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The United Fruit Co.

W hen the trumpets had sounded and all

was in readiness on the face of the earth,

Jehovah divided his universe:

Anaconda, Ford Motors,

Coca-Cola Inc., and similar entities:

the most succulent item of all,

The United Fruit Company Incorporated

reserved for itself: the heartland

and coasts of my country,

the detectable waist of America.

They rechristened their properties:

the "Banana Republics"--

and over the languishing dead,

the uneasy repose of the heroes

who harried that greatness,

their flags and their freedoms,

they established an _opera bouffe_:

they ravished all enterprise,

awarded the laurels like Caesars,

unleashed all the covetous, and contrived

the tyrannical Reign of the Flies--

Trujillo the fly, and Tacho the fly,

the flies called Carias, Martinez,

Ubico--all of them flies, flies

dank with the blood of their marmalade

vasalage, flies buzing drunkenly

on the populous middens:

the fly-circus fly and the scholarly

kind, case-hardened in tyranny.

Then in the bloody domain of the flies

The United Fruit Company Incorporated

sailed off with a booty of coffee and fruits

brimming its cargo boats, gliding

like trays with the spoils

of our drowning dominions.

And all the while, somewhere in the sugary

hells of our seaports,

smothered by gases, an Indian

fell in the morning:

a body spun off, an anonymous

dhattel, some numeral tumbling,

NERUDA * THE UNITED FRUIT CO. **793**a branch with its death running out of it

in the vat of the carrion, fruit laden and foul.

_Translated from the Spanish by Ben Belitt_

**P poet's Obligation**

**T** o whoever is not listening to the sea

this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up

in house or office, factory or woman

or street or mine or harsh prison cell:

to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,

I arrive and open the door of his prison,

and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,

a great fragment of thunder sets in motion

the rumble of the planet and the foam,

the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,

the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,

and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.

So, drawn on by my destiny,

I ceaseelessly must listen to and keep

the sea's lamenting in my awareness,

I must feel the crash of the hard water

and gather it up in a perpetual cup

so that, wherever those in prison may be,

wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation,

I may be there with an errant wave,

I may move, passing through windows,

and hearing me, eyes will glance upward

saying 'How can I reach the sea?'

And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,

the starry echoes of the wave,

a breaking up of foam and of quicksand,

a rustling of salt withdrawing,

the grey cry of sea-birds on the coast.

So, through me, freedom and the sea

will make their answer to the shuttered heart.

_Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid_

**794**LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN * CHILESTUDY QUESTIONS

1. How and to what effect is religious and insect imagery used in "The United Fruit Co."?
2. Where in "The United Fruit Co." is irony used?
3. How does the poet define the role of the United Fruit Co.?
4. How does the author view the poet's responsibility in "Poet's Obligation"?
5. Discuss the use of nature imagery in "Poet's Obligation."

Isabel Allende (b. 1942) is one of Latin America's leading writers. Born in Peru of Chilean diplants, she has lived in several countries in Latin America and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay area. She has worked for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and was for many years a journalist. She only began to write fiction in the early 1980s. Since then, her novels, The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, and Eva Luna, have become international best-sellers. Influenced by the "magic realism" of an older generation of writers, Allende's lyric voice skillfully mingles the personal and the political.

## Phantom Palace

W hen five centuries earlier the bold renegades from Spain with their bone-weary horses and armor candescent beneath an American sun stepped upon the shores of Quinaroa, Indians had been living and dying in that same place for several thousand years. The conquistadors announced with heralds and banners the "discovery" of a new land, declared it a possession of a remote emperor, set in place the first cross, and named the place San Jeronimo, a name unpronounceable to the natives. The Indians observed these arrogant ceremonies with some amazement, but the news had already reached them of the bearded warriors who advanced across the world with their thunder of iron and powder; they had heard that wherever these men went they sowed sorrow and that no known people had been capable of opposing them: all armies had succumbed before that handful of centaurs. These Indians were an ancient tribe, so