Analysis of the poem `The United Fruit Co.`

In Pablo Neruda 's excellent poem The United Fruit Co ' the poet explores the tragic history of Latin American countries under the influence of major corporations . The author uses biblical tones at the beginning of the poem , writing , When the trumpets had sounded and all / was in readiness on the face of the earth / Jehovah divided his universe (Neruda 79 . He then goes into a list of the main influential companies that have had an impact on Latin American politics - Anaconda Copper Mining Company , Ford Motors , Coca-Cola , and of course the United Fruit

Company . The numerous acts of corruption and political influence by these companies are mocked in the poem through this religious tone , and the opening lines serve to satirize the type of religious justification for emperialism by contrasting the holy tone with such corrupt acts . The poem then goes on to describe how these companies took over the beautiful and heroic history of Latin America by turning it into an opyra bouffe , or a farce opera . Overall Neruda exposes the terrifyingly absurd historical acts committed by these companies in changing the direction of history

The poet then goes into a of the tyrants who had dominated subjugated and murdered thousands of citizens in their reign . Neruda describes how these companies had unleashed all the covetous , and contrived / the tyrannical Reign of the Flies (Neruda 79 , then listing the many tyrants who had oppressed their people : Trujillo Tacho , Martinez , Ubico . Neruda uses the metaphor of flies ' to emphasize that rather than producing or generating wealth in Latin America these leaders , like flies , subsisted in a parasitic and opportunistic way , getting fat off the blood of the marmalade vassalage ' or the producers of fruit and sugar in the region (Neruda 79 . The poem then finishes the stanza with an image of the United Fruit Company taking all the goods , the coffee and fruits , to the developed world , leaving behind the waste and destruction of the bloody domain of the flies ' abandoning the innumerable drowning dominions ' that were victims of their capitalist machinery

This poem laments the tragedy of these small nations in Central America , the delectable waist of America (Neruda 79 . Neruda plays with the term of the Banana Republics ' - countries whose governments were heavily controlled by the United Fruit Company , to express the terrible plight of countries whose riches are controlled not by their own governing body but by a foreign company which only comes in to take their fruits . He describes these countries not as independent states but as property ' which was renamed by the controlling forces of these companies . The poem as a whole is not exactly a call to arms against this capitalist influence , but its intent is to bring the reader to outrage with the political situation of these countries under the Reign of the Flies (Neruda 79 . Neruda uses the repetition of the word fly ' in the second stanza to emphasize how much waste and decay has pervaded the political power...