Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla Quotes

The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new set of exchanges, therefore, began and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.

Christopher Columbus was the spearhead of the biggest invasion and genocide ever seen in the history of humanity

In my opinion and experience, imperialists of all nations and races will tell us anything to keep us fighting. For them.

The Spaniardes have executed most outragious and more then Turkishe cruelties in all the west Indies

It is no wonder that the Spanish dependencies languished, in spite of their infinite potentialities of wealth and prosperity. The narrow and selfish policy of the mother country deprived the colonists of all incentives to exertion; the officials sent from Spain enriched themselves, the tax- gatherers seized all superfluous earnings; there were no accumulation of capital and no advancement.

[W]e can be certain that, though preached to more than fifty years, if they [the Aztecs] were now left alone, if the Spanish nation were not to intercede, I am certain that in less than fifty years there would be no trace of the preaching which has been done for them.

The tactic of leading people into... a war that doesn't make any sense by telling them they are under attack, and if they raise any objection they're unpatriotic, is a very old tactic. And it doesn't intimidate me.

We should never suffer Cuba to pass from the hands of Spain to any other European power.

The Catholic Church was the church of the colonial fascist regime.

Mexico was conquered more by manipulation of myth and archetype.

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.

The deed is done, the nail is driven, Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English

The conservation of monarchy in any portion of South America will tend to break the shock of that inevitable divorce by which the New World is about to be divided by the Old... But as to putting it forward, as a project or proposition of ours, that is out of the question. Monarchy in Mexico, and monarchy in Brazil, would cure the evils of universal democracy, and prevent the drawing of the line which I almost dread – America versus Europe. The United States, naturally enough, aim at this division and cherish the democracy which leads to it.

We decided to act carefully, concealing our aims, because if the movement were frankly revolutionary it would not be supported by the general mass of people... Since the natives are indifferent to the word liberty it is necessary to make them believe that the rising is undertaken simply to favor King Ferdinand.

Brazil has cast a firebrand into Europe

The Americans, in the Spanish system now in place, perhaps more so than ever before, have no other place in society than that of simple consumers; even in this they are burdened with shocking restrictions, such as a ban on the cultivation of European fruit, with control of these products monopolised by the king, a prohibition on factories which not even the peninsula possesses, exclusive commercial privileges even over basic needs, and customs bans between American provinces so that they cannot trade, understand each other or negotiate

My mind revolts and my soul cannot support the weight of so much evil: theft, rape, pillage, deaths, and murders, fires and devastation; the virgin violated, the cry of the widow and the orphan; the father armed against his son and each one looking for his brother to kill him; of those who have migrated; of the thousands who have fled; of the bodies stretched out in the public streets; of the bones which cover the fields and of so much blood shed on Venezuela’s soil.

The white race seems to me to blame in saying that all the reason for its interference in Africa is the improvement of the native African, and then to start on altering African institutions without in the least understanding them. It seems to me that the leading men among the European educated Africans have depended too much on the religious side of the question.

How can you call upon us to abolish the clash of civilizations, while America violently attacks Muslims in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in all corners of the world? …. America is interfering in our religion, in our traditions and in our privacies. This contradicts the Koranic verse: "They will not stop fighting you until they turn you back from your faith if they can.

In despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant;

We, of our own accord, not at your instance nor the request of anyone else in your regard, but out of our own sole largess and certain knowledge and out of the fullness of our apostolic power, by the authority of Almighty God conferred upon us in blessed Peter and of the vicarship of Jesus Christ, which we hold on earth, do by tenor of these presents, should any of said islands have been found by your envoys and captains, give, grant, and assign to you and your heirs and successors, kings of Castile and Leon, forever, together with all their dominions, cities, camps, places, and villages, and all rights, jurisdictions, and appurtenances, all islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and the south, by drawing and establishing a line from the Arctic pole, namely the north, to the Antarctic pole

Other nations struggle to gain more territory, more food, more petroleum. Spain has battled and will continue to do battle so that there are more Catholics and honourable men in the world.

The vanquishment of the heathen consists in obliging them to destroy one another.

We're told the old-school imperialists were racists, that they thought of the wogs as inferior. But, if so, they at least considered them capable of improvement. The multiculturalists are just as racist. The only difference is that they think the wogs can never reform: ‘Good heavens, you can't expect a Muslim in Norway not to go about raping the womenfolk! Much better just to get used to it.’

No one has ever succeeded in keeping nations at war except by lies.