Mexicans Quotes

“Madame Ratignolle hoped that Robert would exercise extreme caution in dealing with the Mexicans, who, she considered, were a treacherous people, unscrupulous and revengeful. She trusted she did them no injustice in thus condemning them as a race. She had known personally but one Mexican, who made and sold excellent tamales, and whom she would have trusted implicitly, so soft-spoken was he. One day he was arrested for stabbing his wife. She never knew whether he had been hanged or not.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Now, don't get me wrong, I think border security is important. And I have no doubt that the Republican plan for turning our southern border into The Hunger Games will put a stop to the #1 threat facing America today — illegal cleaning ladies.”
― Bill Maher

“The Mexican people, once they have happened on a good food, he thought, flay the thing to distraction. Ham and eggs every morning now for two weeks. Since arriving in Guanajuato, bearing his typewriter, it had been the same thing each morning at nine. He stared at his plate, gently grieved.

("The Candy Skull")”
― Ray Bradbury

“Of course, the illegals have always been called names other than human--wetback, taco-bender. (A Mexican worker said: "If I am a wetback because I crossed a river to get here, what are you, who crossed an entire ocean?') In politically correct times, "illegal alien" was deemed gauche, so "undocumented worker" came into favor. Now, however, the term preferred by the Arizona press is "undocumented entrant." As if the United States were a militarized beauty pageant.

Maye it is.”
― Luis Alberto Urrea, The Devil's Highway: A True Story

“Adjunct teachers are the professorial equivalent of the migrant Mexican farm laborers hired during harvest. If you can get a good contract at the same farm every year, where the farmer pays you on time and doesn't cheat or abuse you, then it's in your best interest to show up consistently from year to year.”
― Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

“Peter, naomba nitubu kosa. Mimi si mtoto wa Mwanasheria Mkuu wa Serikali. Ni mtoto wa Rais wa Meksiko. Lisa ni mtoto wa Naibu Mwanasheria Mkuu wa Serikali,” Debbie alisema akitabasamu.
“Hata mimi nilijua ulikuwa ukinidanganya. Lakini mbona Rais wa Meksiko haitwi Patrocinio Abrego?” Murphy aliuliza.
“Utamaduni wa Meksiko ni tofauti kidogo na tamaduni zingine,” Debbie alijibu baada ya kurusha nywele nyuma kuona vizuri. “Hapa, watu wengi hawatumii majina ya pili ya baba zao. Hutumia jina la kwanza la mama la pili la baba; ndiyo maana Wameksiko wengi wana majina matatu. Kwa upande wangu, Patrocinio ni jina la baba yake mama yangu na Abrego ni jina la babu yake mama yangu – kwa sababu za kiusalama.”
― Enock Maregesi, Kolonia Santita

“El problema con los criollos, y hasta en mayor grado con las criollas, es que están convencidos de que merecen una mejor vida de la que tienen. La mente criolla está convencida de que bajo la corteza del cráneo porta un diamante que alguien tendría que descubrir, pulir y poner en un cojín rojo, para que los demás se admiren, se pasmen, se den cuenta de lo que siempre se habían perdido.”
― Valeria Luiselli, Los ingrávidos

“En route to California I had a few drinks with an American executive for Falstaff Brewing Company who said he'd been a hobo from '37 to '39. He talked about a friend of his who had lost his legs beneath a freight train and died. He told me he knew something about farm labor contractors. "Killers," he called them. And said it again, "Killers.”
― Tracy Kidder, The Road to Yuba City: A Journey into the Juan Corona Murders

“If the North American continent was broad ("high, wide, and lonesome"), then Mexico was tall. High, narrow, and lonesome. Europeans conquering North America hustled west, where the open land lay. And the Europeans settling Mexico hustled north. Where the open land was.

Immigration, the drive northward, is a white phenomenon.

White Europeans conceived of and launched El Norte mania, just as white Europeans inhabiting the United States today bemoan it.”
― Luis Alberto Urrea, The Devil's Highway: A True Story

“Todos hablan de Irak y de Siria, pero no saben que esta parte del mundo está en guerra desde hace mucho tiempo”
― Benito Taibo, Por una rosa

“A while after I was old enough to understand this story, I pointed out how backwards it was to have fled to the nation that had driven them out of theirs, but they never copped to the irony of it. They needed to believe they'd done the right thing and that it made sense.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“The collective memory of every Latino people includes direct or indirect (neo-)colonialism, primarily by Spain or Portugal and later by the United States. Among Latinos, Mexicans in what we now call the Southwest have experienced US colonialism the longest and most directly, with Puerto Ricans not far behind”
― Elizabeth Martínez, De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century

“He, who endlessly combated his family's reliance on 'Mexican time.' They drove him crazy. If a dinner gathering was announced for six o'clock, he could be sure it wouldn't start until nine. They'd walk in as if they were early. Or worse, they'd say 'What?' as if he were the one with a problem. You know you're Mexican when lunch doesn't show up till ten at night.”
― Luis Alberto Urrea, The House of Broken Angels

“One can seldom look at terrain and think of it, "This is France," for instance, but in looking at the landscape south of Nogales I had the feeling unmistakably. The land itself was Mexican. It was dry, sandy, rocky, hot, and heavy with many kinds of desert plants. It had repose, dignity, and a sense of the fierceness of survival--not just human survival, but all survival, animal, insect, bird, and plant. And then, when the people of Mexico appeared beyond the train windows, this isolation, struggle, and heroism was clearly marked in their faces.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“Good people will always be crossing the border, and whether I'm in the Border Patrol or not, agents will be out there arresting them. At least if I'm the one apprehending them, I can offer them some small comfort by speaking with them in their own language, by talking to them with knowledge of their home.

Fine, my mother said, fine. But you must understand you are stepping into a system, an institution with little regard for people.

I looked away from her and a silence hung between us. I glanced down at my hands and weighed my mother’s words. Maybe you’re right, I replied, but stepping into a system doesn’t mean that the system becomes you. As I spoke, doubts flickered through my mind.”
― Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border