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Manlio Argueta Quotes

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Famous Manlio Argueta Quotes

“Life gets harder and harder. They say we have a lot of people in this country. And the most abundant are the poor. Hordes of poor people everywhere. But what can we do? What are we guilty of? That is why there's so much hunger in the villages and everywhere. Well I don't think life should be that way. "What's important is to be aware that one is poor," Chepe tells me repeatedly. "And what good is that?" I ask him. And he replies that only that way will we become strong enough to claim, to demand that which we have a right to. Everything else is a farce. What we must always insist on is the rights of the poor.”

PovertySocialismPoor PeopleEl Salvador
Book:One Day of Life
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“It was nicer that way. knowing that something called rights existed. The right to health care, to good and to schooling for our children . . . For us things were good; for others they were bad. Especially for the landowners, who are the ones who suffered most when we demanded our rights. They spend more and earn less. Besides, once we learned about the existence of rights we also learned not to bow our heads when the bosses scolds us. We learned to look them in the face.”

DignityUnionsWorkers RightsFarmworkers Rights
Book:One Day of Life
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“The road to Hell is paved with evildoers, they'd tell us. And the evildoers were those who had bad thoughts. We always wanted to be good. We believed that to be good was to bow one's head, not to protest, not to demand anything, not to get angry. No one had clarified these things for us. On the contrary, we were always being offered a celestial paradise. The reward for being good. To respect one's neighbor was really to respect the landowner. And to respect the landowner was to conform to his whimsey. If there were no beans to eat after working on the plantation, it was because the landowner couldn't manage, the landowner was suffering losses. If there were no hammocks to sleep in, it was because the harvest had not left the landowner enough time to provide them. And there we were without food, waiting for the afternoon or the evening to go home to eat, a whole day without eating; or we'd go to sleep under the pepetos trees in the coffee fields. We used to confuse goodness with resignation.”

ReligionCatholic ChurchEl SalvadorClass ConsciousnessClass Conflict
Book:One Day of Life
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“Even innocent people find themselves in trouble, Adolfina is innocent. We're all innocent. The only ones at fault for the bad things that are happening are the authorities. They with their way of being. Their behavior. Yes, the only ones who go to jail or end up wounded or dead along the roads are the poor. And that's because the authorities have a predilection--they know who to hassle. They exist to boss the poor around. To order the poor about, to beat up on the poor and to carry them off as if they were animals. Someday the good life they're living will end. Always doing it to the people, always. They've never suffered the slightest hurt. That's where they get their pride from. Once they're in uniform they think they're kings of the world, and they themselves say they're disposed to anything”

Police BrutalityAuthoritarianismPolice StateEl Salvador
Book:One Day of Life
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“Guadalupe Fuentes: --They're not paid to kill honest people, to shoot for no good reasons. Rubenia Fuentes: --Ah, my little girl, then why do you think they give them those big guns that look like tree branches and are larger than they themselves? To shoot, baby, to shoot. Because if they don't, that gives rise to talk that the authorities are useless, are nothing more than decoration.”

ViolenceAuthorityPolicePolice BrutalityPolice StateEl Salvador
Book:One Day of Life
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“The guardsmen dragged him to the Detour; the mules they had ridden were there. The corpse was buried near here or the buzzards ate it. The authorities were laughing as they left. One could see the laughter in their eyes, the only place where they are allowed to laugh. Because the authorities cannot laugh. It is prohibited; at least they never laugh with their mouths. They're made to denounce, interrogate and capture. Laughing is a weakness. They themselves say, 'Laughter abounds among fools.' An official must not show any weakness before a civilian, otherwise he'll thereby lose precisely his authority. The authorities are short on words; they don't want to lose their strength by speaking to civilians. They act. That's the only way they can defend property, which is sacred. That's why many of them are paid by landowners. How big a bonus they get depends on how well they behave.”

DeathCapitalismPolice BrutalityPrivate PropertyPolice StateEl SalvadorDeath By Police
Book:One Day of Life
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“We have to be well fed, the gringo tells us, so we can defend the country. In exchange for these pleasures, we cannot let these people down. One must be ready to defend the country against its enemies even at the expense of our own brothers. And, though it's unnecessary to say so, even at the expense of our mother. This might seem like an exaggeration, but the Western world is in danger and we know that the worst danger to the Western world is what they call 'the people.' The trainer shouts, 'Who is our worst enemy?' And we shout, 'The people!' And so on and so on, 'Who is the worst enemy of democracy?' And we all respond, 'The people!' Louder, he says. And we shout with all our might, 'The people, the people, the people." I'm telling you this in the strictest confidence, of course. They call us the Special Forces.”

PolicePolice BrutalityAuthoritarianismEl Salvador
Book:One Day of Life
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“What makes them haughty and strong is that they've studied to be authorities so that the law will be obeyed. The law has always been hard. They say that only by being that way can they force you to obey the law; there are people who won't be good otherwise. We're only interested in being bad, they say. I don't know, I've never done anything bad to anyone, not to José or to my children . . . They defend private property--that principle--is sacred--because it is possible for our hands to be stained with blood; but to appropriate what isn't ours, that's out of the question.”

Police ViolenceState ViolenceInherent ViolenceProperty Over People
Book:One Day of Life
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