Giannina Braschi - United States of Banana

drinking rum and Coca-Cola

working for the Yankee dollar.

And after their vacation at the resort that erases stress — or so they say — they need to erase from the blackboard the fights they could not have with their wives because they snored their screams when they got drunk — it was too hard to handle the dragon lady — fierce — and so he tells her: calm down! You party animal, you social butterfly! Go shopping! While he enters the beach with a yellow towel covering his testicles — she enters the mall — both smiling, but their unhappiness is so big that it could take a whole day of sunscreen and earphones not to hear the other say what they don’t want to hear—

drinking rum and Coca-Cola

working for the Yankee dollar.

At first it sounds like magic — drinking rum and Coca-Cola — burning their cheeks and flashing their baby teeth — as a testifier of happiness. Calm down! Everything is alright, baby. And the earphones are louder — and the louder the merrier — drinking cappuccino from Starbucks — where tall means small — because digressions are recessions — and know that if you walk backwards — like a crab — it brings bad luck — to go back to where you started—

drinking rum and Coca-Cola

working for your own nasty dollar.

And then all of a sudden, a real nasty person comes out from the yellow towel around his waist — and reveals an unhappiness that instead of screaming has been snoring all night long — but in the morning while he takes the elevator to the lobby he says — good morning — and drinks a cappuccino from tall means small — and reads in the Times about a woman who jumped on a cardinal who fell on the pope and knocked him down — and a reporter threw a shoe at the president — and another threw a punch at the prime minister and broke his jaw and nose — and the power is shifting — like the tsunami of an insurrection by the people, for the people, of the people. Nasty people are getting nastier. The brew is brewing. The coming insurrection. And the natives are also there sunbathing in the same resort. I’m talking about the children of the colonizers who frequent the hotels — not as tourists but where society meets society — where locals take their wives and kids — because they prefer to be with tourists than with natives who are mulattos, because no, they are not mulattos, or so they think, they are the children of conquistadores and exterminadores . What a match when a conquistador marries an exterminator — they become owners of newspapers, shopping malls, mental asylums, restaurants, banks. I am one of those children, raised in el Caribe Hilton where I played tennis and ate hamburgers and french fries and fried chicken and fried calamari and drank Coca-Cola — and sunbathed on their private beaches — and danced in their nightclubs — and I saw the rupture and the excuse — and how upsetting it can be when the strong culture is controlled by domineering politics — it creates the sadness of a sad ballad — like the ballad of the sad café—in New Orleans — a sad city — where the majority are oppressed by a minority — and the joie de vivre of French and black culture is oppressed by another culture — that is minor — it creates bad conscience, it takes the blessedness of the blessed, the being can’t be completed — because it is repressed and subdued by the rum and Coca-Cola of working for the Yankee dollar.

In Fajardo they have just finished constructing the most luxurious hotel called Hotel El Exterminador. It was built by the husband of one of the daughters of the owner of Hotel El Conquistador. Hotel El Exterminador is famous for having as its most famous guest — Oliver Exterminator who exterminates with a spray of raid everything that is related to race and sex — and if it has no relation to sex and race — it’s because it hasn’t come out of the closet yet — because every figure, every equation, every mathematical confabulation can be eradicated by a spray of raid on sex and race — through the eye of the elephant the needle of a one-track mind — always with blinders — always a steel trap — a mousetrap — a mouthtrap — to catch with the extermination of race and sex the highly suspicious code red of high alert — calm down — you are on a movie set of gigolos — good-for-nothings — only if the cause is serving the cause of the raid formula of blank verse — fill in the blanks — polls and statistics — standards — and good-for-nothings sprayed by the raid of sex and race.

Hotel El Exterminador is called the Glazed Donut because it’s round like a glazed donut with a hole in the middle — and it’s not very tall — only ten floors. And there is a swimming pool in the middle of the hole — very deep — no children allowed. And water overflows the glass walls of the Glazed Donut and the sides of the pool, giving the impression of a sugar glaze. And all the rooms have windows overlooking the pool so everyone can see the swimmers — the hairy legs of men — and the hairless legs of women — but not their faces — unless they are diving into the water. It’s quite a marvel to watch — the 77th wonder of the world. Honeymooners hold hands and jump into the hole of the Glazed Donut from the top floor — and from every room guests can point and laugh at the naked couples falling through the air — with their privates dangling: look at that one — it’ll freeze to death! Because the pool is freezing. It’s made to simulate the icy waters of Siberia. Everyone wants what he doesn’t have — and since Puerto Rican waters are usually warm — Hotel El Exterminator offers the icy thrill of Siberian waters — and to feel strong like a Russian bear — and to scream shrill like an American in a horror movie — or on a roller-coaster — any sensation other than the cozy, lukewarm temperature of Puerto Rican waters — because frogs and Puerto Ricans die of coziness when they feel so, so comfortable in lukewarm waters. And this new sensation of icy cold incited someone to shout: hey, let’s open all the windows and swim in our rooms! Everyone loved the idea — what a thrill — to open all the windows, flood the rooms with icy waters, and swim around the Glazed Donut. It was quite a sight to behold. A horror movie. Everyone was drowning in the freezing waters and looking for a fire extinguisher instead of a fire exit to escape Hotel El Exterminador, which was exterminating all of them with the icy flood of Siberian waters. But once a tourist opened a door to the earth — they all poured out of that door like pennies and penuries out of a piggybank — and they landed in the sand — felt the warmth of the sea, the sun, the suntan, and the clouds.

[Giannina, on top of a tree in El Escambrón, overlooking the white dome of El Capitolio on the horizon.]

Cockroach: The allies are here — England, Germany, and Spain — with their armadas invencibles . They are not here to defend Puerto Rico, but to reclaim their characters — Hamlet, Zarathustra, and Segismundo.

Giannina: Tell them to come talk to me. Have the reptiles left yet?

Cockroach: Yes, they left.

Giannina: Bring England, Germany, and Spain.

England: We came looking for Hamlet.

Giannina: Actually, he is already inside me.

Germany: Where is Zarathustra?

Giannina: You will never find him unless you create him first.

Spain: And Segismundo?

Giannina: I had him as my first communion — as my host. You know what I mean, I ate him. He is already a part of me.

England, Germany, and Spain: So, we are part of you.