Rio Quotes - page 3
What gives corporations like Conoco, Shell, Exxon, Daishowa, ITT, Rio Tinto Zinc, and the World Bank the right which supersedes or is superior to my human right to live on my land, or that of my family, my community, my nation, our nations, and to us as women? What law gives that right to them? Not any law of the Creator or of Mother Earth. Is that right contained within their wealth? Is that right contained within their wealth, which was historically acquired immorally, unethically through colonialism and imperialism and paid for with the lives of millions of people, species of plants, and entire ecosystems? They should have no such right. And we clearly, as women and as indigenous peoples, demand and will recover that right-the right of self-determination, to determine our own destiny and that of our future generations.
Winona LaDuke
Some of these villages were built upon rocky eminences deemed almost inaccessible: witness for instance the ruins of the ancient Pueblo of San Felipe, which may be seen towering upon the very verge of a precipice several hundred feet high, whose base is washed by the swift current of the Rio del Norte. The still existing Pueblo of Acoma also stands upon an isolated mound whose whole area is occupied by the village, being fringed all around by a precipitous ceja or cliff. The inhabitants enter the village by means of ladders, and by steps cut into the solid rock upon which it is based.
Josiah Gregg
From the Rio Grande's waters to the icy lakes of Maine,
Let all exult, for we have met the enemy again.
Beneath their stern old mountains we have met them in their pride;
And rolled from Buena Vista back the battle's bloody tide,
Where the enemy came surging swift like the Mississippi's flood,
And the Reaper, Death, with strong arms swung his sickle red with blood.
Santa Anna boasted loudly that before two hours were past
His Lancers through Saltillo should pursue us fierce and fast.
On comes his solid infantry, line marching after line.
Lo! their great standards in the sun like sheets of silver shine.
Mike Jones
The origin myth's omissions are grotesque. It ignores three major pillars of our nationhood: genocide, enslavement and imperialist expansion. The massive extermination of indigenous peoples provided our land base; the enslavement of African labor made our economic growth possible; and the seizure of half of Mexico by war (or threat of renewed war) extended this nation's boundaries north to the Pacific and south to the Rio Grande. Such are the foundation stones of the United States, within an economic system that made this country the first in world history to be born capitalist.
Elizabeth Martinez
I write, in the main, about the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. That I include the Mexican side is natural and inevitable; that I don't overload it, however, is because I want to present an American literature that was (historically) founded by the neighboring country as seen by its linguistic contribution. To have ignored Mexico would have been a blunder and to have larded it heavier, my work would not have been an American literature, it would have been something else; as to what, I don't know, but Mexico, in some parts and in some ways, had to be included...
Rolando Hinojosa-Smith
