Guatemala Quotes

“Israel's demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as a 'strategic asset,' as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon doctrine, Israel and Iran were to be 'the guardians of the Gulf,' and after the fall of the Shah, Israel's perceived role was enhanced. Meanwhile, Israel has provided subsidiary services elsewhere, including Latin America, where direct US support for the most murderous regimes has been impeded by Congress. While there has been internal debate and some fluctuation in US policy, much exaggerated in discussion here, it has been generally true that US support for Israel's militarization and expansion reflected the estimate of its power in the region.

The effect has been to turn Israel into a militarized state completely dependent on US aid, willing to undertake tasks that few can endure, such as participation in Guatemalan genocide. For Israel, this is a moral disaster and will eventually become a physical disaster as well. For the Palestinians and many others, it has been a catastrophe, as it may sooner or later be for the entire world, with the growing danger of superpower confrontation.”
― Noam Chomsky

“But I don't shut up and I don't die.
I live
and fight, maddening
those who rule my country.

For if I live
I fight,
and if I fight
I contribute to the dawn.”
― Otto Rene Castillo

“Para que los pasos no me lloren,
para que las palabras no me sangren:
canto.

Para tu rostro fronterizo del alma
que me ha nacido entre las manos:
canto.

Para decir qe me has crecido clara
en los huesos más amargos de la voz:
canto.

Para que nadie diga: ¡tierra mía!,
con toda la decisión de la nostalgia:
canto.

Por lo que no debe morir, tu pueblo:
canto.

Me lanzo a caminar sobre mi voz para decirte:
tú, interrogación de frutas y mariposas silvestres, no perderás el paso en los andamios de mi grito, porque hay un maya alfarero en tu corazón, que bajo el mar, adentro de la estrella,
humeando en las raíces, palpitando mundo, enreda tu nombre en mis palabras.

Canto tu nombre, alegre como un violín de surcos, porque viene al encuentro de mi dolor humano.

Me busca del abrazo del mar hasta el abrazo del viento para ordenarme que no tolere el crepúsculo en mi boca.

Me acompaña emocionado el sacrificio de ser hombre, para que nunca baje al lugar donde nació la traición
del vil que ató tu corazón a la tiniebla, ¡negándote!”
― Otto Rene Castillo

“Why were we so full of hope in those days? Looking back, I see so clearly that violence was worsening. Living through that time, we didn’t see that. We believed in our capacity to grow a great country. A just society.”
― Kaimana Wolff, La Chiripa

“Sería muy interesante que alguien investigara en qué medida los sistemas de comunicación de masas trabajan al servicios de la información y hasta qué punto al servicio del silencio. ¿Qué abunda más, lo que se dice o lo que se calla?”
― Ryszard Kapuściński

“On December 21, we will be celebrating in Guatemala the beginning of a new era in accordance with the calendar of the Mayan civilization. The new era, the 13 Baktun, is an invitation to renew physical and spiritual energies in an environment of peace, cooperation and dialogue. All ... are invited to join us to share in this dawn of a new era. The Mayans of yesterday and today, and all Guatemalans, await you with open arms.”
― Otto Perez Molina

“Meli ya kwanza kuondoka katika Bandari ya Salina Cruz kusini mwa Meksiko katika Bahari ya Pasifiki ni 'La Diosa de los Mares', 'Mungu wa Bahari', au 'Goddess of the Seas', Tani 6000, iliyoondoka saa tisa kamili usiku kuelekea Miami nchini Marekani; wakati ya mwisho kuondoka ilikuwa CSS ('Colonia Santita of the Seas', Tani 10000), na SPD ('El Silencio Depredador del Profundo', 'Mnyama Mtulivu wa Kina Kirefu', 'The Silent Predator of the Deep' – nyambizi ya Panthera Tigrisi), zilizoondoka saa kumi na moja alfajiri kuelekea Guatemala na Kolombia. Salina Cruz ni sehemu iliyopo kandokando mwa Bahari ya Pasifiki kusini kabisa mwa Meksiko na kaskazini-mashariki kwa Reparo Jicara katika jimbo la Oaxaca. Kambi ya Panthera Tigrisi ilijengwa ndani ya Msitu wa Benson Bennett – katika ufuko wa bahari kubwa kuliko zote ulimwenguni, iliyopuliza hewa na kuyumbisha miti anuai juu ya maabara kubwa kuliko zote katika Hemisifia ya Magharibi; ya kokeini, heroini, bangi, eksitasi na hielo ya China na Kolombia. Panthera Tigrisi alikamatwa katika Bahari ya Pasifiki. Kahima Kankiriho alikamatwa katika Msitu wa Bennett.”
― Enock Maregesi

“La ciudad se estremece
con sus ruidos terribles,
convulsiones
de risa,
estertores de miedo.
Y la ciudad tiembla
y conjetura
con sus muecas
descoloridas
y sus danzas
informes.”
― Isabel de los Ángeles Ruano, Torres y tatuajes

“Well, Colonel, there is diplomacy and there is reality. Our ambassador represents diplomacy. I represent reality. And the reality is we don't want you.”
― Stephen Kinzer

“If kind words were said without meaning, simply to make us pleased with the speaker, the result was surely accomplished, and we felt more kindly disposed toward the whole of Guatemala for the pleasant words spoken in that musical language.”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico

“In the succeeding thirty-two years of U.S. guidance, not only has Guatemala gradually become a terrorist state rarely matched in the scale of systematic murder of civilians, but its terrorist proclivities have increased markedly at strategic moments of escalated U.S. intervention. The first point was the invasion and counterrevolution of 1954, which reintroduced political murder and large-scale repression to Guatemala following the decade of democracy. The second followed the emergence of a small guerrilla movement in the early 1960s, when the United States began serious counterinsurgency (CI) training of the Guatemalan army. In 1966, a further small guerrilla movement brought the Green Berets and a major CI war in which 10,000 people were killed in pursuit of three or four hundred guerrillas. It was at this point that the "death squads" and "disappearances" made their appearance in Guatemala. The United States brought in police training in the 1970s, which was followed by the further institutionalization of violence. The "solution" to social problems in Guatemala, specifically attributable to the 1954 intervention and the form of U.S. assistance since that time, has been permanent state terror. With Guatemala, the United States invented the "counterinsurgency state.”
― Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

“La nuit était si sombre que l'eau des rivières se cognait aux pierres des montagnes et, au-delà des montagnes, Dieu, qui est parfois come un dentiste fou, avec la main du vent, arrachait les arbres avec leur racines.”
― Miguel Ángel Asturias, Leyendas de Guatemala

“A much more serious labor dispute was the two-year struggle in the late 1940s between the company and stevedores at Puerto Barrios over the issue of mechanization and a change in company pay policy from hourly to "piece" wages. As a result of intense lobbying in Washington by United Fruit officials, members of Congress denounced the strife. From that point on, all efforts by workers to confront the fruit company were reported in the United States as purely political disputes, the result of deliberate government or "Communist" intrigues to harass the company rather than of genuine worker complaints.”
― Stephen Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala

“The view of Central America as a region to be kept "safe" for American corporations was naturally not shared by all the people who lived there. To many guatemalans, United Fruit represented with perfect clarity the alliance of American government and business arrayed against their efforts to attain full economic independence.”
― Stephen Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala

“With intimidating financial resources and shrewd planning, the United Fruit Company thus deployed a platoon of lobbyists and publicists at a cost of over a half million dollars a year to convince Americans that something evil was afoot in guatemala. The company worked both the left and the right of the American political leadership and won the backing of both liberals and conservatives for its policies in Guatemala. This campaign, so ably executed by Edward Bernays, Thomas Corcoran, John Clements and Spruille Braden, had a remarkable impact on the U.S. government.”
― Stephen Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala

“In Guatemala, in 1954, a legally elected government was overthrown by an invasion force of mercenaries trained by the CIA at military bases in Honduras and Nicaragua and supported by four American fighter planes flown by American pilots. The invasion put into power Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who had at one time received military training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The government that the United States overthrew was the most democratic Guatemala had ever had. The President, Jacobo Arbenz,
was a left-of-center Socialist; four of the fifty-six seats in the Congress were held by Communists. What was most unsettling to American business interests was that Arbenz had expropriated 234,000 acres of
land owned by United Fruit, offering compensation that United Fruit called "unacceptable." Armas, in power, gave the land back to United Fruit, abolished the tax on interest and dividends to foreign investors,
eliminated the secret ballot, and jailed thousands of political critics.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“The damage United Fruit had done to Latin America was beyond imaginable and, even as the Cavendish shift occurred, beyond healing. The dictatorial governments the company installed in Guatemala and Honduras ruled their respective countries for decades, releasing wave after wave of abuse, assassination, and even genocide. In Guatemala, death squads sponsored by the successors to banana-installed governments roamed the countryside, killing anyone suspected of being-or even becoming--a left-wing sympathizer. That meant just about anyone who labored on a banana plantation, and their families. It was the obscene, logical extension to the sentiment that had crushed Jacobo Arbenz and his efforts to bring justice to the country's banana lands. Over 100,000 native Mayas died at the hands of the Guatemalan military; tens of thousands more fled the country (most now live in the United States).”
― Dan Koeppel, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World