BC - "If I Had A Rocket Launcher"
February and April 1983. Chiapas, Mexico, and Toronto, Canada.
Here comes the helicopter -- second time today
Everybody scatters and hopes it goes away
How many kids they've murdered only God can say
If I had a rocket launcher...I'd make somebody pay
I don't believe in guarded borders and I don't believe in hate
I don't believe in generals or their stinking torture states
And when I talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relate
If I had a rocket launcher...I would retaliate
On the Rio Lacantun, one hundred thousand wait
To fall down from starvation -- or some less humane fate
Cry for guatemala, with a corpse in every gate
If I had a rocket launcher...I would not hesitate
I want to raise every voice -- at least I've got to try
Every time I think about it water rises to my eyes.
Situation desperate, echoes of the victims cry
If I had a rocket launcher...Some son of a bitch would die
Known comments by Bruce Cockburn about this song, by date:
Editorial note: According to an article called "Hell Fire!" by Bridget Freer, FHM magazine, December 1999 issue, "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" was one of the songs played at high volume outside the Vatican Embassy in Panama City in 1989, in order to drive out Manuel Noriega. Along with "I Fought The Law" and "Nowhere To Run" among others, it was not successful because of complaints from the Ambassador. Thanks to David Newton for sending this in.
19 October 1984
[If one of "Rocket Launcher's" suggestions is not only that anger can signal a beginning of commitment but that such anger can get out of hand, Cockburn is quick to point out that it reflects a very personal experience.] "Aside from airing my own experience, which is where the songs always start, if we're ever going to find a solution for this ongoing passion for wasting each other, we have to start with the rage that knows no impediments, an uncivilized rage that says it's okay to go out and shoot some one."
[Like "Nicaragua" and "Dust and Diesel," "Rocket Launcher" came directly from Cockburn's visits to Guatemalan refugee camps in Mexico.] "I can't imagine writing it under any other conditions." [He had gone to Mexico and Nicaragua in early 1983 with several other Canadian artists at the invitation of OXFAM, the world hunger organization; OXFAM had sponsored a similar trip the year before with members of the Canadian Parliament.]
According to Cockburn, "the idea was to reach a different audience than the politicians by having us go and observe, using the relative visibility that we have to educate the Canadian public to what we had seen and to raise money for projects that OXFAM has in the region." [Cockburn was already involved in the issue, having spent time reading the poetry of Ernesto Cardenal and a report by Pax Christi, the Catholic human rights organization, on its investigation of alleged church persecution in Nicaragua. His three weeks in Central America confirmed some opinions, but also aroused the kinds of frustrations evidenced in 'Rocket Launcher.' Ironically, the political stance it inspired is linked to a similar public position Cockburn took several years ago, when he confirmed that he was a born-again Christian.]
"One is directly responsible for the other," he says, though he insists neither commitment defines his work. "I don't consciously or not consciously write certain kinds of songs," Cockburn says. "In fact, I almost didn't put 'Rocket Launcher' on the album because of the ease with which it could be misinterpreted."
-- from "The Long March of Bruce Cockburn: From Folkie to Rocker, Singing About Injustice" by Richard Harrington, Washington Post, 19 October 1984. Submitted by Nigel Parry.
15 November 1984
"If one needed a reason to; needed an example of why there wasn't a Nicaraguan revolution, you can look at the situation in Guatemala, because the situation is, if anything, worse than what was happening in Nicaragua under Somosa, has been for the last 30 years.
Since the military government presently in power was installed with a little help from your neighborhood agents.... the Washington boys. They ran the country on behalf of themselves and a small land owning elite, using everybody else in the country as their personal servants; and with a cheap labor force. The way they do that is they make sure that the people don't have enough land to support themselves on. Aside from keeping them from any access to medical care or education, they make sure that they don't have enough land to grow enough food for a family. Which means that people have to go work for them if they want to survive.This doesn't necessarily guarantee survival either, of course , because if people object in anyway to that kind of situation.....or maybe if they just sort of go about peacefully trying to rectify things on their own.
www.cockburnproject.net
