The United Fruit Company (1950) by Pablo Neruda is part of section five of Canto General, “The Sand Betrayed,” and was inspired by Pablo Neruda’s visit to Colombia in September 1943. At the time, the Colombian government was embroiled in debate over efforts to expel U.S. commercial involvement in the country. The influence of American firms that exported Central America’s products had grown to the point where representatives of the United States had come to operate much of the public utilities in Colombia and, in many cases, to dominate local politics. Neruda was particularly sympathetic to Colombia’s plight because his own country, Chile, faced the same battle over its copper and mineral resources.

In this poem, Neruda wields a broadsword of satire, aiming a deathblow at the idea of Westernized firms serving a constructive role in Latin America. The poem starts as religious parody, comparing the divvying up of natural resources to the division of kingdoms:

“When the trumpet blared everything / on earth was prepared / and Jehovah distributed the world / to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda, / Ford Motors” (ll. 1–5).

The poet’s sarcastic assignation of divine rights is further perverted as the United Fruit Company claims its share, with all the enthusiasm of a colonist molesting a native woman, “reserv[ing] for itself the juiciest, / the central seaboard of my land, America’s sweet waist” (ll. 6–8). The speaker aligns firmly with “my land,” and there is no pretense of neutrality.

The merchant invaders, oblivious to the country’s rich history, set up shop “upon the slumbering corpses, / upon the restless heroes” (ll. 12–13) and rule via a parasitic “dictatorship of flies” (l. 20). Again, Neruda does not hesitate to name names: “Trujillo flies, Tacho flies, / Carías flies, Martínez flies . . .” (ll. 21–22). This is the voice of a defiant poet in exile. Neruda alludes to Dominican Rafael Trujillo (dictator 1930–61), Nicaraguan Anastasio “Tacho” Somoza García (1936–56), Honduran Tiburcio Carías Andino (1933–48), and Salvadoran Maximiliano Martínez (1931–44). A few years earlier, Neruda had been driven from Chile after a senate speech in which he identified imprisoned dissidents by name, a heroic but politically unwise gesture.

Now the movement of export becomes a gesture of draining enslavement, disguised as polite servitude:

“ravaging coffee and fruits / for its ships that spirit away / over submerged lands’ treasures / like serving trays” (ll. 31–34).

What remains is ruin, native “Indians collapsed, buried / in the morning mist” (ll. 37–38). Neruda ends the poem with an indelible metaphor, recognizing this waste of vitality in the way much of a crop is wasted by the bruising of mechanized harvest,

“a bunch of lifeless fruit / dumped in the rubbish heap” (ll. 41–42).

Categories: Latin American Literature, Literature, World Literature

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