Oh, carrier Intrepid/you in these torrid waters of Santo Domingo/only out of fear.
With the arrival last week of the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group in the Caribbean Sea as part of the US regime’s attempt to turn the screw on Cuba, we are reminded of the appearance of another aircraft carrier in the Caribbean, at an earlier moment in history. In June 1961, one day after the assassination of dictator Rafael Trujillo, the John F. Kennedy government dispatched a large number of naval assets to the coast of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Along with the Caribbean Ready Amphibious Squadron (TG 44.9), which was permanently stationed in the region since the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the US sent 3 aircraft carriers (with 280 aircraft) – the Intrepid, the Shangri-La, and the Randolph – as well as 1 submarine, three amphibious squadrons, and 5,000 troops. The US also deployed two destroyers to the northern and southern ports of Haiti. The goal was to not only protect US assets in the chaos that ensued after the assasination but to make sure that Trujillo was not replaced by a Dominican version of Fidel Castro.
The US regime would maintain a threatening naval military presence around the island of Hispaniola until the election, in December 1962, of a president of its liking in the Dominican Republic, Juan Bosch. Bosch was no communist, but was still not right-wing enough for the right-wing Dominican military and the elite classes. Within a year, Bosch was overthrown in a coup d’etat. Two years later, on April 28, 1965, the Dominican Republic was invaded by 42,000 US troops.
The Dominican poet Pedro Mir marked the arrival of the Intrepid in 1962 through his poem “To The Aircraft Carrier Intrepid.” Born in San Pedro de Macoris in 1913, Mir’s life was bookended by two US military interventions —in 1916 and 1965 — and dominated by the three decades of the Trujillo dictatorship (1930 to 1961). As the poem “To the Aircraft Carrier Intrepid” attests, Mir’s poems were shaped by the political history of his country, and by the shadow cast by a US imperialism that had the power to “annihilate all the Antilles.” Yet while awed by the power of the US, as embodied by the USS Intrepid, Mir also had faith in the “boundless rage” of the Caribbean people for forcing the Intrepid’s exit from the Caribbean, and to bring down the US imperial regime.
Sixty years later, as the Nimitz is once again stationed in the Caribbean Sea, threatening Cuba, we only hope the people’s rage will blow it off course, or send the entire Strike Group to the bottom of the ocean.
We reprint Pedro Mir’s “To The Aircraft Carrier Intrepid” below.
To The Aircraft Carrier Intrepid
Pedro Mir
(Santa Domingo, February 1962 (from the international cable offices):
"Fifteen hundred sailors landed here from the aircraft carrier
Intrepid on a tour of rest and recreation,'')
I know you are a triumph of formidable steel,
I know that your sailors are many beetles,
white with knotted scarves,
I know that along the line that circles your iron
waist wanders a blue tongue
that licks and hugs your iron bowels,
I know that through the waves bitten by your two propellers
sharks and sea serpents flee in terror,
I know that when your public cannons boom
archipelagos flee like doves or coots;
I know you are an almighty aircraft carrier,
I know that you defend a formidable empire
that reclines beneath your shoulders,
that leans upon you and extends its commerce,
I know you are an almighty aircraft carrier,
a sea god that vomits fire
and sinks with a single puff the little Antilles
like a whole powerful aircraft carrier Intrepid.
But you have gone to the tiny roadstead of Santo Domingo,
but you have gone to the gentle bay of Santo Domingo
gently stirred by subterranean waves
in the environs of this month of February,
but you have gone to the gentle bay of Santo Domingo,
with all your sailors with their knotted scarves,
but you have gone to the backwaters of Santo Domingo,
only out of fear,
only out of fear.
To these pacific and elastic waters
only out of fear.
Who could say it of your bronze,
carrier Intrepid!
You so filled with inner powers,
you so filled with brusque eruptions
and seismic movements
and hurricanes of molten rock
and so much fire,
able to annihilate all the Antilles
with a single puff,
anchored in the tender roadstead of Santo Domingo
only out of fear,
with all your cannons displaced
only out of fear,
well girt the fiercely armoured belt
only out of fear.
Can it be because the flagship caravel,
that Santa Maria, now so long ago,
came to tie up Indians once they were discovered
and on the cliffs and on the rocks
was turned into a marine corpse?
Can it be because the furious armored pennant
ship Memphis, not now so long ago,
came with its four smokestacks
to hold down the people
and on the cliffs and on the rocks
was turned into a marine corpse?
No, carrier Intrepid,
you are too much the triumph
of the wedding of bronze and steel
to flee from cliffs and rocks,
from foam and wind,
other forces frighten you
wider than the empire
that scarcely shelters in your armor
like the sea serpents,
forces that endanger your course
and frighten your commerce,
these men frighten you,
fierce and subterranean,
that suddenly grow, clasp hands
across all countries,
smash governments as if they were old
marked cards or aircraft carriers,
rise up and destroy the lies
of all the empires,
of all the cable offices,
of all the foreign syndicates,
of all the cannons and proud
ships, of all the aircraft
and the aircraft carriers,
the aviators and the sailors,
the embassies and the consulates,
of all the States and their Departments,
their Congresses and their Conferences,
their diplomacy and their figureheads.
You are scared by the longing
for death among those peoples,
for many years have gone by, many elections,
many millions and many prisoners
and many working days of unpaid sweat
and too much silence,
and this is too much for your bronze cannons,
your steel armor-plating,
too much for your leaden lies,
your fiery bowels,
for many years have gone by, much blood
mixed with sweat and outrage,
much mutilation and much infamy
and too much army,
and this is too much for the roars
of your boilers or your airplane motors
or your dreadful and electric cranes
or your tons of displacement.
Oh, carrier Intrepid,
you in these torrid waters of Santo Domingo
only out of fear.
Raise, prodigious marvel of the shore,
your two iron anchors
and go away wrapped in appropriate softnesses
and secrets,
go with the help of the diluted wind,
for there are passions and dark hurricanes
in all the Antillean archipelago,
and do not come back, before the consuming passion
of all the women and the men
of all the peoples
achieves what is achieved throughout the world
by them, only out of boundless rage
and you,
only out of fear.
Pedro Mir, “To the Aircraft Carrier Intrepid,” translated by Donald Walsh and published in The American Poetry Review 5, no. 1 (1976): 36–37. Originally published in Spanish as “El Portaaviones Intrépido” (1962).
Image: Dominican York Proyecto GRAFICA, Pepe Coronado, Intrépido, from the portfolio Manifestaciones, 2010, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, © 2010, Dominican York Proyecto GRAFICA .
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