Columbians prefer to descend to the eternal abysses rather than be Spaniards.
Simon Bolivar belongs to the band of modern men whose equals are to be found only when we reach back to republican times of Greece and Rome... In the midst of people who had no more tradition than the respect for an authority sanctioned by the acquiescence of three centuries of ignorance, superstition, and fanaticism, nor any political dogma but submission to an order of things supported by might and force, Bolivar succeeded in defying that power
General San Martin will never shed the blood of his compatriots, and he will unsheath his sword only against the enemies of the independence of South America.
Simon Bolivar turned over all of his land. He freed all of his slaves, and he turned them into soldiers, and he brought them here. He brought them to Peru and Carabobo, and he worked together with the troops of San Martin to liberate this continent. That is Simon Bolivar.
Simon Bolivar, when history led him - and as Karl Marx said, men can make history, but only as far as history allows us to do so - when history took Bolivar and made him the leader of the independence process in Venezuela, he made that process revolutionary.
Sure, we could send in the troops, but the threat of communism wouldn’t diminish until the people’s standard of living was improved and the totalitarian countries of Latin America gave them more freedom.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is such a powerful book, and 'Love in the Time of Cholera' is so strangely, brilliantly optimistic.
Spouting quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara, which are as germane to our highly technological, computerized, cybernetic, nuclearpowered, mass media society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.
Precisely fifteen years ago, at this very hour, you could still hear the echoes of the last shots of the battle that smashed one of Yankee imperialism's most sinister and traitorous actions against a Latin American people. Giro'n went down in history as the first defeat of Yankee imperialism on this continent …. The option between the past and the future, reaction or progress, treason or loyalty to principles, capitalism or socialism, imperialist domination or liberation, was what was decided at Giro'n on April 19, 1961.
Giro'n is the Cuban name for the Bay of Pigs.