Language

A Bolivian Farmer's Revolutionary Quotations

Submitted September 22, 2004 - 9:04 pm by Benjamin Melançon
I am so glad my good friend Daniel Fleming (from our "ten days of extreme cultural exchange" at the School of Authentic Journalism in Bolivia) has brought up the visit to the nearly urban farm of a man with a keen radical intellect.

Here are some of the quotes Francisco Ramirez Sotelo read to us from the wall next to the garden with the pond for his experiment of little alligators to sell.


No somos aves para vivir del aire.  No somos peces para vivir del mar.  Somos hombres para vivir de la tierra.

(We are not birds to live in the air.  We are not fish to live in the sea.  We are men to live on the land.)


Para mi la guérra empezó chando nací.

(For me the fight began when I was born.)


Tupac Katari ya vuelve.

(Tupac Katari already returns.)

Tupac Katari, Daniel reported to me then, and others have since told me, Tupac Katari is an inspiration to the indigineous.

Read those quotations again.  They won't be as powerful on-line as they were in person, but this man's spirit, shared by many in Bolivia, is a big part of what I brought back with me.

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