Elizabeth Martinez

"we know that more Chicanas must become involved. It is our job as Chicanas to wake them up, encourage them to see that they have a responsibility larger than their immediate families-a responsibility to the whole familia of La Raza, the whole family of oppressed peoples. And a responsibility to their own un-used talents, brain, energy."

"That is the true Raza tradition, a communal tradition"

"They perceive how our oppressor uses "machismo" against us-for example, by appealing to a Chicanos sense of supposed manhood in order to get him to kill Vietnamese. Sexism is a useful tool to the colonizer; the men are oppressed but they can beat and mistreat women, who thus serve as targets for a frustration that might otherwise become revolutionary. Some men understand very well that the full participation of women is needed if our people are to win the liberation struggle."

"We do not want a few Chicanas to get better jobs, higher salaries, while everyone else continues to be exploited."

"revolution means turning things upside down and taking another look at what is taken for granted. So revolution means new ideas about relations between men and women, too."

"Today we can say that the Chicana suffers from a triple oppression. She is oppressed by the forces of racism, imperialism and sexism."

"The Chicana may be working 16 hours a day to support for her children, but she will still be viewed as a sexual object rather than a human being. Unless she is over the age of 35 or 40, she will be seen more as a face and body than as a fellow worker and fellow victim of oppression."

"We will not win our liberation struggle unless the women move together with the men rather than against them. We must work to convince the men that our struggle will become stronger if women are not limited to a few, special roles. We also have the right to expect that our most enlightened men will join in the fight against sexism; it should not be our battle alone."

"The truth is that we need to reexamine and redefine our culture. Some of us do not believe that in our culture, femininity has always meant: weak, passive delicate looking... in other words, qualities that inflate the male ego. The women of La Raza is traditionally a fighter and revolutionary."

"the womens liberation movement has rejected traditional family. For us, the family has been a source of unity and our major defense against the oppressor."

"We have to fight together because there is a common enemy. Especially if you are up against an administration being divisive, I think everybody has to come together and form an alliance or a set of goals together. There are various forms of working together. A coalition is one, a network is another, an alliance is yet another. And they are not the same; some of them are short-term, and some are long-term."

"…it’s just another front in the battle against racism. And that’s what it was, because New Mexico was much more colonial than any other area, but it was all the same damn racism. And so I never felt like I was breaking any life pattern; I was just shifting to another front.…"