Michael

United Fruit Co.

In Pablo Neruda's "United Fruit Co.", Neruda describes the impacts and results of United Fruit Inc.'s involvement in Latin America. His at times satirical, at others tragic, tone conveys his antipathy toward United Fruit Inc. Neruda criticizes the company for the exploitation of Latin American resources as neo-colonial imperialism under the comic guise of supporting self-determination.

A particular frustration for Neruda is the hypocrisy of the US government's and company's actions in Latin America. Since the eighteenth century, the US government held the foreign policy position that they would permit no European power to colonize land or interfere with countries in the Americas. While continuing to support this policy to justify opposition to Communist Latin American governments that developed ties to the Soviet Union, US American companies exploited Latin America by harvesting fruits for sale in the US, giving the farmers little of the profit that was made. Neruda conveys this frustration when he argues "[United Fruit Inc.] alienated self-destiny/ regaled Caesar's crowns." Self-destiny was principle behind the Monroe Doctrine; the US had the right to determine their own fate, so should Latin American countries.

Neruda takes this criticism one step forward, comparing the exploitation to seventeenth and eighteenth century colonialism. In the final stanza, Neruda mentions the "Indians collapsed, buried/ in the morning mist" in the same seaport that now docks the ships that carry away Latin American Fruit. He goes on to describe how "a body rolls down, a nameless/ thing, a fallen number,/ a bunch of lifeless fruit/ dumped in a rubbish heap." Neruda is showing the similarities in the actions of colonizers and United Fruit Inc.; the fruit falls lifeless similarly to the Indians, "nameless" to demonstrate how they are both forgotten. The implicit comparison of fruit and the Indians demonstrates their similarity; instead of explicitly comparing the two, they are interwoven into the same description. The reader views the two as the same instead being told by the poet that they are.

Neruda's criticism relies extensively on satire. The poem begins with an allusion to "Jehovah