Large corporations of the United States of America have a long history of exploiting the natural resources of America– North and South.
Recently, the U.S. government has intervened in the politics of Venezuela, capturing its head of state pursuant to a warrant issued by a U.S. Magistrate Judge. The warrant, as usual, was based on alleged crimes, but most countries would also agree that the Venezuelan leader was not fairly or lawfully elected. An acting Venezuelan president who gave her non-transferrable Nobel Peace Prize to the U.S. president is currently governing the country with de facto oversight by the U.S.
Venezuela has abundant oil resources, and the U.S. government argues that Venezuela has previously “stolen” the oil and oil-related facilities of U.S. corporations. The U.S. government has promised that when it reclaims this oil and these oil-related facilities, these corporations will increase production of Venezuelan oil– for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. Neither the argument nor the promise makes sense.
Whether or not one agrees with U.S. extraterritorial interference in the governance and natural resources of another sovereign state or believes the promise that U.S. corporations will enrich the lives of Venezuelans by greater production of Venezuelan oil, precedents of U.S. government and corporate exploitation of natural resources in Central and South America suggest that U.S. involvement is a bad idea.
Consider for a moment U.S. corporate interests alone. In opposition to the invasion of U.S. corporations, the French coined the portmanteau “Cocacolonialization” for the idea that large, wealthy, U.S. corporations, such as The Coca-Cola Company, exert undue influence on politics, economies, and culture in foreign countries. The novelist O. Henry coined the term “banana republic” to describe a less powerful country than the U.S. that uses public resources for private profit, often ceding significant governmental control and natural resources, including land, to U.S corporations. (Henry 147). This term is still in use to describe Central American countries– countries which are also commonly overlooked as part of North America– and it is used by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
Neruda is better known in the U.S. for his love poetry (See bibliographical citations below) and the Italian film Il Postino. (The film trailer is available here). But he also wrote and published “La United Fruit Co.” in 1950 about the exploitation of this asymmetry of power between U.S. corporations and banana republics. (The entire poem in translation is available here). In the poem, Neruda is writing about an unnamed place in Central America, probably Honduras, and its exploitation by the Boston-based United Fruit Co.
Neruda’s poem refers to la dolce cintura de América—the sweet waist of America– describing, in a corporeal and veiled sexual way, the beauty of this part of North America. Neruda does not need to specify a particular country to make clear that a powerful U.S. corporation is taking the best “of my own land”:
la Compañía Frutera Inc.
se reservó lo más jugoso,
la costa central de mi tierra,
la dulce cintura de América.The Fruit Company, Inc.
reserved for itself the most succulent,
the central coast of my own land,
the delicate waist of America.
Using the metaphor of “blood-thirsty flies” for the local heads of state abetting U.S. corporate exploitation, the poem primarily describes how these “flies” and U.S. selfish, corporate interests rank above those of Latin American countries:
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.Among the blood-thirsty flies
the Fruit Company lands its ships,
taking off the coffee and the fruit;
the treasure of our submerged
territories flow as though
on plates into the ships.
This exploitation also extends to the local people themselves:
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.Meanwhile Indians are falling
into the sugared chasms
of the harbours, wrapped
for burials in the mist of the dawn:
a body rolls, a thing
that has no name, a fallen cipher,
a cluster of the dead fruit
thrown down on the dump.
The commodity involved is not important; whether it is oil or fruit makes no difference. Neruda’s poem is helpful in understanding what the U.S. government and its corporate proxies are doing today has been done before.
¡Que chévere es tu país!
I. Librarian
Works Cited:
Henry, O. Cabbages and Kings. McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904.
Il Postino. Directed by Michael Radford. Cecchi Gori Group Tiger Cinematografica, 1994.
Neruda/Schmitt. Canto General. 2011, https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520354623.
Neruda, Pablo. The Captain’s Verses. New Directions, 1972.
Neruda, Pablo. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Jonathan Cape Ltd. London; Penguin Books, 1976.
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