Guatemala Quotes

• 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.

  John Negroponte

  Couple, War, Taken

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• I wasnt privy to all of the intelligence that was coming in about Guatemala, but I did see the traffic that was coming in from Guatemala City, because it was very relevant to me, and of course I exchanged what I had with the chief of station in Guatemala City.

  E. Howard Hunt

  Cities, Traffic, Chiefs

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• The problem in Guatemala is that there is no solution to the issue of human rights. The problem is militarization, it is the injust distribution of wealth. It is intolerance of the indigenous, it is discrimination and marginalization.

  Rigoberta Menchu

  Issues, Rights, Distribution Of Wealth

  Source: www.indians.org

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• I'm living in a dream. I really consider myself really lucky. I was born and raised in Guatemala, in a village, where to go to the market you have to take two buses or drive about 20 minutes if you are lucky enough to have a car. I grew up very, very poor and I didn't even know that being an actor could be a career.

  Erick Chavarria

  Dream, Careers, Two

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• In the case of my country, Guatemala, 65% of the inhabitants are indigenous. The constitution speaks of protection for the indigenous. Who authorized a minority to protect an immense majority? It is not only political, cultural and economic marginalization, it is an attempt against the dignity of the majority of the population.

  Rigoberta Menchu

  Country, Political, Majority

  Source: www.indians.org

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• The evidence is now clear that the majority of people coming across the border are not from Mexico. They're coming from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. Those countries are the source of the people that are now coming in its majority.

  Marco Rubio

  Country, People, Majority

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• The most dramatic case is that of the Central Americans. Why are people fleeing Central America? It's because of the atrocities the U.S. committed there. Take Boston, where there's a fairly large Mayan population. These people are fleeing from the highlands of Guatemala, where there was virtual genocide in the early 1980s backed by Ronald Reagan. The region was devastated, and people are still fleeing to this day, yet they're sent back.

  Noam Chomsky

  Boston, America, People

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• It's very hard to try to be a cultural . . . people who organize cultural things . . . it's very complicated. And more so in a country like Guatemala.

  Luis Gonzalez

  Country, People, Trying

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• You will learn more by walking from Canada to Guatemala than you will ever learn in film school.

  Werner Herzog

  School, Canada, Film

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• In Guatemala, the gap between rich and poor must be eliminated, or we will continue to be the example of conflict in America.

  Rigoberta Menchu

  America, Example, Gaps

  Source: www.indians.org

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• I’ve been traveling in Guatemala in the rainforest, and here all these houses are made of sticks. It seems so easy to make one.

  Bjork

  House, Sticks, Easy

  Interview with Mathias Augustyniak, Michael Amzalag, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 21, 2009.

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• The US has attacked countries like Grenada, Panama, Libya... the list of victims of US terrorism is almost infinite. And the US government's participation in torture, whether in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile... is well-documented and widely known.

  Assata Shakur

  Country, Government, Lists

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• In the sublime days before 11 September 2001, when the powerful were routinely attacking and terrorising the weak, and those dying were black or brown-skinned non-people living in faraway places such as Zaire and Guatemala, there was no terrorism. When the weak attacked the powerful, spectacularly on 9/11, there was terrorism.

  John Pilger

  Powerful, People, Black

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• Haiti, which has been the main target of US intervention throughout the 20th century, is the poorest. And Guatemala, which is maybe the third major target of US intervention, probably ranks third poorest.

  Noam Chomsky

  Target, Haiti, Century

  Source: www.madre.org

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• Soft rock music isn’t rock, and it ain’t music. It’s just soft.

  George Carlin

  Funny, Humor, Rocks

  "Napalm and Silly Putty". Book by George Carlin, 2001.

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• Like Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Paraguay and others, Mexico believes that we should evaluate internationally agreed upon policies and search for a more effective and comprehensive response

  Jose Antonio Meade Kuribrena

  War, Believe, Drug

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• The Indians are a marginal people in Guatemala just like I am a marginal person in the first world.

  Luis Gonzalez

  People, Firsts, World

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• Soft rock music isn't rock, and it ain't music. It's just soft. Reminds me of something my third-grade teacher said to us. She said, "You show me a tropical fruit and I'll show you a cocksucker from Guatemala."

  George Carlin

  Teacher, Stupid, Rocks

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• The inaction of the international community towards Guatemala is injustifiable. The community should play an active role with concrete measures and sanctions imposed, as was the case in South Africa, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Cuba and Haiti. Why for us no? Why legalize death in one place and somewhere else no? This is clear in our memories.

  Rigoberta Menchu

  Memories, Iraq, Somewhere Else

  Source: www.indians.org

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• In 2011, after spending a couple of years working at Google, I decided that I wanted to dedicate myself to helping to transform education. I was particularly inspired by my upbringing in Guatemala, a poor country where high-quality educational opportunities are limited to those who have money.

  Luis von Ahn

  Country, Couple, Educational

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• By the laws of the land, people who come looking for jobs in America are illegal. But by the laws of economics, they are following the logic and laws of economics when they leave Guatemala and go to Mexico, leave Mexico and come to the U.S., leave Africa and go to Spain and Europe looking for jobs.

  Benjamin Barber

  Jobs, Europe, Law

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Navajo infants get so attached to cradleboard that they cry to be tied into it. Kikuyu infants in Kenya get handed around several"mothers," all wives to one man. . . . Mothers in rural Guatemala keep their infants quiet, in dark huts. Middle-class American mothers talk a blue streak at them. Israeli kibbutz mothers give them over to a communal caretaker . . . Japanese mothers sleep with them. . . . All these tactics are compatible with normal health--physical and mental--and development in infancy. So one lesson for parents so far seems to be: Let a hundred flowers bloom.

  Melvin Konner

  Mother, Flower, Sleep

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• We live in a capitalist system; anyone who believes they are above this system or purer than this system, even while shopping at the cute organic market across the street or taking a hiking vacation to Guatemala, is certifiable.

  Katy Lederer

  Cute, Believe, Vacation

  "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Capitalist". Interview with Benjamin Samuel, www.gelfmagazine.com. January 19, 2009.

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• What really terrifies Americans is the prospect that the Indian is very much alive, that the Indian is having nine babies in Guatemala, and that those nine babies are headed this way. This is one reason why Americans hold on so dearly to the myth of the dead Indian.

  Richard Rodriguez

  Baby, Nine, Way

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.

  Lynne Truss

  Book, People, Giving

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