Excerpt from "Voice of La Raza" (Transcript)

Anthony Quinn speaking.

I can relate to, at the moment, and maybe, again, I have to personalize...that any kind of discrimination that stops a man from earning a living...and when I see that people.....let me say something... and it s terrible, because I m sure it s a human quality, not only particular to the Mexican, but there s a kind of a pride that maybe comes from machismo... a word that I m not too much in favor of because it, again, it s kind of chauvinism....a kind of machismo; a kind of a pride, of a man being able to support his family, and so forth....and the indignities that poverty brings to people...this is the thing that I can relate most to, the immediate thing of people really being allowed to work and when I see these poor families in these barrios who know that they re being discriminated against simply because their skin is a certain color...because their name is not Anglo. And that they have to work for $3.20 a day, whereby the other man can make $9.00 or $10.00 or whatever it is, and he knows that he s been discriminated against, I just don t understand it. I certainly feel, having known the indignity of hunger, having known the indignity of poverty, and feeling, as I said before, that you cannot have a healthy mind without a healthy body, and I know that you cannot have a healthy brain on an empty stomach and with a distended belly and I think that s where it sat first I mean you must feed the people, you must see that they have the dignity and that they are employed and that they don t feel this ugly discrimination. So from the standpoint of the Commission, I can only say that I would do anything in the world to help them, you know, to be of some use.