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Historical
Backgrounds: the United Fruit Massacre and Márquez’s
One Hundred Years of Solitude
By Damon Jasso
Introduction
 Gabriel
García Márquez, the famous magical realist,
according to the Colombia link web site, insists his work
is documentary. Márquez, since early adulthood, has
been a strong political advocate and commentator of human
rights in his Latin America homeland. Using political themes
from the historical past into his fiction, Márquez
draws actual events from his home country of Colombia, which
has a long history of civil war and political unrest. One
such political occurrence, the United Fruit Massacre of 1929,
influenced Márquez to include a retelling of this actual
historical event, within the characters of his fictional town
of Macondo, in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Separating the real historical facts from the fictional world
of Márquez creates a heightened experience that is
both revealing and insightful for any reader.
In order to understand how Márquez ingeniously mixes
his fictional world within One Hundred Years of Solitude
and the historical past, requires a brief biographical sketch
of Márquez himself, a short historical background of
Colombia with a definition of its two political wings, and
an investigation of the real United Fruit banana massacre.
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Political
Beliefs of the Author
Márquez’s
political avocations and interventions with politics are
well known. For example, according to writer Jon Anderson,
Márquez the author travels in a customized 1992 midsize
sedan with bulletproof windows, bombproof chassis, and employs
a stocky former guerrilla fighter, named Don Chepe as his
personal driver. Even before his decision to become a writer,
in a biography from Allen Ruch, Márquez participated
in politics, namely the riot after the assassination of
Gaitán. As an extreme leftist, explains Allen B.
Ruch, in many causes in places such as Colombia, Venezuela,
Nicaragua, Márquez supports organizations that strive
to correct the abuses of Latin American power and the release
of political prisoners, such as Omar Torrijos. These are
just a few examples of the political life of Gabriel García
Márquez, which permeate into his fiction. |
Brief
History of Colombia
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The
embattled history of Colombia, comments Author Camilo
Azcarate, is “a country of contradictions,”
where violence is a permanent occurrence, “between
the guerrilla, the government, the mob and paramilitaries.”
No less than three civil wars have occurred in the twentieth
century alone, reports Azcarate, with the first civil
war in 1900, again in 1946-59, plus the civil war between
the government and the guerrillas 1964-1998, and the
raise of the drug lords. |
| Comprehending
the complex nature of Colombia’s volatile political
history, Gabriel García Márquez draws
his most obvious political references in One Hundred
Years of Solitude from the circumstances between
Colombia’s two political parties and the infamous
United Fruit banana worker strike of 1929. |
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Two
Political Parties
In
early twentieth century Colombia, two separate political
parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives vied for political
control. However, according to General Board to Global
Ministries web site, the Liberals and Conservatives share
a “mutual hatred,” from “generation
to generation,” “despite having similar platforms
for governing the country.” Historically both parties
rule for, seemingly, decades at a time. During 1849-1885,
reports Marcelo Bucheli, the Liberal party ran the country
with negative results:
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result was a fiasco: the extreme political and economic
independence of each of the national regions led to
a chaotic and unmanageable situation that included
no monetary unity and civil wars between states. (Bucheli
5) |
After the Liberal unsuccessful attempts at government
policies, explains Marcelo Bucheli, the Conservatives
reigned from 1885-1930 with equal controversial polices:
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did everything to centralize power and get the Church
back into a privileged position… [And] the Conservative
government wanted to assure that its principles ruled
Colombia forever by writing a new constitution that
ended previous Liberal federalism and concentrated
political power in Bogotá. (Bucheli 6) |
Drawing from these actual historic events between the
two parties, Marquez’s satirizes both political
parties in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Politics arrive in Macondo, suddenly, and without explanation.
The town people, at first, do not challenge this breech
of freedom. The only difference, for Márquez, between
the liberals and conservative parties is the time they
attend mass on Sunday. Moreover, without warning a banana
company arrives into Macondo and the rest parallels actual
history.
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United
Fruit Massacre
“No foreign multinational corporation operating in
Latin America,” explains Historian Marcelo Bucheli,
“has attracted more attention and has been more vilified
than the United Fruit Company.” The United Fruit Company,
at the beginning of the twentieth century, outsourced its
labor into South America. Over a period of almost a decade,
the United Fruit Company and its Colombian employees clash
over work conditions, according to Marcelo Bucheli in collaboration
with Ian Read. One of the first instances of worker discontent
notes Bucheli and Read is the workers demand for “written
contracts, eight-hour days, six-day weeks and the elimination
of food coupons.” However, after years of strained
relations between employee and employer, the workers strike
again, but this time, the infamous Banana Massacre occurs
in 1929. During that year, the Conservative party was in
power in Colombia while the opposing Liberal party supported
the ongoing banana worker strike. The Colombian workers
gather in a demonstration in the city of Cienaga and the
Conservative government deploys on the Colombian army to
maintain control under the command of Carlos Cortes Vargas.
Vargas commands his troops to fire on the strikers, reports
Bucheli, and the number dead unaccountable. Sadly, notes
Bucheli, in the aftermath of this bloodied spectacle, the
Liberal branch seizes control of the Colombian government
in the following presidential election and the United Fruit
Company forms an “Education Department [that] prints
educational materials for classroom use promoting banana
consumption.”
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Conclusion
Understanding the historical background and relationships
between the author and his country, elevates the significance
of Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Now in his seven decade, Márquez continues to further
his political beliefs and influence upon to his homeland
and other countries. Interestingly, within Latin America,
notes Jon Lee Anderson, Gabriel García Márquez
is the sole receiver of the Nobel Prize and his legacy validates
this achievement. The relevance and importance of Gabriel
García Márquez as a man and an author, no
doubt, will never diminish and will always be the focus
of literal critics and historians alike. |
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