Nicolás Guillén - Far Off... lyrics

When I was a boy (say, reader, fifty years back) we had grand, ingenuous people who over a row in the street of a hell-raising crowd in a bar would shudder. They'd exclaim, "Good Heavens, what would the Americans say!" For some folks To be a Yankee in those days was to be something almost sacred: the Platt Amendment, armed intervention, battleships. Back then, what is today quite common was unthinkable: the kidnapping of a gringo colonel, like in Venezuela, or of four agents provocateurs, like our brothers did in Bolivia, and least of all things like decisive bearded ones from the Sierra Some fifty years ago in the first section of the newspapers, no less, they put the latest baseball scores direct from New York. Great! Cincinnati beat Pittsburgh! St. Louis whipped Detroit! (Buy Reich baseballs. They're the best.) Johnson, the boxer, was our model of a champ. For kids, Fletcher's Castoria was the remedy prescribed in (rebellious) cases of enteritis or indigestion. One newspaper in its table of contents listed each day a page, in English, for the Yankees: "A Cuban-American paper with news of all the world." Nothing like Walk-Over Shoes, or the pills of Dr. Ross. And the native pineapple juice came no more from the plant: the Fruit Juice Company said it was "huelsencamp." We would take the Munson Line to Mobile, Southern Pacific to New Orleans, and the Ward Line to New York. We had Nick Carter and Buffalo Bill. We had the immediate, greasy, memory of fat Magoon: obese gangster and governor, the thief among thieves of thieves. There was the American Club. There was Miramar Garden (when any fool can say *jardin* in Spanish). To travel by train there was the Cuban Company. There was Cuban Telephone. There was that tremendous amba**ador. And above all there was, "Watch your step, the Americans will intervene!" Some folks, not so ingenuous used to say, "Hah! They'll intervene? You mean they're not already here?" At any rate, they were great... strong, honest above reproach, the cream of the crop, and our model: for quick elections without debate, for buildings with many floors, for presidents who did their duty, for those who smoked light tobacco, for those who used chewing gum, for Whites who wouldn't mix with Blacks, for those who puffed curved pipes, for energetic and infallible functionaries, for aborted revolution, for a single strong tug on the chain in the water-closet. But it came to pa** that one day we were like children who grow up and learn that the honorable uncle who bounced us on his knee was sent up for forgery. One day we came to know the worst. How and why they murdered Lincoln in a theatre-box of d**h. How and why the bandits there became senators. How and why There are many cops who're not in prison. How and why there are tears in the stones of every skyscraper. How and why With one blow Texas was ripped off and pocketed. How and why the vineyards and orchards of California no longer belong to Mexico. How and why Marines k**ed the soldiers of Veracruz. How and why Dessalines saw his flag torn from every Haitian staff. How and why our great general Sandino was betrayed and murdered. How and why they dirtied our sugar with manure. How and why they've blinded their people and torn out its tongue. How and why they're forbidden to know us and tell our simple truth. How and why... Oh, we came from far off, from far off. One day we learned all this. Our mind sorts out its memories. We've simply grown up. We've grown ...but we don't forget.