Quotes & Sayings About Mexican American

I have taken part in ceremonies with North American and Mexican shamans, as well as Brazilian ceremonies. — Stanislav Grof

To me, you have to declare yourself a Chicano in order to be a Chicano. That makes a Chicano a Mexican-American with a defiant political attitude that centers on his or her right to self-definition. I'm a Chicano because I say I am. — Cheech Marin

I had to endure the worst time of all in terms of racial discrimination in Hollywood when I first started out. It was inconcievable to American directors and producers that a Mexican woman could have a lead role. — Salma Hayek

A white leftist Mexican activist isn't the same in the media as the son of a farmer in Guerrero, they aren't worth the same. In the same imaginary of the Latin American Left exists a racism, a racism that corresponds to processes of colonialism internal to almost all countries in Latin America. — Bocafloja

If New Mexican voters believe the path to create American jobs is keeping taxes low, then they have an option. That's my campaign. — Heather Wilson

You have the United States, and you have Mexico, and then you have this Mexican-American thing which is this third culture, which I like to call Aztlan. — Linda Ronstadt

What's four years in our long American history? Remember when I asked that wheelchair-bound politician to "stand up." It turns me off when people say Donald Trump is authentic. Just because he says "Mexican rapists." What about me? I am the real deal. — Joe Biden

The V-2's directional system was notoriously erratic. In May 1947, a V-2 launched from White Sands Proving Ground headed south instead of north, missing downtown Juarez, Mexico, by 3 miles. The Mexican government's response to the American bombing was admirably laid back. General Enrique Diaz Gonzales and Consul General Raul Michel met with United States officials, who issued apologies and an invitation to come to "the next rocket shoot" at White Sands. The Mexican citizenry was similarly nonchalant. "Bomb Blast Fails to Halt Spring Fiesta," said the El Paso Times headline, noting that "many thought the explosion was a cannon fired for the opening of the fiesta. — Mary Roach

But a major factor in the discontent of Americans came with the decree of April 6, 1830, when the Mexican government in essence banned further American immigration into Texas and tried to control slavery. (For an account of how Texans opposed this decree at Fort Anahuac, see Texas History Features on the Texas Almanac website.) Austin protested that the prohibition against American immigration would not stop the flow of Anglos into Texas; it would stop only stable, prosperous Americans from coming. Austin's predictions were fulfilled. Illegal immigrants continued to come. By 1836, the estimated number of people in Texas had reached 35,000. — Elizabeth Cruce Alvarez

Now the pope on his overnight flight back to Italy explains how contraception can be justified. This is the pope, the Vicar of Christ, the Catholic Church explaining how contraception could be justified. And then he rips into capitalism and the American immigration policies while at the Mexican border before getting on his plane to go back to Italy. — Rush Limbaugh

There are some Chicanos who don't want to be Chicanos - they want to be Mexican-American, Hispanic, or even Spanish. — Cheech Marin

The American white man (not to speak of the Indian, the Negro, the Mexican) hasn't a ghost of a chance. If he has any talent he's doomed to have it crushed one way or another. The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack of him. — Henry Miller

I understand Los Angeles as a space where "real and imagined narratives overlap" in ways that disrupt both either/or dichotomies (Spanish or Indian, Mexican or American, Brown or White) and "linear historical understandings of this place and its people."22 — David Samuel Torres-Rouff

In Phoenix, they were called illegal aliens and pegged as criminals. They were alternately viewed as American, Mexican, or neither. Now, for a moment, they were simply teenagers at a robotics competition by the ocean. — Joshua Davis

I'm Mexican-American. My dad was actually born in Mexico. He was raised up there, and he came back and forth to America pretty much his whole teenage years. My mom is from Sacramento, California, and she's a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl. She's a whitey. — Ryan Guzman

The denunciation and smearing of truly gifted people like Rodriguez - people the Chicano community should be proud of - by the self-appointed gatekeepers of Chicano Studies is, alas, an everyday spectacle. (Did anyone in the Chicano Studies community even take note when Dana Gioia, who is one of the best poets of his generation and happens to be half Mexican American, was named chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in 2002? No, because he made it on his merits and not by being a victimization hustler.) — Bruce Bawer

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he's an American child. — Richard M. Nixon

Where are we going? We're going to try and fulfill Dr. Martin Luther King's dream, and if we Mexican Americans march to Washington, it is to tell this country that poverty is not a Negro problem. Poverty is a Mexican-American problem; poverty is an American-Indian problem; poverty is a Puerto Rican problem; poverty is an Appalachian problem. — Rodolfo Gonzalez Lebrero

I read that yesterday, the Mexican peso hit its lowest point since March of 2009. In fact, things got so bad, it was seen leaving a bar with the American dollar. — Jimmy Fallon

The Pi Betas had accepted the fact that Rose was Mexican, but it was obvious they would just as soon ignore it. And they seemed to assume Rose wanted to do that, too. The other girls might not be overtly disturbed by the fact that Rose was a chicana, but they certainly were not going to encourage her to explore her heritage. No, if Rose joined the Pi Betas, she would have to deny the biggest part of herself. She would have to become completely American. — Francine Pascal

I held Angie Luna in that room for hours, and I remember the different times we made love like epochs in a civilization, each movement and every touch, apex upon abyss. In the luxury of our bed, we tried every position and every angle. I explored the curves on her body and delighted in seeing the freedom of her ecstasy. Her desperate whispers and pleas. I told her I loved her, and she said she loved me too. We lay in bed with our limbs entangled, in a pacific silence that reminded me of existing on a beach just for the sake of such an existence. I couldn't imagine the world ever becoming better, and for some strange reason the thought slipped into my head that I had suddenly grown to be an old man because I could only hope to repeat, but never improve on, a night like this. I finally took her home sometime when the interstate was empty, and the bridges seemed to lead to nowhere, for they were desolate too. — Sergio Troncoso

When we talk about corruption, there's corruption on both sides of the border. That's what I think is interesting. I'm from Mexico, so when I see a Mexican portrayed in the American market on TV or films, you better do it right because you won't fool me. I'm sure no one really cares on this side of the border, if they get it right or not, but all the way from Mexico, to another 120 countries where the show goes, they will be able to tell the difference. — Demian Bichir

I think that Mexican-American kids live in a global world. It's not even bi-, it's multi-. You know, for those of us who grew up with different countries on our block, different nationalities, you know, we moved into multiple worlds. — Sandra Cisneros

In other words, the problem of empire-building is essentially mystical. It must somehow foster the impression that a man is great in the degree that his nation is great; that a German as such is superior to a Belgian as such; an Englishman, to an Irishman; an American, to a Mexican: merely because the first-named countries are in each case more powerful than their comparatives. And people who have no individual stature whatever are willing to accept this poisonous nonsense because it gives them a sense of importance without the trouble of any personal effort. — Felix Morley

You say your city the way some Americans say this is their country. You never feel right saying that - my country. For some reason looking Mexican means you can't be American. — Ana Castillo

My grandmother would always tell me that I was hers, that I was Mexican. That was her role. It was not my teacher's role to tell me I was Mexican. It was my teacher's role to tell me I was an American. — Richard Rodriguez

What has happened in the last generation is that Tijuana has become a new Third World capital - much to the chagrin of Mexico City, which is more and more aware of how little it controls Tijuana politically and culturally. In addition to whorehouses and discos, Tijuana now has Korean factories and Japanese industrialists and Central American refugees, and a new Mexican bourgeoisie that takes its lessons from cable television. — Richard Rodriguez

I'll occasionally go and do an honor like the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund because it raises money for a very worthy organization. — Linda Ronstadt

Well, I think the American people have to understand that the Mexican government is committed, in a very substantial way, to eradicating the effect of the impact of the cartels on Mexico. We have - what are called vetted units down there. Units that have been vetted by our law enforcement people there, the people with whom we deal - primarily. — Eric Holder

Republican candidate Ben Carson told reporters he thinks American prisons might be too comfortable. As opposed to Mexican prisons that have personal showers with $5 million escape tunnels. — Jimmy Fallon

The intelligence community is so vast that more people have top secret clearance than live in Washington. The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined. — Nicholas D. Kristof

OUCH

"The arrabal (a term used for poor neighbourhoods in Argentina and Uruguay) and carpa (informal mobile theatre set up inside tents, once common in Latin America), with their caliente (hot) rhythms such as the rumba or the cha-cha-cha, were conquering audiences all over the world, a trend allegorised in song lyrics about their popularity among the French and other non-Latin Americans - "The Frenchman has fun like this/as does the German/and the Irishman has a ball/as does even the Muslim" ("Cachita") - even as they filtered in the presence of a blackness - "and if you want to dance/look for your Cachita/and tell her "Come on negrita"/let's dance" - denied in the official discourse of those Spanish=speaking countries wielding the greatest economic power in the region: namely, Argentina and Mexico, the latter of which would eventually incorporate Afro-Latin American culture into its cinema - although being careful to mark it as Cuban and not Mexican. — Robert McKee Irwin

After the Reagan years, there were only three people of color in the Republican Party. Their slogan was 'Republicans - the Other White Meat.' George [H.] Bush tried to dispel the 'whites only' image of his party, often referring to his Mexican-American grandkids as 'the little brown ones over there,' and nominated Clarence Uncle Thomas to the Supreme Court. — Kate Clinton

A country that cannot count its own illegal aliens - estimates range from 8-12 million - with a porous 2,000 mile border is not secure despite twelve carrier battle groups. We must accept that it is a cornerstone of Mexican foreign policy to export illegally each year a million of its own to the United States to avoid needed reform at home and to influence American domestic policy. — Victor Davis Hanson

The German military were equally unenthusiastic, because they were oblivious to the damage caused by their insecure ciphers during the Great War. For example, they had been led to believe that the Zimmermann telegram had been stolen by American spies in Mexico, and so they blamed that failure on Mexican security. They still did not realize that the telegram had in fact been intercepted and deciphered by the British, and that the Zimmermann debacle was actually a failure of German cryptography. — Simon Singh

Although most Americans believed in Manifest Destiny, few could agree on exactly which lands the United States was supposed to govern. — Charles W. Carey Jr.

There's something about my Mexican-American heritage ... I'm proud of it. — Christian Camargo

Every major war in American history, except the Mexican and Spanish-American, has either led to central banking or resulted from it. Central banking and government have a symbiotic relationship that is often mediated by war. Central banking gives government a way to tap the productive power of the private sector and borrow from the future without the need to rely overmuch on unpopular tax increases. Government gives central banking the extreme profits that derive from immense borrowing to finance wars and other government projects. — Mark David Ledbetter

The Mexican debt crisis, Latin American debt crisis, the crises of the 1990s, the Wall Street stock market crash, and other events should have reminded us, and did remind us, that financial instability remains a concern, remains a problem. — Ben Bernanke

I usually say Latina, Mexican-American or American Mexican, and in certain contexts, Chicana, depending on whether my audience understands the term or not. — Sandra Cisneros

Do not set out to make Mexican art, or American, Chinese, or Russian art. Think in terms of universality. — Rufino Tamayo

I have many friends who are both Mexican and Mexican-American and others who, I guess you would say, are somewhere in between. The ironic thing is that all three of those categories often exist inside of the same family. — Conor Oberst

I'm not Mexican, and I'm not Central American. I'm from California. — Cary Fukunaga

There is a certain pride in work and in your body throbbing beyond any boundaries you imagined you could endure. You identify with those who come home with pieces of pork fat wedged into their boots, with gashes on their arms and legs from their tools and machines, and with black grime etched into the folds of their dark skin.
Too often this country has turned its back on the working class and the working poor, not to mention the undocumented workers who harvest the food for American tables and build our houses. — Sergio Troncoso

Hopefully I'll be the first Mexican-American going into Hillbilly Heaven. — Freddy Fender

In terms of the revolution, I believe that the revolution will be a revolution of dispossessed people in this country: that's the Mexican American, the Puerto Rican American, the American Indian, and black people. — H. Rap Brown

I'm Mexican-American, but for a long time I was pushed out of any references to Mexican-American writers. It was easier to come out as a gay man than it was to come out as a Mexican-American. — John Rechy

Texas Gov. Rick Perry referred to the Mexican city of Juarez as the most dangerous city in America. In his defense, he probably just thought it was an American city because there were so many Mexicans there. — Jay Leno

My dad will win, I silently countered, even as I smiled sweetly. I couldn't wait to spike the ball right through her block, no matter how tall she was. In health class we'd learned that if Barbie were human, she'd be six feet tall and weigh one hundred pounds, and Gisele seemed pretty close to those dimensions. By contrast, my doll representation would be more like Barbie's Fat Mexican-American Republican sidekick. — Jennifer Lane

If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription, who has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer - even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American or Mexican-American family being rounded up by John Ashcroft without benefit of an attorney or due process, I know that that threatens my civil liberties. And I don't have to be a woman to be concerned that the Supreme Court is trying to take away a woman's right, because I know that my rights are next. It is that fundamental belief - I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper - that makes this country work. — Barack Obama

This is America. I don't want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian. — Stephen Colbert

All American wars (except the Civil War) have been fought with the odds overwhelmingly in favor of the Americans. In the history of armed combat such affairs as the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars must be ranked, not as wars at all, but as organized assassinations. In the two World Wars, no American faced a bullet until his adversaries had been worn down by years of fighting others. — H.L. Mencken

I grew up watching foreign programs - American, English, Mexican, and very little Kenyan. 'The Color Purple' was the first time I saw people who looked like me. — Lupita Nyong'o

The United States has used force abroad more than 130 times, but has only declared war five times - the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II. — John Yoo

No, pos, de nada," the Mexican said with the typical humility that has always bewildered my American need to take credit. — Erasmo Guerra

Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts. — Octavio Paz

Esperanza leaned around the side of the truck. As they rounded a curve, it appeared as if the mountains pulled away from each other, like a curtain opening on stage, revealing the San Joaquin Valley beyond. Flat and spacious, it spread out like a blanket of patchwork fields. Esperanza could see no end to the plots of yellow, brown, and shades of green. The road finally leveled out on the valley floor, and she gazed back at the mountains from where they'd come. They looked like monstrous lions' paws resting at the edge of ridge. — Pam Munoz Ryan

This is me putting it simply; the politicians are one demographic and they see that Arizona is changing. I feel like the only instinct to retain power is to have education favor you. You have this Mexican American program that helps kids take ownership of their race and their power. It threatens the political powers that are in place. — Matt De La Pena

I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American. — Lyndon B. Johnson

I love the Mexican people; I respect the Mexican leaders - but the leaders are much sharper, smarter and more cunning than our [American] leaders. — Rand Paul

This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President. — Mark Shields

It wasn't a cutdown to call someone a Mexican. It would kill my career to refer to someone as Mexican today. It's like calling me an American. — David Spade

You can love the Mexican culture, you can love your Mexican-American wife and also believe that we need to control the border. — Jeb Bush

Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands. — Michael Oppenheimer

Friends started saying, "Oh, don't come. No vengas. It's dangerous for us, and we live here." Then there's also the issue, if you go back, and you happen to be Mexican-American, you get treated very differently [in Mexico] than if you're blond. If you say something wrong, they say, "Why don't you learn your mother tongue?" — Sandra Cisneros

Justin Butterfield of Illinois, a Federalist-turned-Whig, said of the Mexican-American War, said, "I opposed one war and it ruined me. From now on I am for war, pestilence and famine. — Michael S. Green

I want to be the Mexican-American Oprah Winfrey. That's a small goal, isn't it? That's something that I want. And of course not just to host, I want to OWN it! So, that's in my future. — Jenni Rivera

I'm not trying to prove how Mexican I am or how American I am. I'm proud to be both. — Mark Sanchez

You see the one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not a Native American. I'm not politically correct. Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if you notice, I put American before my ethnicity. I'm not a hyphenated African-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American or Mexican-American. — Russell Means

...the Virgin of Guadalupe was not a mere Christian front for the worship of a pagan goddess. The adoration of Guadalupe represented a profound change of Aztec religious belief...The pagan Tonantzin was a dual-natured earth goddess who fed her Mexican children and devoured their corpses. She wore a necklace of human hands and hearts with a human skull hanging over her flaccid breasts, which nursed both gods and men. her idol depicts her as a monster with two streams of blood shaped like serpents flowing from her neck. Like other major deities in the Aztec pantheon, Tonantzin was both a creator and destroyer...The Christian ideals of beauty, love, and mercy associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe were never attributed to the pagan deity."
William Madsen, "Religious Syncretism", Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 6, p.378. — William Madsen

On 17th July there came to us at Potsdam the eagerly-awaited news of the trial of the atomic bomb in the [New] Mexican desert. Success beyond all dreams crowded this sombre, magnificent venture of our American allies. The detailed reports ... could leave no doubt in the minds of the very few who were informed, that we were in the presence of a new factor in human affairs, and possessed of powers which were irresistible. — Winston Churchill

Marco Rubio is interesting because he checks so many boxes when you think about what a Republican nominee needs. He brings Florida, he's young, he's Hispanic, the Tea Party likes him. But that said, he's got issues, actually surprisingly, ironically, with Mexican-American voters. — Mark McKinnon

I love Ozomatli, this L.A. band that makes great coffee. They are half American, half Mexican, their coffee's great, and they're very good friends. — Jose Andres

Brittany Ellis, I'm goin' to prove to you I'm the guy you believed in ten months ago, and I'm gonna be the successful man you dreamed I could be. My plan is to ask you to marry me four years from now, the day we graduate.'And I guarantee you a lifetime of fun, probably one with no lack of fightin', for you are one passionate mamacita ... but I definitely look forward to some great make-up sessions. Maybe one day we can even go back to Fairfield and help make it the place my dad always hoped it would be. You, me, and Shelley. And any other Fuentes or Ellis family member who wants to be a part of our lives. We'll be one big, crazy Mexican-American family. What do you think? Mujer, you own my soul. — Simone Elkeles

Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott's army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America. And so on, to the limited extent that any one person, however he or she strains, can "see" history from the standpoint of others. — Howard Zinn