Only a bitch of color comes to Harvard to get pregnant. White women don't do that. Asian women don't do that. Only fucking black and Latina women. Why go to all the trouble to get into Harvard just to get knocked up? You could have stayed on the block and done that shit.
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Junot Díaz (This Is How You Lose Her)
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We travel with the same clan over and over again, from one life to the next, until some ultimate purpose is fulfilled and we no longer need to return.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Our identities are as fluid as our personal experiences are diverse.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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We aren’t encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Marginalized women, specifically Black and Latina women, make up the largest group of laborers in a capitalist system. Our labor historically has been used to make the lives of white women less hectic and more relaxed.
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Tricia Hersey (Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto)
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If it weren’t for her setting me free, I may still be a caged bird today, holding my own daughter captive on a shit-laden perch.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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And while it is okay to acknowledge that all kinds of women, whether white, Black, Indigenous, Latina, Asian, cis, gender nonconforming, trans, queer, bi, or straight might have different experiences, it's not cool to act as though transwomen are in some entirely separate category from the more general category of woman. That is something that feminism needs to be clear on - that it isn't feminism if all women's concerns, particularly the most marginalized women's concerns, aren't taken seriously.
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Brittney Cooper (Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower)
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Perhaps finding out that we carry New World history in our genes will transcend racial checkboxes altogether and enable Latino-Americans to rethink what America is supposed to look like.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Foisting an identity on people rather than allowing them the freedom and space to create their own is shady.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Nobody, she felt, understood her--not her mother, not her father, not her sister or brother, none of the girls or boys at school, nadie--except her man.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Paradise is a state of being, more than just the name of a suburb or a home.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Even the juncture in history and the zeitgeist we live in is something we choose, setting the scene for the spiritual fodder we need to grow and achieve deeper elevation of our souls.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Listen kid, it’s just you and me now, so let’s help each other out. Always be honest with me, and show me how to be the mother and father I never had. I’ll make a mess of things sometimes, and I’m sorry in advance, but I’ll try. My word is bond.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Barbara appraised her with critical eyes. ‘Oh my. Well, this is going to need some work.’ She went right to Carmen’s hips and pulled the unfinished seams open. ‘Yes, we’ll have to take this way out. I’m not sure I have enough fabric. I’ll check when I get back to my office.’
You are a horrible witch, Carmen thought.
She knew she looked absolutely awful in the dress. She was part Bourbon Street whore and part Latina first-communion spectacle.
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Ann Brashares (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood, #1))
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They sounded a lot like me and my old girlfriend Loretta, but I swore to myself that I would stop thinking about her ass, even though every Cleopatra-looking Latina in the city made me stop and wish she would come back to me.
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Junot Díaz (Drown)
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More than anything, this place feels familiar. I bury my hands in the hot sand and think about the embodiment of memory or, more specifically, our natural ability to carry the past in our bodies and minds. Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation. I quietly thank this ancestor of mine for surviving the trip so that I could one day return.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Hay quienes creen que el destino descansa en las rodillas de los dioses, pero la verdad es que trabaja, como un desafío candente, sobre las conciencias de los hombres.
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
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Cuando el Estado se hace dueño de la principal riqueza de un país, corresponde preguntarse quién es el dueño del Estado.
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina (La creación literaria))
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Lately, Mami’s eyes have been so dark, I don’t like looking into them because I’m afraid I’ll fall in.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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You are meant to be, despite how you got here; you’ll see someday.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Come to think of it, maybe God is a He after all, because only a cruel force would create something this beautiful and make it inaccessible to most people.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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In 1996, when two-thirds of the crack users were White or Latina/o, 84.5 percent of the defendants convicted of crack possession were Black.
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Ibram X. Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America)
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I have thin lips, like two rose petals on top of each other, and I would say I have a Roman nose, but it doesn’t speak Latin.
Sane, paululum linguae Latinae dico. Caveat emptor!
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Jarod Kintz (Gosh, I probably shouldn't publish this.)
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Que importa a gramática de raiz latina quando duas bocas estão demasiado próximas para que qualquer vocábulo possa ser dito?
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Manuel Jorge Marmelo (O Amor é Para os Parvos)
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Soñé que asistía a mi propio entierro, a pie, caminando entre un grupo de amigos vestidos de luto solemne, pero con un ánimo de fiesta. Todos parecíamos dichosos de estar juntos. Y yo más que nadie, por aquella grata oportunidad que me daba la muerte para estar con mis amigos de América Latina, los más antiguos, los más queridos, los que no veía desde hacía más tiempo. Al final de la ceremonia, cuando empezaron a irse, yo intenté acompañarlos, pero uno de ellos me hizo ver con una severidad terminante que para mí se había acabado la fiesta. «Eres el único que no puede irse», me dijo. Sólo entonces comprendí que morir es no estar nunca más con los amigos.
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Gabriel García Márquez (Doce Cuentos Peregrinos (Spanish Edition))
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Il latino è una lingua precisa, essenziale. Verrà abbandonata non perché inadeguata alle nuove esigenze del progresso, ma perché gli uomini nuovi non saranno più adeguati ad essa. Quando inizierà l’era dei demagoghi, dei ciarlatani, una lingua come quella latina non potrà più servire e qualsiasi cafone potrà impunemente tenere un discorso pubblico e parlare in modo tale da non essere cacciato a calci giù dalla tribuna. E il segreto consisterà nel fatto che egli, sfruttando un frasario approssimativo, elusivo e di gradevole effetto “sonoro” potrà parlare per un’ora senza dire niente. Cosa impossibile col latino.
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Giovannino Guareschi (Chi sogna nuovi gerani?)
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Escribo y escribiré toda mi vida en español; el francés lo guardo para la correspondencia cuando tengo que escribirle a algún francés. El español es mi lengua de escritor y hoy más que nunca creo que la defensa del español como lengua forma parte de una larga lucha en América Latina que abarca muchos otros temas y muchas otras razones de lucha. La defensa del idioma es absolutamente capital. Si hay un espectáculo penoso es el de latinoamericanos que al cabo de muy poco tiempo en un país extranjero permiten que su idioma se degrade y el segundo idioma comience a entrar; hay una excepción a esto que estoy diciendo y es el caso de las gentes de un nivel mínimo de educación, porque no se les puede exigir de ninguna manera que tengan un control crítico de su lenguaje.
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Julio Cortázar (Clases de Literatura: Berkeley, 1980)
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There are things in our blood that are just naturally passed down to us, whether we want to recognize them or not.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Hip-hop is storytelling.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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This is what I know about my parents. They spent the next several years trying to forget each other, and me.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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The truth is usually left for us to hunt and gather independently, if we are so inclined.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Globalization by the way of McDonald’s and KFC has captured the hearts, the minds, and from what I can see through the window, the growing bellies of the folks here.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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«La muerte es cierta, la hora incierta. Cada cual tiene su tiempo marcado»,
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
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El sistema ha multiplicado el hambre y el miedo; la riqueza continuó concentrándose y la pobreza difundiéndose. Así
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
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The myths of the Strong Black Woman from chapter one, the Wise Indian, the Submissive Asian, and the Sassy Latina do more than show up in bad TV shows. They influence the perception that women who are not white do not experience a full range of emotions, much less suffer from the same mental health issues.
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Mikki Kendall (Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot)
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I have always been taught to be proud of being Latina, proud of being Mexican, and I was. I was probably more proud of being a "label" than of being a human being, that's the way most of us were taught. Since the day we enter this world we were a label, a number, a statistic, that's just the way it is. Now if you ask me what race I am, like Zlata, I'll simply say, "I'm a human being.
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Erin Gruwell (The Freedom Writers Diary)
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El duende is literally the goblin wind or force behind a person’s actions and creative life, including the way they walk, the sound of their voice, even the way they lift their little finger. It is a term used in flamenco dance, and is also used to describe the ability to “think” in poetic images. Among Latina curanderas who recollect story, it is understood as the ability to be filled with spirit that is more than one’s own spirit. Whether one is the artist or whether one is the watcher, listener, or reader, when el duende is present, one sees it, hears it, reads it, feels it underneath the dance, the music, the words, the art; one knows it is there. When el duende is not present, one knows that too.
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Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype)
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I have no doubt that we will one day abolish the death penalty in America. It will come sooner if people like me who know the truth about executions do our work well and educate the public. It will come slowly if we do not. Because, finally, I know that it is not a question of malice or ill will or meanness of spirit that prompts our citizens to support executions. It is, quite simply, that people don't know the truth of what is going on. That is not by accident. The secrecy surrounding executions makes it possible for executions to continue. I am convinced that if executions were made public, the torture and violence would be unmasked, and we would be shamed into abolishing executions. We would be embarrassed at the brutalization of the crowds that would gather to watch a man or woman be killed. And we would be humiliated to know that visitors from other countries - Japan, Russia, Latina America, Europe - were watching us kill our own citizens - we, who take pride in being the flagship of democracy in the world. (p. 197)
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Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate)
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Sometimes opposites attract, or so they say, but Paloma and Rocío were like arroz and mangú: they didn’t really mix well.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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I think Dad wanted to feel the pain, to feel his body cry, an urgent reminder that he was still alive. I pretended not to notice.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Hip-hop...has been the proverbial key that’s opened the door for me to roam this breathtaking planet.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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To me, travel is more valuable than any stupid piece of bling money can buy.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Discretion is a polite word for hypocrisy.
Tea Party Teddy
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Dianne Harman
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«Sería curioso que del seno mismo de los Estados Unidos, de donde nos viene el mal, naciese también el remedio».
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
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Constituimos una sola raza mestiza que desde México hasta el estrecho de Magallanes presenta notables similitudes etnográficas.
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Ernesto Che Guevara (Diarios De Motocicleta: Notas de Viaje por America Latina)
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En América Latina es lo normal: siempre se entregan los recursos en nombre de la falta de recursos.
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
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As Kimberlé Crenshaw reported1 in 2014, the median wealth, defined as the total value of one’s assets minus one’s debts, of single black women is $100; for single Latina women it is $120; those figures are compared to $41,500 for single white women. And for married white couples? A startling $167,500.2
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Rebecca Traister (All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation)
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I fall in love with Paraíso. It’s like a giant playground where I’m never scolded for running around recklessly, where I’m almost overwhelmed with the amount of attention and love I receive from Mami’s family. In New York, I’m invisible.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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The tension between people is palpable, and the ideal of what it means to be and look American becomes a preoccupation to folks around the country, including me.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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The gaping hole in her heart is amplified when she catches a glimpse of the strands of silver hair framing her once young face in the mirror.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Hip-hop, this thing we love that loves us back, is our lingua franca.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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If Aphrodite chills at home in Cyprus for most of the year, then Fez must be the goddess’s playground.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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La causa nacional latinoamericana es, ante todo, una causa social: para que América Latina pueda nacer de nuevo, habrá que empezar por derribar a sus dueños, país por país. Se abren tiempos de rebelión y de cambio. Hay quienes creen que el destino descansa en las rodillas de los dioses, pero la verdad es que trabaja, como un desafío candente, sobre las conciencias de los hombres. Montevideo, fines de 1970.
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina (La creación literaria))
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Estoy convencido de que nunca nos sucede nada que no hayamos previsto, nada para lo que no estemos preparados. Nos han tocado malos tiempos, como a todos los hombres, y hay que aprender a vivir sin ilusiones
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Ricardo Piglia (Respiración artificial)
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io, mio caro, non credo nell'amore universale. L'amore esiste in dosi modiche. Si possono amare forse cinque fra uomini e donne, dieci magari, talvolta financo quindici. E anche questo solo assai di rado. Ma se uno arriva e mi dice che ama tutto il Terzo mondo, o ama l'America Latina, o ama il sesso femminile, quello non è amore ma retorica. Pura demagogia. Slogan. Non siamo nati per amare più di una manciata di persone.
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Amos Oz (Judas)
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No te aconsejo leer a Poe, que inventó el relato plociaco y fue un gran poeta; ni a Conan Dpyle, el papá de Sherlock Holmes. ¿Sabes por qué? Porque sus dectectives son demasiados estrafalarios y cerebrales. No podrían resolver ni el caso más simple en nuestra caótica América Latina.
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Roberto Ampuero (El caso Neruda)
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Alice’s razor-thin blond hair is what people in Santo Domingo call bueno, but I don’t understand how that kind of hair can be good. It doesn’t move at all, or ripple like the water in Boca Chica when I throw shells at it.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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She looks like an empty shell of a woman with her soul hovering above her. We believe in spiritual guías in Santo Domingo. Hers is her own self. I can see Mami’s soul desperately trying to find its way back into her small body.
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Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
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Uno escribe para tratar de responder a las preguntas que le zumban en la cabeza, moscas tenaces que perturban el sueño, y lo que uno escribe puede cobrar sentido colectivo cuando de alguna manera coincide con la necesidad social de respuesta.
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Eduardo Galeano
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la próxima vez que te encuentres con el Che Guevara en una camiseta, en la portada de un álbum de rock o en el bikini de una modelo, ve ahí la buena noticia. La imagen es una prueba de que vives en un sistema más libre que el defendido por el Che.
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Leandro Narloch (Historia Políticamente Incorrecta de América Latina (Spanish Edition))
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I never wanted to be saved, just loved in ways that would make the Gods jealous.
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Nancy Arroyo Ruffin (Coming Undone (Love Poems))
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Ahora América es, para el mundo, nada más que los Estados Unidos: nosotros habitamos, a lo sumo, una sub América, una América de segunda clase, de nebulosa identificación.
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
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De acuerdo con los términos de este breve pero jugoso manifiesto capitalista, la ley de la selva es el código que naturalmente rige la vida humana y la injusticia no existe, puesto que lo que conocemos por injusticia no es más que la expresión de la cruel armonía del universo: son países son pobres, son pobres porque... son pobres; el destino está escrito en los astros y solo nacemos para cumplirlo: unos, condenados a obedecer; otros señalados para mandar. El autor fue el artífice de la política del Fondo Monetario Internacional en Brasil.
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Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
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Besos
Hay besos que pronuncian por sí solos
la sentencia de amor condenatoria,
hay besos que se dan con la mirada
hay besos que se dan con la memoria.
Hay besos silenciosos, besos nobles
hay besos enigmáticos, sinceros
hay besos que se dan sólo las almas
hay besos por prohibidos, verdaderos.
Hay besos que calcinan y que hieren,
hay besos que arrebatan los sentidos,
hay besos misteriosos que han dejado
mil sueños errantes y perdidos.
Hay besos problemáticos que encierran
una clave que nadie ha descifrado,
hay besos que engendran la tragedia
cuantas rosas en broche han deshojado.
Hay besos perfumados, besos tibios
que palpitan en íntimos anhelos,
hay besos que en los labios dejan huellas
como un campo de sol entre dos hielos.
Hay besos que parecen azucenas
por sublimes, ingenuos y por puros,
hay besos traicioneros y cobardes,
hay besos maldecidos y perjuros.
Judas besa a Jesús y deja impresa
en su rostro de Dios, la felonía,
mientras la Magdalena con sus besos
fortifica piadosa su agonía.
Desde entonces en los besos palpita
el amor, la traición y los dolores,
en las bodas humanas se parecen
a la brisa que juega con las flores.
Hay besos que producen desvaríos
de amorosa pasión ardiente y loca,
tú los conoces bien son besos míos
inventados por mí, para tu boca.
Besos de llama que en rastro impreso
llevan los surcos de un amor vedado,
besos de tempestad, salvajes besos
que solo nuestros labios han probado.
¿Te acuerdas del primero...? Indefinible;
cubrió tu faz de cárdenos sonrojos
y en los espasmos de emoción terrible,
llenáronse de lágrimas tus ojos.
¿Te acuerdas que una tarde en loco exceso
te vi celoso imaginando agravios,
te suspendí en mis brazos... vibró un beso,
y qué viste después...? Sangre en mis labios.
Yo te enseñé a besar: los besos fríos
son de impasible corazón de roca,
yo te enseñé a besar con besos míos
inventados por mí, para tu boca.
Este maravilloso poema de Gabriela Mistral, nos describe de una manera muy simple y sentida, una de las grandes expresiones de amor o quizas las principal. Me he tomado el trabajo de narrarlo, asumiendo el riesgo de no ser capaz de transmitir la verdadera intensidad o altura que tienen las palabras de esta destacada artista de las letras.
Lucila de María Godoy Alcayaga, conocida como Gabriela Mistral. Nacida en Vicuña, Chile el 7 de abril de 1889 y fallecida Nueva York, el 10 de enero de 1957, Poetisa, diplomática, y pedagoga. Gabriela Mistral, una de las principales figuras de la literatura chilena y latinoamericana, fue la primera persona de América Latina en ganar el Premio Nobel de Literatura,2 que recibió en 1945.
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Gabriela Mistral
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To the ancients, bears symbolized resurrection. The creature goes to sleep for a long time, its heartbeat decreases to almost nothing. The male often impregnates the female right before hibernation, but miraculously, egg and sperm do not unite right away. They float separately in her uterine broth until much later. Near the end of hibernation, the egg and sperm unite and cell division begins, so that the cubs will be born in the spring when the mother is awakening, just in time to care for and teach her new offspring. Not only by reason of awakening from hibernation as though from death, but much more so because the she-bear awakens with new young, this creature is a profound metaphor for our lives, for return and increase coming from something that seemed deadened.
The bear is associated with many huntress Goddesses: Artemis and Diana in Greece and Rome, and Muerte and Hecoteptl, mud women deities in the Latina cultures. These Goddesses bestowed upon women the power of tracking, knowing, 'digging out' the psychic aspects of all things. To the Japanese the bear is the symbol of loyalty, wisdom, and strength. In northern Japan where the Ainu tribe lives, the bear is one who can talk to God directly and bring messages back for humans. The cresent moon bear is considered a sacred being, one who was given the white mark on his throat by the Buddhist Goddess Kwan-Yin, whose emblem is the crescent moon. Kwan-Yin is the Goddess of Deep Compassion and the bear is her emissary.
"In the psyche, the bear can be understood as the ability to regulate one's life, especially one's feeling life. Bearish power is the ability to move in cycles, be fully alert, or quiet down into a hibernative sleep that renews one's energy for the next cycle. The bear image teaches that it is possible to maintain a kind of pressure gauge for one's emotional life, and most especially that one can be fierce and generous at the same time. One can be reticent and valuable. One can protect one's territory, make one's boundaries clear, shake the sky if need be, yet be available, accessible, engendering all the same.
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Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
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Este o crima, o rusine pentru fiecare om sa stie ca exista pe lume doua sute cincizeci de milioane de copii exploatati. Obligati sa munceasca de la cinci-sase ani, in locuri insalubre, sa presteze zile de munca istovitoare pentru cativa banuti cand au noroc, deoarece multi copii lucreaza in stare de sclavie sau semisclavie, fara protectie legala sau medicala. Aceste milioane de copii analfabeti, mai slabi si mai scunzi decat copiii nostri care merg la scoala, sufera de boli infectioase, rani, amputari si umilinte de toate felurile. Ii intalnim atat in marile orase ale lumii, cat si in tarile cele mai sarace. In America Latina exista cincisprezece milioane de copii exploatati.
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Ernesto Sabato (Antes del fin)
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Anger and tears create the space for the work of the Spirit. They are the groaning of the Spirit for renewal or creation and an expression of compassion thus revealing a deep spiritual well. To fear our tears or to suppress our anger is to block the power of the spirit springing forth from within our spiritual wells to resist death and to sustain and renew life.
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Elizabeth Conde-Frazier (Latina Evangélicas: A Theological Survey from the Margins)
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Together and separately, we as speakers disproved another description used to disqualify feminists: that we were all “whitemiddleclass,” a phrase used by the media then (and academics who believe those media clippings now) as if it were a single adjective to describe the women’s movement. In fact, the first-ever nationwide poll of women’s opinions on issues of gender equality showed that African American women were twice as likely as white women to support them.8 If the poll had included Latinas, Asian Americans, Native Americans,
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Gloria Steinem (My Life on the Road)
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Por el camino hasta perdimos el derecho de llamarnos americanos, aunque los haitianos y los cubanos ya habían asomado a la historia, como pueblos nuevos, un siglo antes de que los peregrinos del Mayflower se establecieran en las costas de Plymouth. Ahora América es, para el resto del mundo, nada mas que los Estados Unidos: nosotros habitamos, a lo sumo, una sub América, una América de segunda clases, de nebulosa identificación.
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Eduardo Galeano
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Hoy día, para abrir una empresa en Irlanda hacen falta sólo tres procedimientos legales que se realizan en un promedio de doce días, según las tablas del Banco Mundial.4 Comparada con México, donde se requieren siete trámites legales y cincuenta y un días, o la Argentina, donde hacen falta quince trámites burocráticos y sesenta y ocho días, Irlanda es un paraíso para las inversiones extranjeras.
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Andrés Oppenheimer (Cuentos chinos: El engaño de Washington, la mentira populista y la esperanza de América Latina)
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A new origin narrative and national identity could help pave the way to a more livable society for us all. A society based on cooperation rather than competition, on the idea that all living creatures are interdependent and that humanity's goal should be balance. Such were the values of many original Americans, deemed "savages." Similar gifts are waiting from other despised peoples and traditions. We might well start by recognizing that "America" is the name of an entire hemisphere, rich in a stunning variety of histories, cultures and peoples-not just one country.
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Elizabeth Martínez (De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century)