UNITED STATES—I defer to Rubén Dario, whom they say is half forgotten, and yet this one verse “To Roosevelt” is freed of the sonnet shackles. It is free and it matters not which Roosevelt he was addressing: FDR or Theodore, his half cousin. . .
It is with the voice of the Bible, or verse of Walt Whitman,
that we should reach you, Hunter!
Primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
with a bit of Washington and a bit of Nimrod.
You are the United States,
You are the future invader
the naive America who has Indian blood,
that still prays to Jesus and still speaks Spanish.
You are a proud and strong exemplar of your race;
you are cultured, you are clever, you oppose Tolstoy.
And breaking horses, or murdering tigers,
you are an Alexander or Nebuchadnezzar.
(You’re a professor of energy,
as today’s locos say.)
You think life is fire,
that progress is eruption;
where you put your bullet
you put the future.
No.
The United States is strong and big.
When it shakes there is a deep tremor
through the enormous vertebrae of the Andes.
If you clamor, you hear the lion’s roar.
Hugo said to General Grant: “The stars are yours.”
(Just shining, rising, Argentine sun
and the Chilean star rises …) You’re rich.
Join Hercules’ cult to Mammon’s;
and lighting the path to easy conquest,
Liberty raises her torch in New York.
But our America, which had poets
from the old days of Netzahualcoyotl,
you’ve saved in the footsteps of the Bacchus,
nimble as Pan in the alphabet learned for a while;
who consulted the stars, who knew Atlantis,
whose name comes to resonate in Plato
Since the ancient times of your life
living light, fire, perfume, love,
America’s great Montezuma, from the Inca,
redolent of America by Christopher Columbus
Catholic America, Spanish America,
The America where noble Cuauhtémoc said:
“I’m no bed of roses” that America
trembles in hurricanes and lives in Love,
men of Saxon eyes and barbarous soul-lives.
And dreams. And loves, and vibrates, and is the daughter of the Sun
Be careful. Live the American Spanish!
There are a thousand puppies let loose from the Spanish Lion.
Be required, Roosevelt, being God Himself,
Rifleman the terrible and strong Hunter,
keep us in your iron claws.
And, you may have everything, but one thing you lack: God!
(From ‘Cantos de vida y esperanza’ by Rubén Dario translated from the Spanish by Graydon Miller).
Indeed the conspirators already had a prototype for what was going to happen to Gascón. Already CIA agents had deposed the prime minister of Iran, which occurred after the Persian leader had nationalized oil fields that belonged to the British. The outcome of this operation was deemed a success, that radiated throughout the covert bureaucracy just as plans for Gascón’s overthrow in Guatelandia were being laid out. Surely the swift results of the operation served as encouragement for the 10/2 committee, whose activities served as kind of a macabre counterpoint to the smooth, bland wholesome, neurotically-charged era of Krausheimer. Operation Ajax returned the Shah of Iran to power. It seemed easy as baking a cake, same dong, different singer. Just replace the names of the figures involved.
The banana company instead of the oil company. Like Ajax, Success would be a military coup devised as a popular revolt.
CIA operatives were scattered among a dozen locations, in camps and safe houses, where they prepared the psychological tricks that were key to the success of Operation Success.
Exiled Guatemalan newspapermen wrote fake articles that foretold of the swelling ranks of the rebel army. Printers made up bales of leaflets flyers to be dropped from airplanes over Guatemala City, 100,000 of them, printed in bold two-tone headlines in black and red.
(Bernie Lukasey always held that the most effective propaganda be printed in red and black or yellow and black.) The population to informed, FORCE YOUR PRESIDENT TO RESIGN or WE WILL START DROPPING BOMBS!
Audio engineers recorded sound effects, termed “terror broadcasts,” that were to be played during the mock invasion and give it terrifying verisimilitude. Panicked newsmen, terrified crowds, exploding bombs—taken from the same bag a tricks Orson Welles used during his “War of the Worlds” radio drama that gripped many people in their homes with the unthinkable encounter with creatures from another world. Of course. In the West Indies, long ago, with the voyages of Christopher Columbus this face-off between two very divergent worlds, so different as to be two different planets, collided.
To be continued…
