Socio-Political Conditions in Latin America

Introduction

Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is considered by many critics to be an extremely important and thoroughly representative novel of the Latin American literary boom of 1960s and 1970s. The acclaim bestowed upon the novel all across the world led to a discovery by readers and critics of “magical realism”. This extraordinary genre combines realistic portrayals of factual and realist political and social conflicts with descriptions of mystical, and more often than not, supernatural events. Known as one of its foremost practitioners, Garcia Márquez claims that everything in his fiction has a basis in reality. However, his portrayals of his homeland Colombia have made him one of the most acclaimed writers in the modern world.

The novel pictures a multi-generational story of the Buendia family, set in the fictional town of Macondo, founded by it's patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia. His work in the novel has been regarded to be highly influenced by modernism and the Cuban Vanguardia (Vangaurd) literary movement. The major themes visible in the novel can be listed out as : Solitude, Cyclicity of time, Magical Realism and Ignorance. I consciously do not intend to divulge further into the details of these thematic characterstics of the novel as it would in itself require a whole new blog entry.

As an undeniable fact, we all agree that the social and political developments in any part of the world have an immense effect on the writers of the contemporary times. Memories get penned down in the form of carefully written fiction with sprinkles of realistic events. Gabriel Garcia Márquez is no exception of such an observation. As we find out while reading his masterpiece, such socio-political developments in last few centuries have also affected Garcia Márquez to a great extent. To understand the effects of these developments on his writings, we must get to know the history that his people have gone through over the centuries, as acclaimed by him in his famous Nobel lecture. Knowledge of Latin American history and Colombia in particular, can provide great insights into understanding political battles that take place all throughout “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. García Márquez has beautifully woven Colombian political and social reality with magical realism into his magnum opus.

If we look at the following map of the Latin America of the 16th century, we can clearly see that the major parts of the region had been colonized by Spain, barring the Brazilian region which was colonized by Portuguese rulers. This colonization has had direct reference in Garcia Marquez’s novel where he, in the initial chapters, provide enough hints and example to indicate the long lost Spanish presence and possible rule over the peninsular region of Macondo and surroundings.

Several Hundred Years of Colombia

Walking through the history of the Latin American region, we look at the last 500 years in particular to have a better understanding of the effects of the socio-political conditions of Garcia Marquez’s writings. Prior to the 16th century, and before any contacts with the external world, northern Latin American region was inhabited primarily by Tairona & Chibcha native Indian tribes, who were organized as clans, deriving the local monarchy who governed pre–Hispanic "Colombia" for centuries. In 1509, Vasco Núñez de Balboa established first Spanish settlement, which was used as guard for invasion & conquest by the mid-16th century. In fact, Bogotá became the center of colonial Spanish rule in the year 1538. The following three centuries saw oppression and harassment of the natives by colonial rulers much like India and other Asian and African colonies. However, the fight for independence went on throughout the 18th century, which gave birth to the fruit of freedom in 1810 when the Spanish empire collapsed in Colombia. People soon arose to counter the political authority of Government. But the disappointment of the Colombian citizens, armies of Count Pablo Morillo restored Spanish rule to Colombia once again by 1819. This initiated the Second war of Independence in the same year, at the nation-wide behest of freedom activist Simón Bolívar. During the period of 1819 to 1831, this revolt saw the rise of La Gran Colombia, a comparatively unified Colombian region comprising of Northern Latin America, Southern Central America and previous viceroyalty of New Granada.

The modernization of Gran Colombia faced numerous obstacles, viz. inaccessibility to many remote regions of the country due to geographical hindrances, high cost of transport facilities etc. This led to establishment of discrete communities with political and economic autonomy, much like Garcia Márquez’s description of the town of Macondo. In the early 19th century, Colombian rulers explored and colonized Colombian interiors and forced racial differentiation of these regions. White regions were considered to be moral & progressive, while Black & Indian regions were associated with disorder and backwardness. Modernization, hence technology, became associated with race. A similar trend could be seen in the novel where other parts of the country had access to scientific developments, and Macondo got left out due to its solitude.

The political situation in Colombia is a bi-party system with Conservatives and Liberals battling out for the supreme post in the government. The Conservative have been the more “villainous” is their approach towards the power, misusing it to squeeze out all the juice out of the productive land of Colombia. On the other hand, Liberals had always been progressive in their approach and have worked for the people’s development whenever in power. One of the major political events of the 20th century in Colombia happened in the 1930s when liberal leader Alfonso López Pumarejo called for La Revolución en Marcha in March 1934. The important highlights of the period had been the reforms in the labour laws to benefit working class and native peasants, which had been ignored by Conservatives all through their reigning period. In 1946, the rule changed to Conservatives, and as a consequence political dysfunction began worsening the political scenario to create undemocratic authoritarian rule. Assassination of influential liberal leader, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948 began the darkest decade in Colombian history – La Violencia. By 1957, the Conservative government fell to military rebellion. Liberals & Conservatives then finalized an agreement to constitute a compromise government. The 1948 to 1957 period saw an increase in guerrilla insurgencies in the interiors of the country. As a fact, it is sad to know that guerrilla warfare caused over 200,000 assassinations in Colombia. I must put a historical bookmark at this point to remind ourselves that Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. By the eighth decade of the 20th century, guerrilla factions were slowly replaced by coordinated network of drug cartels & struggling farmers. In 1990, Colombian government approved a new constitution, with an immediate aim to further democratize the political system.

Analysis

My analysis of the novel with reference to the above mentioned topic is summarized in the following bulleted list, in the hope that it makes the reading much easier.

• Latin America’s centuries of undiscovered existence has been symbolized by Macondo’s solitude from the rest of the world.
• The town of Macondo, drawn as a Utopian village in Garcia Marquez’s novel is a direct reference to the fully developed civilization in the region prior to Spanish colonization.
• Much like all Utopian worlds, the existence of Macondo does not last forever. Its downfall clearly started with the arrival of outside world in the form of Don Apolinar Moscote, who is a metaphor for the conservative Colombian government.
• His mandate over Macondo is symbolism for the conservative Oligarchic government’s irrational control over people. For example, he forced Buendía family to paint their house blue instead of white, with little or no reason whatsoever, and threatened them when they protested.
• The dislike of Buendía family against Don Apolinar Moscote is the resultant of Garcia Márquez’s open ideology against the Colombian Government.
• Social Injustice & Capitalist backed political system reached Macondo through Don Apolinar Moscote. He is declared the “benevolent governor” of Macondo. However, he is only an ornamental authority under the conservative leaders in capital city of Bogota with actual powers.
• The country of Colombia in contemporary times has been a result of absence of efficient political regiments and no definitive national identity among the citizens. The primary reasons being centuries of Spanish colonialism, repression and exploitation by government and civil violence.
• A strong desire for substantial progressive changes in countries of Latin America is equally evident in Macondo as well.
• Interesting connections could be seen all through the novel, between Macondo and Colombian political conditions. Macondo also got infected by corruption in democratic processes. For example, Don Apolinar Moscote ordered the sergeant to break the seal of ballot box, change the count of votes and reseal it.
• The life of Colonel Aureliano Buendía is in some sense symbolic representation of political violence of Colombian history. He led the civil war against the government in the novel, and showed post-war effects in his habit of locking himself up in Melquíades’ laboratory.
• Another important connection between the two is the similarity of the start and end of the Civil War in the novel. The war started with corruption of democratic processes and ended with peace treaties between the government and rebels.
• Also, Don Apolinar Moscote’s behaviour during the war was much similar to the actual conservative government. For example, he confiscated every type of weapon from the people of Macondo, even all the kitchen utensils!
• The changes following the arrival of the International Banana Company are also a clear reflection of the reality of Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
• In the early 20th century, United Fruit Company became the most lucrative international corporation in Colombia. Banana Company in Macondo followed similar practices of United Fruit Company, making it the ‘only wholesale buyer of bananas in region’.
• Also, Macondo's banana company clearly abused the people of Macondo and the surrounding region. Macondo’s company followed United Fruit Company’s practice of paying salary in Scrips, which could only be used at their local company stores.
• As a result, the frustrated workers of banana company in Macondo soon began to rebel with violence. They called upon the strike, with striking similarities to the actual strike of the Colombian citizens against the United Fruit Company’s policies. García Márquez’s strike much resembles the strike that took place in Ciénaga in 1928. Their actions too, were an absolute replication of the actual strike. The striking workers burnt the banana fields and company stores to ashes, destroyed the train tracks that were used for transporting banana bunches to cities, disrupted all the communication channels between Macondo & large cities.
• The soldiers were put to cut and ship banana bunches as described by Garcia Márquez during the strike.
• In the climactic section, García Márquez’s narrative style translates from fiction to ‘careful reconstruction of history’. For example, Army’s actions in Ciénaga inspired the climactic moment of the novel.

Conclusions

As a conclusion to this blog post, I think that it would be trivial to state that it is inevitable for Garcia Marquez to be strongly affected by political events of 19th & 20th century of Colombia. Garcia Marquez portrayed his views on politics and society through Buendía family. I personally appreciated the amazing amalgamation of factual reality with magical realism, a literary technique that I termed as disconnected familiarity – disconnecting the readers from familiar historical events. Also, his writing had a great deal of resemblance with James Joyce, in context of his writings about his birth-land. Both of them extensively described their homeland, Ireland for Joyce and Colombia for Garcia Marquez.

References

• One Hundred Years at Forty By Randy Boyagoda - The Walrus magazine
• Simons, Geoffrey Leslie – Colombia: A Brutal History. Saqi. (2004). ISBN 0863567584
• Appelbaum, N. – Muddied Waters: Race, Region & Local History in Colombia. Duke University Press. 1846–1948
• Martz, John D. – Colombia : A Contemporary Political Survey The University of North Carolina Press, 1962
• Henry, Abram L. – Struggling Against the Injustice: The Historical Context and Social Justice in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, University of Minnesota Morris
• Taylor, Anna Marie – ‘Cien Años de Soledad: History and the Novel.’ Science & Society XXXIX.3 (1975)
• Erickson, D. – Ghosts, Metaphor, and History in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years off Solitude. Macmillan (2009)
• Bell-Villada, Gene H. – Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Casebook. Oxford University Press, 2002
• Images – Google Image Search.