Four years have passed since Pablo Neruda died on September 23, 1973 — 12 days after the junta seized power in Chile. In this essay Leon Baya addresses him- self to an aspect of Neruda’s work that intellectual cir- cles in the west have tried to bury. Translations were provided by the author. By Leon Baya The themes of Pablo Neruda’s poetry cover a wide range: a pair of woolen socks knitted for him by a native Chilean Indian; the shape, fullness and taste of tomatoes, olive oil and olives; an imaginative flight to a forest or open sea; the love of a man for a woman. His deep personal commitment to the liberation of all exploited peoples is also reflected in a significant part of his work — poems to revolutionary leaders like the Tuban poet-statesman José Marti, the Spanish dramatist-poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was brutally murdered by Franco’s fascists in 1936, and to Fidel Castro. : But when we turn to the many editions of Neru- da’s works, published here and in other western coun- tries, Neruda’s worker-oriented, class-consicous poems seldom, if ever appear. Yet Neruda joined the Communist Party of Chile in 1945 and remained an active Communist all his life. Bourgeois critics and translators often mention that Neruda was awarded, belatedly, the Nobel Prize of Poetry in 1971, perhaps to increase sales of his books, but we look in vain for any mention of the Lenin Peace Prize, which he was given in 1950. Not only a permanent member of the Lenin Peace Prize Committee, Neruda frequently was an emissary for peace in such countries as India, China and France. Bourgeois critics are consistently silent about Neruda’s revolutionary poetry, for example, his ode to the heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad. Occasionally, however, a single poem that expresses Neruda’s in- dignation at extreme exploitation finds its way intoa Collected Works. One such edition contains his con- demnatory poem, Reciben Ordenes Contra Chile (They Are Given Orders Against Chile), written in 1948. In it Neruda denounces the corrupt and cruel Chilean compraderes who joined with New York ban- Kers in suppressing the native population: These men lie, bribe and dance over the dead and their wives wear expensive minks. The agony of the people is of no concern: the copper bosses demand this sacrifice .... He scorns the military men who, once they retire, take positions as executives in the nitrate and copper mines. He calls these men ‘‘dwarfs”’ and traitors who carry out the instructions sent them, ‘even as the trunk of the country’s tree rots.”’ In another rarely quoted poem, Hambre En El Sur (Hunger in the South), Neruda writes of the weary miners: | see the sobs in the coal at Lota and the tired shadow of the oppressed Chilean as he picks away at the cruel vein in the earth's belly; as he dies : lives and is born from the bitter ashes. hunched over, downtrodden, as though the world began and ended this way in the midst of the dark dusk and flames only a cough in the winter is heard. ‘Sometimes we find his famous poem, The United Fruit Co., in an anthology. Here Neruda contrasts the back-breaking, ill-paying labor of the banana gather- ers with that of the luxurious lives of such foreign exploiters as United Fruit, Coca-Cola, Anaconda and Ford Motors, all of which, he states, have been given parcels of Latin America by Jehovah himself. ° The most glaring omission is his powerful collec- tion entitled Seng of Protest, which he read time and again in his numerous public readings (once, under Allende, attended by 130,000 people! ). We have yet to find one of these poems in any of his Collected Works! It is easy to see why this volume is neglected, for it is an attack upon dictatorships, imperialism and col- onialism. Conversely, it expresses warm-hearted Support for revolutions against tyranny and for the masses and their leaders. Written in 1960, and con- taining 43 poems, it has been reissued in many edi- tions. It was one of the few books that Che Guevara took with him to Bolivia. In the introduction, Neruda States: : PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 11, 1977—Page 10 Pablo Neruda “Song of Protest is still ardently alive in its numerous editions. It was the first book that any poet, in Cuba or anywhere else, had dedicated to the Cuban Revolution.” The only edition I could find is an English transla- tion, without the Spanish original. (Miguel Algarin’s Song of Protest, published by Morrow. Mr. Algarin is a Puerto Rican who teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey.) The third edition, published in Uruguay, contains aclear statement as to the purpose of these poems. He says, in the introduction: “My poetry will serve and sing of dignity to the indignant, of hope to the hopeless, of justice in spite of the unjust, of equality in spite of the exploiters, of truth in spite of liars, and of the great brotherhood of : true fighters.” These poems contain political, social and economic analyses of Puerto Rico, which he some- times calls Puerto Pobre (Poor Puerto), of Cuba both before and after the 1959 Revolution, and of the Nicaraguan peasant leader, Augusto César Sandino, who was gunned down in the streets by U.S. Marines (1933) while leaving a peace talk. The Organization of American States (OAS), dominated by U.S. im- perialism and its puppets, is also exposed in this vol- ume. ; One poem treats of the illegal arrest of Neruda and 3,000 Argentinians. He was placed in solitary con- WORDS THAT _ SHOOK THE LAND _ boundless optimist with faith in the masses. This ed finement although he had already established 4 worldwide reputation as a poet. Recalling that arrest, he says that not a single word appeared in the news papers about this mass incarceration: .-. in La Prensa ,which contains so much news Mr. Gainza Paz does not know that the prisons in Argentina are filled. He stands up for a “free press” - but when communist newspapers are shut down this grandee becomes silent and unaware; his feet hurt him and his eyes trouble him .. . La Prensa is concerned “with the last divorce taking place with motion picture dolts in Hollywood and while press associations cloister themselves La Prensa and La Nacional become metaphysical. Neruda expresses bitter outrage at the contemp tible blowing up of La Coubre, a ship that was if Cuba’s harbor, by imperialist agents in 1960. There was a great loss of life and important cargo. But, declares Neruda, this act will teach the Cuban masses that “with Fidel, one speaks differently,” and once the peasants fully understand the nature of theif enemies, ‘“‘Cuba will live, we swear it, this star.” — The’ Nicaraguan leader Anastasio Somoza was placed in power iin 1936. After a number of years of tryanny, he was assassinated. Of him Neruda writes: Somoza was the name of that tyrant that mercenary, that traitor, that executioner ... thus dropped that perforated stomach ‘ and with that death, honor was restored. Neruda was especially critical of the former ruler of Puerto Rico, Mufioz Marin, who collaborated with “Operation Bootstrap.’’ This parasitic union resulted in the mortgaging of the island to American Big Busi ness. Of Marin he says: : There lives a fat worm in these lands there is a predatory worm in these parts: he devoured the island’s flag . . . his palace was white outside while inside it was an inferno, like Chicago. with the mustache, the heart and the claws of that traitorous worm, Louis Mufioz the Judas of that blood-stained island .. . corrupter of his poverty-weakened brothers, bilingual translator for the killers, bootlegger of whiskey from North America. Neruda was often attacked for his membership in the Communist Party and for his views on im- perialism, colonialism and peace. A short poem answered these critics: My obligations move together with my song: _l exist; | do not exist: that is my responsibility. i cannot be said to be alive if | pay no heed To the agony of those who are in pain; their pains are mine; For | cannot live without living for all, For those who are silent, yet oppressed. 1 am derived from the people, and | sing for them.” In Do Not Ask, he says: ~ Some ask that human affairs with names, surnames and elegies _not be the themes of the pages in my books. They assert that poetry dies in such writing. Others ask that I should no longer proceed. The plain truth is, | do not want to please them. | have a pact of love with beauty. | have a pact of kinship with my people. Ever since World War I, the main body of art which has gained recognition in the capitalist world has conveyed pessimism, hopelessness and bleak- ness. But despite exile for many years from his native Chile, despite relentless attacks upon him, both pers sonal and artistic, Neruda remained a humanist, a poem sums up Neruda’s credo: TOMORROW, THROUGHOUT THE CARIBBEAN Pure youth in this bloody sea young communists of this day, there will be more of you to wipe out the tyrannies of this territory: one day we shall be able to meet And, being free, my poems will sing once more among you. Rejoicing, | await this future, comrades.