“The United States of America will become the United States of Banana. And Puerto Rico will be the first half-and-half banana republic state incorporated that will secede from the union. Then will come Liberty Island, then Mississippi Burning, Texas BBQ, Kentucky Fried Chicken—all of them—New York Yankees, Jersey Devils—you name it—will want to break apart—and demand a separation—a divorce. Things will not go well for the banana republic when the shackles and chains of democracy break loose and unleash the dogs of war. Separation—divorce—disintegration of subject matters that don’t matter anymore—only verbs—actions. Americans will walk like chickens with their heads cut off.”

—  Giannina Braschi , book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Giannina Braschi 37
Puerto Rican writer 1953

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:: Je suis citoyen de la Grande République de l'Humanité. Je vois le genre humain uni comme une grande famille par des liens fraternels. Nous avons jeté une semence de liberté et d'union qui germera peu à peu dans toute la Terre. Un jour, sur le modèle des Etats-Unis d'Amérique, se constitueront les États-Unis d'Europe. Les États-Unis seront le législateur de toutes les nationalités.
: An anonymous blogger in "Did George Washington predict a "United States of Europe"? (30 January 2010) http://racehist.blogspot.com/2010/01/did-george-washington-predict-united.html showed that it derived from Gustave Rodrigues, Le peuple de l'action: essai sur l'idéalisme américain (A. Colin, 1917), p. 207:
:: Washington écrivait à La Fayette qu'il se condérait comme « citoyen de la grande république de l'humanité » et ajoutait : « Je vois le genre humain uni comme une grande famille par des liens fraternels ». Ailleurs il écrivait, prophétiquement: « Nous avons jeté une semence de liberté et d'union qui germera peu à peu dans toute la terre. Un jour, sur le modèle des Etats-Unis d'Amérique, se constitueront les États-Unis d'Europe. »
: A translation by Louise Seymour Houghton ( The People of Action: An Essay on American Idealism (1918) http://books.google.com/books?id=b8Y9AAAAYAAJ) reads:
:: Washington wrote to Lafayette that he considered himself a "citizen of the great republic of humanity," adding: "I see the human race a great family, united by fraternal bonds." Elsewhere he wrote prophetically: "We have sown a seed of liberty and union that will gradually germinate throughout the earth. Some day, on the model of the United States of America, will be constituted the United States of Europe." [pp. 209-210]
: The first two quotations come from a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette of 15 August 1786 (see above) as quoted in Joseph Fabre's Washington, libérateur de l'Amérique: suivi de Washington et la revolution Américaine (Ch. Delagrave, 1886), and the third is also found in that source where, although placed between quotation marks, it is clearly intended as the author's own comments on what "Washington and his friends" were saying to the world by establishing the American Constitution. Gustave Rodrigues mistakenly printed Fabre's words as Washington's alongside some actual observations of his from a letter to Lafayette, and so created the misquotation.
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