Silence of the Corporations: A Literary Analysis on Pablo Neruda’s United Fruit Co. Most of us tend to blame the difficulties and failures that are present in third world countries on corrupted politicians, ruthless crime lords, and uncooperative political groups. Basically, we blame these problems on internal factors. However, many of us have failed to realize that large international corporations have also played key roles in leading these nations into the state of chaos and demise that they are in today. Many people think that just because they’ve known about large corporations, such as Coca Cola and Nike, their entire lives, that they can’t be doing anything wrong, wouldn’t someone have called them out if they already had? The truth
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In the poem “United Fruit Co.” by Pablo Neruda, the speaker of the poem discusses how United Fruit Inc. and other large corporations have taken over world and have without any sort of remorse have mistreated these nations and their workers, these disgusting corporations have used lesser developed countries for their personal gain long enough, it’s time that the …show more content…
as the main example in the poem, the description of that one company can be used to describe many large international corporations. A corporation that many people may have heard of, but do not know that it has committed many heinous actions toward its employees is Nike Inc. In 1997, journalist, Burhan Wazir, revealed that workers in one of Nike’s “contracted factories in Vietnam were being exposed to toxic fumes at up to 177 times the Vietnamese legal limit.” Wazir also discovered that Nike factory employees are “coerced into working up to 70 hours per week” and are “humiliated in front of other workers or threatened with dismissal if they refuse to do the extra work.” If Nike were to treat any of its employees in more developed countries, such as the United States, in such manner it would face severe punishments and worldwide attention. Though, due to the fact that these factories are placed in poorly developed countries, where it is difficult for common people to communicate and address their problems with the rest of the world, these atrocities mainly go unknown and
In the poem “United Fruit Co.” by Pablo Neruda, the speaker of the poem discusses how United Fruit Inc. and other large corporations have taken over world and have without any sort of remorse have mistreated these nations and their workers, these disgusting corporations have used lesser developed countries for their personal gain long enough, it’s time that the …show more content…
as the main example in the poem, the description of that one company can be used to describe many large international corporations. A corporation that many people may have heard of, but do not know that it has committed many heinous actions toward its employees is Nike Inc. In 1997, journalist, Burhan Wazir, revealed that workers in one of Nike’s “contracted factories in Vietnam were being exposed to toxic fumes at up to 177 times the Vietnamese legal limit.” Wazir also discovered that Nike factory employees are “coerced into working up to 70 hours per week” and are “humiliated in front of other workers or threatened with dismissal if they refuse to do the extra work.” If Nike were to treat any of its employees in more developed countries, such as the United States, in such manner it would face severe punishments and worldwide attention. Though, due to the fact that these factories are placed in poorly developed countries, where it is difficult for common people to communicate and address their problems with the rest of the world, these atrocities mainly go unknown and