Edna Acosta-Belén

“Oppression will always breed different forms of mobilization and organizing, protest and resistance. Building a historical memory of Puerto Rican struggles against different forms of subjugation is an indispensable component of envisioning those new paths and moving forward.”

“Predictably, the pattern of relegating women's issues to a secondary position or viewing them as "detracting" or "divisive" to a "greater" cause is by now a deeply rooted cliché. Just as achieving some degree of class and race consciousness is a prerequisite to understanding class and racial oppressions, developing a feminist consciousness is also a precondition for both progressive women and men to comprehend women's sources of oppression, unequal treatment, and diminished presence in historical narratives.”

“When referring to the masses, must men always be reminded that women represent slightly more than half of the world's population?”

“Morales unveils what was until now, an unaccounted counter- narrative of the Young Lords. Painstakingly, what is historically a common pattern within these movements reveals itself: there is a tendency for women members to be pressured into acquiescing to a male leadership that claims that discussion of any issues related to women's subordination must always be subsumed to the ostensibly "wider" or "more important" class-based liberation struggles of "oppressed peoples."”

“The word palante (a colloquial abbreviated version of the Spanish phrase para adelante, meaning moving forward) was a call to revolutionary action and the battle cry of the Young Lords. The rallying term was also adopted as the title of their bimonthly newspaper, which rapidly made its way to the streets of our communities, the offices of many agencies and organizations, and the halls of our schools and universities.”

“it was important to revisit and decolonize the dominant historical record, and envision new emancipating knowledge and decolonial imaginaries.”

“How the past is unveiled and represented by an oppressed group or community is an essential component of constructing a collective historical memory that inspires their present and future spheres of activism and resistance. Building a historical memory, however, is always a rugged and convoluted terrain of contesting claims, but moreso for those populations that have endured the coloniality of being silenced and are seeking to voice their untold stories and, in this way, contribute to the production of new decolonial knowledge.”