“I know realized that this was how you enslaved a people. You didn't just bring them over in chains from Africa. No, you convinced them that they were inferior, not evolved, subhuman, and then you took off their shackles, so they could go to work, you'd still have them enslaved and shackled inside of their minds for hundreds of years. And this system of teaching was fine with most Anglo teachers, because int he act of convincing us, los Mexicanos and the Blacks, we were subhuman, they'd also convinced themselves that they were superior!”

“And I thanked mi papa who'd always said to me that we, los Indios, the Indians, were like the weeds. That roses you had to water and giver fertilizer or they'd die. But weeds, indigenous plants, you gave them nada-nothing; hell you even poisoned them and put concrete over them, and those weeds would still break the concrete, ”

“Jaguars, afterall, were fairly common, and so people were more respectful than afraid of them, just as they were of any other natural force.”

“Mi hijito, I've told you a thousand times, if you speak badly of people, God will punish you and make you just like them.”

“And also--to add to my problems--my parents and relatives kept telling me how they'd grown up feeling so close to the Almighty that they'd spoken to Him on a daily basis as one would speak to a friend and how, now and then, God had actually spoken back to them in the form of miracles.”

“Could it be we stifle our children's genius by languaging them too quickly away from their hearts and into the straight and narrow confines of linear thinking?”

“No, you are not to complain or question who you are, but instead, grow, reaching for the light that's inside you.”