The Solitude of Latin America

Introduction:

Gabriel García Márquez’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1982 was an explanation of Latin America’s isolation from the rest of the world. It successfully explained the ideas and the need of magical realism that Garcia Marquez has so beautifully deployed in his novels. Reading the lecture, it dawns upon one that magical realism was not a luxury at the disposal of the writers of Latin America; rather it was the most pressing need if they wanted to write about their land.

Nobel Prize for Literature, 1982:

In 1982, Gabriel García Márquez was given the Nobel Prize for literature. The Nobel Committee said that the prize was given because of “his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts”.

Gabriel García Márquez was born in Columbia in a small town named Aracataca. This town is the inspiration of the fictional town Macondo, where many of his stories are set, including ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. This indicates that his stories are very intricately linked with the real Latin America. Thus, in talking about the reality of Latin America, he talked about his novels and his style of writing.

Outsized Reality of Latin America:

Gabriel García Márquez began his acceptance speech by mentioning the records of the explorer Antonio Pigafetta, who was one of the first Europeans to reach South America along with Magellan. García Márquez refers to the record as “a strictly accurate account that nonetheless resembles a venture into fantasy”. This is because of the nature of the lands of Latin America. For instance, Columbia has been identified as a megadiverse country by Conservation International, which is one of the largest non-profit conservation organizations in the U.S.A. The animals of this region are so unique that they seem very strange and somewhat magical to people from elsewhere.

García Márquez also mentions the stories that have become part of the culture of Latin America, but seem exaggerated to us. There are stories about the eleven thousand mules each loaded with a hundred pounds of gold, all of which disappeared mysteriously. Similar stories, when heard by other people, conjure a feeling that one associates with Narnia or the Middle Earth. Tolkien did not explain the existence of magic in Middle Earth; García Márquez did not explain the existence of magic in Macondo.

“The unearthly tidings of Latin America, that boundless realm of haunted men and historic women, whose unending obstinacy blurs into legend”.

Latin America has always had a history that is inextricable from legend. There have been men who ruled the land in such a manner that the illogical became a part of the lives of the people. There was General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, the dictator of El Salvador who had seized power during a palace coup, and had thirty thousand peasants slaughtered. He had the streetlamps draped with red paper to fight scarlet fever. He once said that “It is a greater crime to kill an ant than a man, for when a man dies he becomes reincarnated, while an ant dies forever.” There was General Antonio López de Santana who held a magnificent funeral for his right leg which he had lost during a war. With the rulers like these, the extraordinary became part of the lives of the local people.

Plight of the People:

Even after the end of European colonialism in Latin America, the living condition of the people in these countries has remained deplorable. There have been many wars and innumerable military coups. Millions of children have died due to poor health facilities. Many countries of the region have been witness to ponderous exiles. One million people fled Chile. El Salvador has produced colossal number of refugees. Columbia is the fourth largest economy in Latin America, but it has widespread extreme poverty in both urban and rural areas. This situation is similar to that of India. So, for us this is normal. But if we see this situation in a different light, we will realize that this can be only explained befittingly as an act of magic. The reality no longer remains realistic; and accordingly, the magical no longer remains fantastic. Hence, it becomes mandatory to use magical realism to describe such a place. So did Gabriel García Márquez; so did Salman Rushdie.

The Solitude of Latin America:

“…we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.”

This statement by García Márquez explains why the people of Latin America have been isolated from the developed world. He says that the conventional means, i.e. the disposition of the Latin American people, has become so antithetical to that of the developed world that their lives seem very unrealistic. There is very little hope of improvement left in the lives of these people. Accordingly, they don’t feel the need to explain something like a girl ascending to heaven. Clearly, García Márquez had no choice but to accept the attitude of the local people and write accordingly. This solitude is reflected in the novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ in the form of self-inflicted solitude of all its major characters.

“The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.”

By saying this García Márquez refers to the fact that the developed world tries to realize the reality of Latin America through lenses of its own culture. Ergo, to represent this outsized reality, it was imperative to deploy a new method of description, one that presented this reality as magic.

Magical Realism in Latin America & One Hundred Years of Solitude:

Another aspect to consider is the cultural influences in the perception of reality. Latin America, like India, has the coexistence of modern and indigenous belief systems due to colonization. Because of this cultural influence, the ascension of Remedios the Beauty seemed normal to the people of Macondo, but things like ice or a train seemed fantastic. So, the use of magical realism in the novel can also been fathomed as an attempt to elucidate the culture of Latin America. The novel has instances where the extraordinary is described as ordinary. Aureliano Segundo’s conversations with the dead Melquaides, Father Nicanor’s levitation, Ursula’s super long life, Colonenl Aureliano Buendiá knowledge of events even before they occurred are few of the many magical things that were not explained. Similarly, there were very logical events that were presented as magic, like the manipulation of facts by Banana Company lawyers, or the first appearance of train and of ice in Macondo. In Macondo, and in the novel, magic and reality blend together into magical realism.

Conclusion:

The acceptance speech given by Gabriel García Márquez makes it easier to understand the use of magical realism, the most important aspect of the novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. It is now established that magical realism was not just one of the many literary tools that writers choose from, rather it was indispensible in writing about Latin America. The speech also explains the titles of the novel and of the speech itself.