As a political activist, especially one who was present during or indirectly involved with some of the most violent and turbulent periods of Columbian history, Garcia Marquez makes several statements in his work about social and political responsibility. When the events of the Banana Strike Massacre are fictionalized in "One Hundred Years of Solitude", for example, the author explores the social implications of such violence. At one point, he even makes a statement about how there was certain amount of social and political irresponsibility among the citizens of the village.

As one critic notes, “No amount of passionate denunciation can rouse the Macondones from their indifference, even as the Banana Company effectively inaugurates the clearest identity disparity witnessed in the novel: the Company owners and the banana workers” (Krapp 403). This is important because, although the reader has been hitherto coerced into focusing almost solely on the decaying state of the family and central characters, we are now being forced to look beyond the local and immediate to consider the larger historical implications of this small village. Although it is somewhat utopian, further influences from outside keep causing more problems and Garcia Marquez seems frustrated at the reaction of the characters, just as he might have been with his own people when after the Banana Strike Massacre, an official statement was released that made the event no longer seem violent—a lie in which many in Columbia were willing to believe. Just as in real life, the author expresses his thoughts about social and political responsibility when after the false report comes out, “There were no dead, the satisfied workers had gone back to their families, and the banana company was suspending all activity until the rains stopped” (Garcia Marquez 332).

While this might seem like a twist or plot contrivance, knowing the actual events in Columbian history as they relate to the fictionalized telling of the tale about the Columbian Banana Strike Massacre makes the story much more powerful and relates the author’s feelings about responsibility. In general, it seems that Garcia Marquez wants his readers, especially those who are Columbian, to find a voice in the political chaos of the years since active colonialism yet he also seems to want to gently scold or warn them about the dangers of allowing atrocities to continue when peace could be possible. This is a particularly potent political and social message coming from a man who has seen and reported on one of the worst and most devastating periods in the history of Columbia. The author also discusses the corruption behind regional politics by examining certain key characters such as Senator Onesimo Sanches in “Death Constant Beyond Love” and looks at the way he is representative of what is wrong with contemporary politics and how citizens can be impacted by such leadership. Again, by presenting a figure who is firmly based in Latin American political reality and demonstrating how those around him react to his corruption, the author is not just telling a story, he is making his readers aware of consistent problems in his society.

In terms of time, politics, and history, it is significant to note the style in which nearly all of the author’s works are written. Despite his status as a former journalist, his style is anything but dry and factual. In fact, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is credited with expanding and introducing (on a wide scale) magical realism, which is a mode of storytelling in which both realistic and fantastic or supernatural events are narrated exactly the same, thus making the reader believe that they are both truthful representations of what is occurring in the story. This is an important aspect to his writing because it allows for a kind of political, cultural, and even religious leniency since it combines the realistic aspects of the everyday world with aspects from indigenous culture. Stories about ghosts and spirits are given as much credence as those about everyday concerns and the melding of the two is like a melding of cultures—the indigenous and the modern. As one scholar notes, “Occurrences seen as supernatural in the First World (such as ghostly apparitions, human beings with the ability to fly, disappear, etc.) are presented as natural from a Third World perspective, while other occurrences seen as normal in the First World (magnets, science, and railway trains) are presented as supernatural” (Hart 115). Again, with the mindset that the author is a “people’s writer” he is taking aspects of folk culture and instead of evaluating them against the modern standard of reason, he gives them equal value and by doing so, validates them. Since he was raised on the stories of his grandmother, who often spoke of ghosts and supernatural events occurring within the framework of a “logical” story, he learned that both ways of thinking about the world are correct. In general, his attempt to incorporate both the real and the fantastic into the same work is admirable and speaks volumes about his social and political ideas because he seeks to maintain both the traditional and native as well as letting in the realistic and “grounded.”

The author often uses the form of magical realism and the content derived from history and politics to address some of the most difficult and meaningful themes. He addresses war, suffering, and death with clarity and a political slant. As one critic notes, “The message of ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ is that one must be determined to live—above all, to love—with fearless devotion to the very end, or else consign oneself to the ash-pits for those who have given up living before they are actually dead” (Valiunas 51). The author is not content to look at issues from the surface, but rather boils every story down to its most vital essence. These themes, like those in other tales, offer a very large message for his readers but perhaps it is this timelessness of theme combined with history and cultures that make his works so enduring today.

Works Cited

Bell-Villada, Gene H. Garcia Marquez: The Man and His Work Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Hart, Stephen M. "Magical Realism in the Americas: Politicised Ghosts in One Hundred Years of Solitude, The House of the Spirits, and Beloved." Tesserae: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 9.2 (2003): 115.

Krapp, John. "Apathy and the Politics of Identity: García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Contemporary Cultural Criticism." Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 11.4 (2001): 403.

Marquez, Gabriel G. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper Perennial, 2004.

Sommer, Doris. Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America Berkley; University of California Press. 1993.

Valiunas, Algis. "The 'Magic' of Gabriel García Márquez." Commentary 117.4 (2004): 51.

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