Adventures of Isabel

Guess where, and when, the following lines were written (in literal if not literary translation):

This unredeemed people
may perhaps succumb in the struggle,
but only its corpse
can be yoked by alien tyranny.

Yankee! If you defeat us
with the powerful weight of weapons,
you will not live happily, because you are hated
even by the air of my native land.

Yankee! If my verses
survive me, their words
will echo in the centuries to come
the eternal hate of the eternal outcast.

Is it Afghanistan in 2001? Iraq 2003?
Maybe Vietnam in 1965?

Try the Philippines, 1899 — America’s very first colonial adventure. (Probably not much of a surprise, actually, to anyone who pays any attention to what I normally post here.)

I’m sad to report that the US did not leave the Philippines until 1946 (and even then, not really), and that colonial officials did rather well for themselves. And I’m not sure Cecilio Apostol, the nationalist poet who wrote “Al Yankee,” would be comforted to know that his words do seem to have been echoed, again and again, for more than a century, as the march of U.S. imperialism spread across the globe.

The translation above is the standard one, by Nicanor G. Tiongson. (I think it deserves better). Below is the full text of the original Spanish version. I’m including it because I had a hell of a time finding it, finally locating a copy in a back issue of a Spanish-language journal I’d never heard of.

Al “Yankee”
por Cecilio Apostol

Siempre que la codicia
Rasga un girón del territorio extraño
…………………………………….
poetas, vengadores
de la conciencia universal, ¿acaso
podréis guardar silencio,
la honrada voz de la protesta ahogando?
-Ferrari
…………………………………….
¡Jamás! Cuando la fuerza
con la traición y la injusticia pacta,
para aplastar los fueros,
los sacrosantos fueros de una raza;

Cuando los hijos del infame Judas
venden la fe jurada;
cuando al gemido de los pueblos débiles
contestan con brutales carcajadas;

Cuando el santo Derecho se trucida
en el festín de la ambición humana;
cuando como los yankees,
a cañonazos brindan una patria;

No es posible callar: la Patria opresa
protestará indignada,
y en el pecho traidor del enemigo
esconderá el puñal de su venganza.

El irredento pueblo
sucumbira quizás en la demanda,
más solo a su cadaver
se logrará imponer coyunda extraña.

¡Yankee! Si tú nos vences,
con el potente empuje de tus armas,
no vivirás dichoso, porque te odia
hasta el ambiente mismo de mi Patria.

¡Yankee! Si mis estrofas
logran sobrevivirme, sus palabras
vibrarán en los siglos venideros
el odio eterno del eterno patria.
(1899)

Tags:   Al Yankee · Cecilio Apostol · colonialism · imperialism · Philippines · poetry · To the Yankee1 Comment