Central America Quotes

Politically, [Latin] America is the same as it is physically: the land of the earthquakes.

The glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people, struggling to burst their chains and be free.

Show me one American drug kingpin who has been put in jail in America. There are a number of Hispanic kingpins from South and Central America but I don’t see any Mr. Smith’s.

The absence of significant development aid has only increased the importance of trade for Central America's future.

I helped make Mexico...safe for American oil interests. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank …. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

The idea that Hillary Clinton wants to do to Central America what her husband did to Colombia is troubling.

Those countries cannot be in better hands, my fear is that the Spaniards are too feeble to hold them till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece.

If we don't want to see the map of Central America covered in a sea of red, eventually lapping at our own borders, we must act now.

…we had a very desperate situation, or we thought it was at least, in Central America, and we had to get rid of a Communist government which had taken over, and our early efforts were defeated by a bad accident and we had to help, some send help right away.

There was the situation in Nicaragua where the Sandinistas had taken over a couple of years earlier. There was a civil war going on in El Salvador and there was a similar situation in Guatemala. So Honduras was in a rather precarious geographic position indeed.

We seek in Central America not peace alone, not peace to be followed someday by political progress, but peace and democracy, together, indivisible, an end to the shedding of human blood, which is inseparable from an end to the suppression of human rights.

The Europeans liked to believe it was their valor, superior weapons and culture that won the New World. The real conquistadors were the armies of pathogens that raced on ahead to infect and kill 9 out of 10 of all the Indians of North, Central, and South America. The civilizations of the New World crumbled under the onslaught of invading microbes. Without this invisible army, Cortez and those who followed might never have stood a chance.

Just about every Latin American country has sent players to the big leagues, from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica.

If there is no peace in Central America, it will not be because Costa Rica, and myself as president, have not done what is necessary to obtain peace.

My dad grew up in Nicaragua in his teenage years, then immigrated to the United States.

The only way in which a European union, embracing Britain but excluding eastern Europe, could become economically healthy would be develop the closest sort of trading relationships either with this hemisphere or with Africa.

Going back to the discussion we were having about immigration reform, some of the most challenging discussions I've had are with activists who essentially would argue that any immigrant from Central America, let's say, who gets here to this country should be allowed to stay because their country is dangerous, their country is poor, and the opportunities for that mom and that kid are much greater here, and why would you send them back?

When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago, but then they always blame America first.

The hatred that the Peninsula has inspired in us is greater than the ocean between us. It would be easier to have the two continents meet than to reconcile the spirits of the two countries. The habit of obedience; a community of interest, of understanding, of religion; mutual goodwill; a tender regard for the birthplace and good name of our forefathers; in short, all that gave rise to our hopes, came to us from Spain

The most damning indictment of the United States in Central America is that we have allowed the sterile voices of Marxism-Leninism to claim falsely the mantle of economic justice and hope for ordinary people when it should be carried by the heirs of Thomas Jefferson.

Although fostering a peaceful, prosperous and equitable hemisphere is clearly in the best interest of the United States, Washington has not always supported Central America's struggle for economic survival.

16,000,000 Americans either defend their rights or suffer repression at the hands of Spain, which, although once the world's greatest empire, is now too weak, with what little is left her, to rule the new hemisphere or even to maintain herself in the old. And shall Europe, the civilized, the merchant, the lover of liberty allow an aged serpent, bent only on satisfying its venomous rage, devour the fairest part of our globe? What! Is Europe deaf to the clamor of her own interests? Has she no eyes to see justice?

Our enemy, and the enemy of all America, is the monopolistic government of the United States of America

Latin American leaders have been demonized by a combination of their own local media—which is controlled by private, rich families who don’t want to see change in their countries—and also the U. S. media which is surprising considering the distance from the facts.

Although the pineapple had been widely disseminated for centuries among the native peoples of South and Central America, it didn't figure in European history until 1493.