Our America Quotes

“Unless US citizens acknowledge and understand their country's imperial past, they will not be able to understand its present or future. Much of the recent and current Hispanic resettlement of parts of the United States is a consequence of empire.... Countercolonization follows colonization, and the waves of migrants always flow back like returning tides.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States

“in their supposed innocence of and opposition to empire, have become the mythic progenitors of the United States—almost as improbably as Solomon was of Ethiopia or Aeneas of Rome or his suppositious brother, Brut, of Britain. But almost everything most Americans think about the Plymouth colonists of 1620 is false. The truth is more credible. The first colonists in Massachusetts, exchanging accusations of “bestial, yea, diabolical affectations,” were as divided and conflicted as people usually are when fate flings them together. Their leaders did not seek”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States

“Yet despite these advantages, England’s empire remained unlaunched until the seventeenth century. The problem is a dog-in-the-night”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States

“When the United States wants cheap labor, Mexicans respond. When the employment market north of the border is glutted, the barbed wire gets taut, the border patrols fix bayonets, the vigilantes get busy, and the walls go up.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States