Spanish Colonization Quotes

A few years back Texas was a wilderness, the home of the uncivilized and wandering Comanche and other tribes of Indians, who waged a constant warfare against the Spanish settlements…. In order to restrain these savages and bring them into subjection, the government opened Texas for settlement. Foreign emigrants were invited and called to that country. American enterprise accepted the invitation and promptly responded to the call

Columbians prefer to descend to the eternal abysses rather than be Spaniards.

Your former Fathers the Spaniards have now no further Authority over you.

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

'Hispanic' is a reference to Hispania, the name by which Spain was known in the Roman period, and there has always been strong ambivalence toward Spain in its former colonies.

Even when we were under the Spanish flag, we had a movement that just wanted assimilation into Spain, a movement of autonomy - which has been the majority always - and a movement for separation. In that sense, Puerto Rico's political reality is very different from any place I know in the whole world.

The kings of Spain brought us the conquistadores and masters, whose footprints remained in the circular land grants assigned to those searching for gold in the sands of rivers, an abusive and shameful form of exploitation, traces of which can be noted from the air in many places around the country.

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

If the Philippines secure their independence after heroic and stubborn conflicts, they can rest assured that neither England, nor Germany, nor France, and still less Holland, will dare to take up what Spain has been unable to hold.

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

Spanish colonial policy has been a failure. All the defects of character and administration which produced such disastrous results at home had naturally fuller scope for development in the colonies. The discoveries of Columbus did not open up a new continent to be settled by industrious immigrants coming to found states and develop their resources in peaceful industry. The marvelous exploits of the Conquistadors were performed in the craziest thirst for gold, and those who succeeded them came in the hope of speedy enrichment and return, to accomplish which they exploited to the utmost the unhappy natives, and when these were no longer available replaced them with African slaves.

You want to know why there's a Texas Rangers? Well, here's the answer. You know how the six-gun came around? Well, here's the answer. You want to know why Mexicans allowed Americans to settle Texas in the first place? It was fear of Comanches.

My maternal great-grandfather Don Juan del Gallego was a Spanish adventurer from Asturias, Spain. He sailed on a galleon ship to the Philippines. He then went to the Bicol region to build a town that eventually became known as Del Gallego.

Being Peruvian means to come from the farthest place possible to get to Europe. Peru is the land of the Incas. It was the capital of South America; it was where the Spanish founded their empire and took over the Inca Empire and made it into a colony of Spain.

The Philippines is a terrible name, coming from Spain. Phillip II was the father of the inquisition, who I believe died of syphilis. It is my great regret that we didn't change the name of our country.

One hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the Spanish government issued a decree authorizing the enslavement of the American Indian as in accord with the law of God and man.

While the Pilgrims landed on 'Plymouth Rock' in 1620, the Spanish had already settled in to the Southwest beginning in the late 1500s, and with the coming of Europeans, some tribes suffered massive declines in populations due to disease and violence. Some Tribes were wiped out by 90 percent, while others were completely decimated.

The US stole Texas from Mexico by violence, then invaded Mexico on ludicrous pretexts and conquered half of it, what is now the Southwest and Far West. That's why cities have Spanish names: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Cruz, etc. All of this is suppressed in standard American history. But the victims remember. The conquerors typically have one history, the victims a different one - and often a more accurate one.

[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.

During the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica in the 16th century, the Catholic Church's Friar Diego de Landa supervised the burning of hundreds of Maya codices - fig-bark books rich in mythological and astronomical information. Only four Maya codices are known to have survived.

Do you not realize that this war is waged against the Spanish alone, and that it would therefore be a war without enemies and would be all over in a day if you did not help them to fight? Do not let yourselves be deceived, Americans, or allow them... to make you believe that we are God’s enemies and want to overthrow His holy religion... Open you eyes; remember that the Europeans are trying to set Creole against Creole while they themselves look on from a safe distance. If things turn out favorably they will take the credit for having conquered us, and will mock and despise whatever is Creole...

The Spaniards would have nothing to say to us. They had no thoughts of accepting our proffer of liberty; and we could not oblige them to take it. I reflect that amidst all their alleged grievances, they have great wealth and prosperity, and whatever they suffer, they have in general no pain from the consciousness of oppression.

But for the difference in habit of observation, why did Yankees, almost instantly, discover gold in California, which had been trodden upon and overlooked, by Indians and Mexican greasers, for centuries.

If the Philippines must remain under the control of Spain, they will necessarily have to be transformed in a political sense, for the course of their history and the needs of their inhabitants so require.

Whatever may be said as to our relations to some other countries, I think the relations of this country to Spain offer no ties of gratitude or of blood.