America

Week Eight: Signs of Crisis in a Gilded Age

I would like to focus this week’s blog post on Rubén Dario’s poem titled “To Roosevelt” and the meaning behind it. Even during the “modernization” of Latin America, countries depended on their relationship with the United States to further progress their nations. For an exchange of exporting valuable resources and goods, America would provide up […]

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Week 4: Independence Narratives, Past and Present

The readings brought up a lot of interesting topics that I’ve delved into a bit before, albeit for different regions. Having heard from the video about the many allegories Martí weaves into his work “Nuestra América”, especially via imagery of clothing, one segment caught my attention. Martí decried the elites for flaunting “epaulets and judge’s […]

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Week Nine: America

I learned a lot about the United States presence in Guatemala growing up. I think there is something especially consumable about a war waged based on fruit. While I appreciate Dawson’s use of this example, I think that it obscures and takes place of ot…

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Week Nine: America

I learned a lot about the United States presence in Guatemala growing up. I think there is something especially consumable about a war waged based on fruit. While I appreciate Dawson’s use of this example, I think that it obscures and takes place of other extremely violent forms of United States interventionism. The Cold War resulted in some of the most despicable maneuvers that are often left untouched in Latin American history courses such as the heavy involvement in the Sandanista movement. I wish that textbooks and more accessible literature widened their scope of example. Nicaragua is one of the most compelling revolutions in my opinion just from the massive female involvement in creating a new government. In reading about the United Fruit Company, I remembered a Pablo Neruda poem titled “United Fruit Co.”

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.
I think Neruda’s poem is extremely powerful and effective at communicating the issues with United States interventionism. He manages to address multiple layered issues, specifically how entire countries were rebranded as Banana Republics. At the same time, the indigenous were on the receiving end of violence that exploited their labor for fruit. Bodies become synonymous with rotten fruit being discarded without much thought. The poem reminds me a bit about the struggle surrounding the Panama Canal where so many lives were lost for material gain. Neruda captivates by eloquently capturing the greed of these companies in imagery of the rich fruit and “sunken lands.”
It is really interesting to see how Latin American artists use surrounding political issues to form their art. I hope that we get to look into magical realism and poetry as an aspect of Latin American culture.

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Week Nine: America

I learned a lot about the United States presence in Guatemala growing up. I think there is something especially consumable about a war waged based on fruit. While I appreciate Dawson’s use of this example, I think that it obscures and takes place of ot…

Posted in Blogs, Week 9 | Tagged with , ,

Week 9

This week is a tough one for me to write about because this topic seems to me quite controversial. Latin America has always been majorly influenced by the United States. The economic industrialization that occurred in the late 1800’s resulted in the United States needing to export goods to Latin America. In return, they would […]

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WEEK 9

This chapter really outlined a handful of ideas and stereotypes that I was aware of, but never placed within the context of a sociopolitical level. The section on the banana contextualized pieces like the first chapter of Gravity’s Rainbow, or the 1960…

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WEEK 9

This chapter really outlined a handful of ideas and stereotypes that I was aware of, but never placed within the context of a sociopolitical level. The section on the banana contextualized pieces like the first chapter of Gravity’s Rainbow, or the 1960…

Posted in Blogs | Tagged with , , , ,

WEEK 9

This chapter really outlined a handful of ideas and stereotypes that I was aware of, but never placed within the context of a sociopolitical level. The section on the banana contextualized pieces like the first chapter of Gravity’s Rainbow, or the 1960…

Posted in Blogs | Tagged with , , , ,

WEEK 9

This chapter really outlined a handful of ideas and stereotypes that I was aware of, but never placed within the context of a sociopolitical level. The section on the banana contextualized pieces like the first chapter of Gravity’s Rainbow, or the 1960…

Posted in Blogs | Tagged with , , , ,