Pablo Neruda's "United Fruit Company"

[Red Terror]

Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda wrote his epic collection of poems Canto General (General Song) which was in opposition to Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself". Interesting ...



The United Fruit Co.

by canonical poet Pablo Neruda (Nobel Laureate)

When the trumpet sounded,
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehovah gave the world
to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other corporations.
The United Fruit Company
reserved for itself the most juicy
piece, the central coast of my world,
the delicate waste of America

It rebaptized these countries
Banana Republics,
and over the sleeping dead,
over the unquiet heroes
who won greatness,
liberty, and banners,
it established an opera buffa:
it abolished free will,
gave out imperial crowns,
encouraged envy, attracted
the dictatorship of flies.

Trujillo flies, Tachos flies
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, flies sticky with
submissive blood and marmalade,
drunken flies that buzz over
the tombs of the people
circus flies, wise flies
expert at tyranny

With the bloodthirsty flies
came the Fruit Company,
amassed coffee and fruit
in ships which put to sea like
overloaded trays with the treasures
from our sunken lands.

Meanwhile the Indians fall
into the angry depths of the
harbors and are buried in the
morning mists,
a corpse rolls, a thing without
name, a discarded number,
a bunch of rotten fruit
thrown on the garbage heap.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNG6xzQu1Mw&index=18&list=PL1IIRVPwL5-UozGolsBS1au55v9-I6Spd

[Red Terror]

Here is another documentary by CNN and narrated by Shakespearean actor/director Kenneth Brannagh.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M47_lRDUkgw

(Pablo Neruda's Song of Protest)





That Friend



Later Sandino crossed the jungle,

he unloaded his sacred gunpowder

against assaulting sailors

grown and paid for in New York:

the earth burned, the foliage resounded:

the Yankee did not expect what was happening:

he dressed very well for war

shining shoes and weapons

but through experience he soon learned

who Sandino and Nicaragua were:

it was a tomb of blond thieves:

air, tree, road, water

Sandino' s guerrillas came forth

even from the whiskey that was opened,

which sickened with quick death

the glorious Louisiana fighters

accustomed to hanging blacks

with superhuman valor:

two thousand hooded men busy

with one black man, a rope and a tree.

Affairs were different here:

Sandino attacked and waited,

Sandino was the coming night,

he was the light from the sea that killed.

Sandino was a tower with flags,

Sandino was a rifle with hopes.

These were very different lessons,

at West Point learning was clean:

they were never taught at school

that he who kills could also die:

the North Americans did not learn

that we love our sad beloved land

and that we will defend the flags

that with pain and love were created.

If they did not learn this in Philadelphia

they found it out through blood in Nicaragua:

the captain of the people waited there:

Augusto C. Sandino he was called.

And in this song his name will remain

full of wonder like a sudden blaze

so that it can give us light and fire

in the continuation of his battles.



XI

Treason

For peace, on a sad night

General Sandino was invited

to dine, to celebrate his courage,

with the "American" Ambassador

(for the name of the whole continent

these pirates have usurped).

General Sandino was joyous:

wine and drinks raised to his health:

the Yankees were returning to their land

desolately defeated

and the banquet sealed with honors

the struggle of Sandino and his brothers.

The assassin waited at the table.

He was a mysterious spineless being

raising his cup time and again

while in his pocket resounded

the thirty horrendous dollars of the crime.

O feast of bloodied wine!

O night, O false moonlit paths!

O pale stars that did not speak!

O land mute and blind by night!

Earth that did not restrain his horse!

O treasonous night that betrayed

the tower of honor into evil hands!

O banquet of silver and agony!

O shadow of premeditated treason!

O pavilion of light that flourished,

since then defeated and mourned!



XII

Death

Sandino stood up not knowing

that his victory had ended

as the Ambassador pointed him out

thus fulfilling his part of the pact:

everything was arranged for the crime

between the assassin and the North American.

And at the door as they embraced him

they bade him farewell condemning him.

Congratulations! And Sandino took his leave

walking with the executioner and death.

[YesNo]

After reading Adam Feinstein's "Pable Neruda: a passion for life" I lost interest in the poet.

[Red Terror]

After reading Adam Feinstein's "Pable Neruda: a passion for life" I lost interest in the poet.

I usually don't give a hoot about the personal lives of writers; I'm more concerned about their artistic output. Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were unabashed admirers of Hitler and Mussolini, yet they were capable of leaving amazing poetry.

https://informacionlibre2000.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/gloriosa-victoria.jpg

Image above: Detail of Mexican artist Diego Rivera's mural "Gloriosa Victoria" (Glorious Victory) illustrating the CIA-backed overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954 to the advantage of United Fruit company. Note: U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower's face on bomb near dead workers while Secretary of State John Foster Dulles shakes hands with the newly-installed dictator Castillo Armas.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/043.html

"They force [Sister Dianna] Ortiz, who entered the novitiate at the age of 17, to jerk them off and perform oral sex. They hurt her in other ways she won't describe. (The most chilling line in the book is in a different section, where Ortiz, casually explaining her fear of dogs, says, "Dogs were used in my torture in a way that was too horrible to share with anyone. Even now, I don't talk about that part of the torture.") And they put her in a pit of dying and dead people who've already been tortured -- including children. Most damaging of all, they position Ortiz's hands around a machete and force the machete, in her hands, into another torture victim, murdering the woman."

"I got pregnant as a result of the multiple gang
rapes by my torturers, and unable to carry within me what
they had engendered, what I could view only as a monster, the product of the men who had raped me, I turned to someone for assistance and I destroyed that life. Am I proud of this decision? No. But if I had to make the decision again, I believe I would again decide as I did eight years ago."---- Page 2 of Salon.com's review of her book The Blindfolds Eyes

http://www.salon.com/2002/11/19/ortiz/

For women, it was an especially violent experience. The commission reports that nearly every female prisoner was the victim of repeated rape. The perpetration of this crime took many forms, from military men raping women themselves to the use of foreign objects on victims. Numerous women (and men) report spiders or live rats being implanted into their orifices. One woman wrote, “I was raped and sexually assaulted with trained dogs and with live rats. They forced me to have sex with my father and brother who were also detained. I also had to listen to my father and brother being tortured.” Her experiences were mirrored by those of many other women who told their stories to the commission.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3NrCYU5zNE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianna_Ortiz



http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/2/7/torture-under-pinochet-we-were-peeling/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/11/AR2006121101204.html

https://www.amazon.com/Blindfolds-Eyes-Journey-Torture-Truth/dp/1570755639?ie=UTF8&redirect=true&ref_=nosim&tag=sofa-20

[YesNo]

I usually don't give a hoot about the personal lives of writers; I'm more concerned about their artistic output. Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were unabashed admirers of Hitler and Mussolini, yet they were capable of leaving amazing poetry.


For what it's worth, I don't like Pound, Eliot or Neruda. There is nothing amazing about their poetry.

Of course, you are welcome to think otherwise, but that doesn't mean that I agree with you. It reminds me of a refrigerator magnet I once saw that said, "If I agreed with you then we'd both be wrong."

[desiresjab]

For what it's worth, I don't like Pound, Eliot or Neruda. There is nothing amazing about their poetry.

Of course, you are welcome to think otherwise, but that doesn't mean that I agree with you. It reminds me of a refrigerator magnet I once saw that said, "If I agreed with you then we'd both be wrong."

Liking a poet and admitting their greatness are two different things. I can only admit what I see. I believe I see that Elliot is an incontestably great poet, whether I like him or not, and I rather do.

I cannot see that Pound is that great a poet, but he is that great a critic, I believe. As a translator he was valuable.

If I knew Spanish I could make a better judgement on Neruda's greatness. The Twenty Love Poems was super world class, even in translation. I have slogged through a lot of Neruda trying to find something as interesting as these, but I seldom find anything to compare. Political poetry bores me suicidal, and a lot of the commie's work is that. Twenty nearly perfect poems is no ledger to sneeze at, if he had never written anything else. His large body of poems has a low homerun average, whereas the smaller body of work of someone like Larkin has a higher homerun average.

[YesNo]

One thing I cannot deny Pound, Eliott, Neruda or Larkin is that they created well-known brands through their poetry. That is a major accomplishment, but it is not the same thing as "greatness" because "greatness" assumes a positive value. Brands need not all be positive. Hitler also created a well-known brand.

As far as liking goes, we do not and probably should not all like the same thing. Liking something does not mean everyone else should also like it. We need to have a little tension so we can progress. We each have our own perspective on reality which will influence what we like.

There was a thread on Neruda a few years ago where I read some of his poetry. His political poetry stunk which is similar to your assessment of those political poems being boring. The intermediate collections of poetry where he played pretentious intellectual were also boring from my perspective. Perhaps the only potentially valuable part of his poetry were those Twenty Love Poems that you mentioned, but they really weren't love poems. They were lust poems which people (especially females looking for a bad boy to have fun with and maybe marry) misread as love poems. I read him as a manipulator. Initially he wanted to manipulate females to get them into bed with him or marry him if they had money. Later he wanted to manipulate intellectuals (not that he forgot about females). And finally he manipulated the people. My conclusion: I don't have time to waste reading him.