Bolivian History Quotes

General Mario Vargas Salinas, now retired from Bolivia's Eighth Army Division, was one of the young army officers present at Guevara's burial. It was his duty to accompany an old dump truck carrying the bodies of the six dead rebels, including that of "Che" Guevara, to the airstrip in Vallegrande, Bolivia. Knowing that the facts surrounding the burials were leaking out, he decided that after 28 years the world should know what had happened to "Che" Guevara's body. At the time, Captain Vargas, who had also led the ambush in which Tamara "Tania" Bunke, Guevara's lover, was shot dead, said that Guevara was buried early on the morning of October 11th, 1967, at the end of the town's landing strip. After the gruesome facts became known, the Bolivian government ordered the army to find Guevara's remains for a proper burial.
General Gary Prado Salmón, retired, had been the commander of the unit that had captured Guevara. He confirmed General Vargas' statement and added that the guerrilla fighters had been burned, before dumping their bodies into a mass grave, dug by a bulldozer, at the end of the Vallegrande airstrip. He explained that the body of "Che" Guevara had been buried in a separate gravesite under the runway. The morning after the burials, "Che" Guevara's brother arrived in Vallegrande, hoping to see his brother's remains. Upon asking, he was told by the police that it was too late. Talking to some of the army officers, he was told lies or perhaps just differing account ~ Hank Bracker

Tamara Bunke was the only woman to fight alongside "Che" during his Bolivian campaign. She was an East German national, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 19, 1937, of Communist activist parents. As a child, her home was frequently used for meetings, hiding weapons and conducting other Communist activities. After World War II, in 1952 she returned to Germany where she attended Humboldt University in Berlin. Tamara met "Che" Guevara when she was an attractive 23-year-old woman in Leipzig, and he was with a Cuban Trade Delegation. The two instantly hit it off as she cozied up to him and, having learned how to fight and use weapons in Pinar del Rio in western Cuba, she joined his expedition to Bolivia.
Becoming a spy for the ELN, she adopted the name "Tania" and posed as a right-wing authority of South-American music and folklore. In disguise, she managed to warm up to and entice Bolivian President René Barrientos. She even went on an intimate vacation to Peru with him. ~ Hank Bracker

Secret Societies have existed among all peoples, savage and civilized, since the beginning of recorded history ... It is beyond question that the secret societies of all ages have exercised a considerable degree of political influence. ~ Manly Hall

A person can't regret honesty any more than other unavoidables - a plain face or a poor history. ~ Leif Enger

Art thieves steal more than beautiful objects; they steal memories and identities. They steal history. ~ Robert K. Wittman

You're all Helen talks about. She's been reading Welsh history books and plaguing the family with accounts of Owain Glynd and something called the Eistedfodd." His eyes sparkled with friendly mockery. "Helen was hacking and spitting so much the other day that we thought she was coming down with a cold, until we realized she was practicing the Welsh alphabet."
Ordinarily Rhys would have made some sarcastic retort, but he'd barely noticed the gibe. His chest had gone tight with pleasure.
"She doesn't have to do that," he muttered.
"Helen wants to please you," Devon said. "It's her nature. Which leads to something I want to make clear: Helen is like a younger sister to me. And although I'm obviously the last man alive who should lecture anyone about propriety, I expect you to behave like an altar boy with her for the next few days."
Rhys gave him a surly glance. "I *was* an altar boy, and I can tell you that reports of their virtue are highly exaggerated. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The computer on the desk of the student in school knows no history. It is not like a book, worn at the edges by human hands. No little child has written a note in it, long ago. It will not be passed down to the children of the children who use it. Its "meaning" is that there is no enduring meaning. ~ Anthony M. Esolen

One's own history can be the greatest educator ~ Deborah L. Parker

If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us. ~ A.A. Gill

Sixteenth-century litigation combined the qualities of tedium, hardship, brutality, and injustice that tested character and endurance, with the element of pure chance that appealed to the gambler, the fear of defeat and ruin, and the hope of victory and humiliation of the enemy. It had everything that war can offer except the delights of shedding blood. ~ Lawrence Stone

When the injured humerus is accompanied by a serious rupture of the overlying soft tissue the injury is regarded as fatal. ~ James Henry Breasted

You can build the most important companies in history with a very simple to describe concept. You can market products in less than 50 characters. There is no reason why you can't build your company the same way. So force yourself to simplify every initiative, every product, every marketing, everything you do. Basically take out that red and start eliminating stuff. ~ Keith Rabois

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know. ~ Henry David Thoreau

While Frazier was a man of few words / Ali was a world of mouth / but he found his place in history / Now his heart can express him well / Joe Frazier was a silent warrior / whom Ali silently admired / One could not rise without the other ~ Muhammad Ali

In my own version of the idea of 'what art wants,' the end and fulfillment of the history of art is the philosophical understanding of what art is, an understanding that is achieved in the way that understanding in each of our lives is achieved, namely, from the mistakes we make, the false paths we follow, the false images we have come to abandon until we learn wherein our limits consist, and then how to live within those limits. ~ Arthur Danto

Kip Keino, Moses Tanui, Paul Tergat, they all come from my tribe. Some say it is the food we eat that makes us strong, the way we live. In the history of our people we wear no clothes and we are used to drinking the blood of animals. ~ Martin Lel

But the participants [in war] never forgot the details of their experience, and like the Wandering Jew, they were condemned to remain their own history books, each containing a story they could not pass on to others and from which no one would learn anything of value. ~ James Lee Burke

A few seconds later, my father broke his big toe; but his accident was a mere trifle when set beside what had befallen me in that benighted moment, because thanks to the occult tyrannies of those blandly saluting clocks I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country. ~ Salman Rushdie

Ronald Reagan was long thought to be the most conservative of Republicans. And by any standard today he is the most popular Republican in modern history. Yet he raised taxes 11 times, supported a ban on assault rifles and the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks, and established amnesty for 3 million undocumented workers. ~ Mark McKinnon

In all the known history of Mankind, advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result no culture of greater stability than about fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of great human misery. ~ Isaac Asimov

The idea of progress - the notion that human history is the history of human betterment - dominated the world view of the West between the Enlightenment and the First World War. ~ Jill Lepore

In the end, I listen to my fear. It keeps me awake, resounding through the frantic beating in my breast. It is there in the dry terror in my throat, in the pricking of the rats' nervous feet in the darkness. Christian has not come home all the night long. I know, for I have lain in this darkness for hours now with my eyes stretched wide, yearning for my son's return. ~ Ned Hayes

One of the greatest inventions of the 20th century -- indeed, one of the landmark inventions in the history of the human race -- was the work of a couple of young men who had never gone to college and who were just bicycle mechanics in Dayton, Ohio.
That part of the United States is often referred to as 'flyover country' because it is part of America that the east coast and west coast elites fly over on their way to what they consider more important places. But they are able to fly over it only because of those mechanics in Dayton. ~ Thomas Sowell

If you look back to the most spectacular blow ups in history, you can always tie them to a couple things: They were extraordinary complicated strategies that maybe even the practitioners themselves didn't understand, and they were overleveraged. ~ James O'Shaughnessy

A history professor at university had once told her, Violence is what people do when they run out of good ideas. It's attractive because it's simple, it's direct, it's almost always available as an option. When you can't think of a good rebuttal for your opponent's argument, you can always punch them in the face. ~ James S.A. Corey

Just soaking up the history of the Boston Celtics has been the best thing that's happened to me as a player. ~ Paul Pierce

Isn't often the past picks up the phone and calls, affording the opportunity to reconsider personal history in a way that could have saved countless thousands of dollars in therapy had I been inclined to go. I ~ Ann Patchett

Destiny can sometimes be history coming back to bite you in the arse. ~ Hal Duncan

After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, or it is the most fantastic fact of history ~ Josh McDowell

I do not believe in diversification. Take a close look at
some of the greatest entrepreneurs in U.S. history. Henry Ford never
diversified; Bill Gates didn't diversify. I strongly believe that the best
way to create real wealth is to put one's eggs in one basket and watch
that basket (the right one) very carefully. In fact, one can go broke
diversifying. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

So much history can be lost if no one tells the story
so that's what I do. I tell the stories. This is my way of fighting for social change. ~ Alanis Obomsawin

The unexpressed aim of every politician is to influence events that history books will record his name - and spell it right. ~ Judy LaMarsh

The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States. ~ Edward Said

- I was an American citizen too; a citizen who had to watch his step, a citizen who had to distrust the police and the government, public opinion, and even the history taught in schools. It was odd that such negative thoughts would invigorate me. But knowing the truth, no matter how bad it was, gave you some chance, a little bit of an edge. ~ Walter Mosley

In a vivid insight, a flash of black lightning, he saw that all life was parallel: that evolution was not vertical, ascending to a perfection, but horizontal. Time was a great fallacy; existence was without history, was always now, was always this being caught in the same fiendish machine. All those painted screens erected by man to shut out reality - history, religion, duty, social position, all were illusions, mere opium fantasies.
- The French Lieutenant's Woman ~ John Fowles

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history; if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama. ~ Tony Kushner

Capitalism is too important and complex a subject to be left to economists. Achieving a critical comprehension of it requires perspectives beyond those characteristic of modern economics. That is why this is a history not of economic ideas, but of ideas beyond the capitalist economy. ~ Jerry Z. Muller

History may someday record that the Arab awakening that began with the Arab revolt of 1916 against the Ottomans ended about a century later with a whimper. ~ Elliott Abrams

Where you are born
what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own
stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Lost

In black as solid as a mire
In a land no one would die for
In a time I was lost
To anyone who ever loved me
The world set itself on fire
And the sky collapsed above me

In a place no one could call home
In a place I breathed and slept
In a battle no one understood
That continued all the same
I sat defenseless and alone
With the insignificance of my name

In the midst of the Lord's birth
On a night meant to be peaceful
In a country of the Prophet
Where women don't live free
I spoke to God from the shaking Earth
And prayed my mother would forgive me

In a city without power
In a desert torn by religion
In a bank between two rivers
We added up the decade's cost
And glorified the final hour
Of a war that everyone had lost

In the dust of helplessness
In a concrete bunker
In a fate I chose myself
I waited without remorse
To fight again as recompense
For wasted lives and discourse

-an original poem about an attack on our base in Iraq during the Arab Spring ~ Dianna Skowera

Lee could assemble an entire history from the photos that would tell any version of the story she wants. But back then, that first summer in Paris, she didn't yet know the power of pictures, how a frame creates reality, how a photograph becomes memory becomes truth.

Or Lee could tell the real story: the one where she loved a man and he loved her, but in the end they took everything from each other - who can say who was more destroyed? ~ Whitney Scharer

God has plucked you out of eternity, positioned you in time, and given you gifts and talents to serve him in this generation. Your race is now. This is your time in history. ~ Christine Caine

In every house, there was always one malcontent jealous prick out to destroy everyone else just for spite. The entire history of the earth was written in the blood of those betrayed by the very people they'd foolishly trusted. (Stryker) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

There are constant cycles in history. There is loss, but it is always followed by regeneration. The tales of our elders who remember such cycles are very important to us now. ~ Carmen Agra Deedy