La United Fruit Co. Pablo Neruda

In Memory of Pablo Neruda
Died: September 23, 1973.

Cuando sonó la trompeta, estuvo todo preparado en la tierra,
y Jehova repartió el mundo a Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, y otras entidades: la Compañía Frutera Inc.
se reservó lo más jugoso,
la costa central de mi tierra, la dulce cintura de América.

Bautizó de nuevo sus tierras como "Repúblicas Bananas," y sobre los muertos dormidos, sobre los héroes inquietos
que conquistaron la grandeza, la libertad y las banderas, estableció la ópera bufa: enajenó los albedríos
regaló coronas de César, desenvainó la envidia, atrajo la dictadura de las moscas,
moscas Trujillos, moscas Tachos, moscas Carías, moscas Martínez, moscas Ubico, moscas húmedas de sangre humilde y mermelada, moscas borrachas que zumban sobre las tumbas populares, moscas de circo, sabias moscas entendidas en tiranía.

Entre las moscas sanguinarias la Frutera desembarca, arrasando el café y las frutas, en sus barcos que deslizaron como bandejas el tesoro
de nuestras tierras sumergidas.

Mientras tanto, por los abismos azucarados de los puertos, caían indios sepultados
en el vapor de la mañana: un cuerpo rueda, una cosa
sin nombre, un número caído, un racimo de fruta muerta derramada en el pudridero.

.

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 waist 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 sugared 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.

The United Fruit Company (1899–1970) was a major American corporation that traded tropical fruit (primarily bananas and pineapples) grown in Third World plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. Critics often accused the company of exploitative neocolonialism and described it as the archetypal example of the influence of a multinational corporation on the internal politics of the so-called "banana republics."


Neruda was hospitalized with cancer in September 1973, at the time of the coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet that overthrew Allende's government, but returned home after a few days when he suspected a doctor of injecting him with an unknown substance for the purpose of murdering him on Pinochet's orders. Neruda died in his house in Isla Negra on 23 September 1973, just hours after leaving the hospital. Although it was long reported that he died of heart failure, the Interior Ministry of the Chilean government issued a statement in 2015 acknowledging a Ministry document indicating the government's official position that "it was clearly possible and highly likely that ‘Neruda was killed as a result of "the intervention of third parties’.