Introduction
I love reading. In a typical month, I read about eleven books. I even had a shirt that said, “Books are my happy place.” When we arrived in Colombia, my dad introduced me to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was a world-renowned author and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Meanwhile, my mom found a Colombian-American author named Ingrid Rojas Contreras, who was recently a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Since I am already reading a bunch, I thought why not read fiction to learn about Colombia? My research question is, “What can I learn about Colombia by comparing and contrasting the works of Garcia Marquez and Contreras?”
Methodology
For my project, I first read The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Contreras, which is a multigenerational memoir about "curanderos," or magical healers. I also read Contreras’ Fruit of the Drunken Tree, which is a coming of age novel about Chula, who is a sheltered child, and Petrona, her maid who is only thirteen. I also read one book by Garcia Marquez called Chronicle of Death Foretold which is about a murder in a Colombian small town. Finally, I watched Netflix’s adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the multigenerational saga of the Buendía family in the fictional town of Macondo.
Additionally, I interviewed four different people who had an interest in Colombian literature. I also read over ten articles about Colombian history, I listened to two podcasts, and watched two Youtube videos analyzing One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Thesis
The three main themes in the books I read are non-linear storytelling, an emphasis on violence, and depictions of gender roles. Ultimately, I found that Contreras was much more readable than Garcia Marquez and she painted a picture of Colombia that helped me understand the country.
Section 1
Both of these authors use a nonlinear narrative in their stories. These authors jump around from generation to generation and from story to story. In The Man Who Could Move the Clouds, Contreras tells the story of her amnesia, the exhumation of her grandfather, and stories of growing up in a war torn country. On the "Writing Latinos podcast”, Contreraz explains this nonlinear style she adapted was because her family tells stories and often goes off on tangents (Cadava). An example of nonlinear story telling in One Hundred Years of Solitude is in the first sentence: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buedia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice” ("One Hundred Years of Solitude, episode 1”). This sentence includes past, present, and future. This defies the western expectation of sticking to one tense throughout the whole book let alone in one sentence. Likewise, at the start of Chronicle of Death Foretold, Garcia Marquez describes how the murder will take place and where the characters will end up.
Finally, all of these books are in the genre called “magical realism.” According to Contreras, the genre for her is “real magical realism” because she grew up where it was common for miracles to happen (Thresholds podcast). In her memoir she says, “Magical realism was just realism to us, and Jane Austen was not any life that was possible in our land.” In her memoir she talks about magical events in a matter of fact tone, for example her aunt had been haunted by ghosts, but Contreras accepts this supernatural phenomenon as fact (page 256). One moment of magical realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude is when Jose Arcadia shoots himself in the head and a thread of blood goes all the way from his house to his mother’s house like a string or snake. Garcia Marquez does not try to explain this supernatural event.
The non-linear storytelling and magical realism showed me something bigger about Colombian culture. This style of writing reflects the merging of indigenous religion, Catholicism, and African traditions. The indigenous people are approximately 3.4-4.7% of the population in Colombia today and number 1.5 million people in total (IWGIA). Despite their relatively small numbers, indigenous spirituality remains in Colombia. A core belief in indigenous religion is the harmony between nature and humans, and healing practices using supernatural methods. However, the predominant religion is Catholicism and roughly 64% of the population is Catholic (Statista). Even though we don’t consider Catholicism magical, it is because you hear stories of saints performing miracles and using holy water to ward off the devil. Finally, over 9% of Colombia is of African descent (MRG), arriving in the 16th to 19th centuries in Colombia as slaves. They brought with them their spirituality, such as ancestor veneration, a practice in which your ancestors can impact your daily life in a way that westerners might call magic..
The merging of these cultures has led to a new type of storytelling, different perspectives, and different ways history was told.This style of writing is very common for Latin American writers and others from colonized areas. The mix of mundane and magical helps tell stories from the textbook and from the victims of violence that can not be described with common language (John Green).
Section 2
Colombian history has been marked by violence, and both Ingrid Contreras and Gabriel García Márquez reflect this in their works.
A large part of One Hundred Years of Solitude is about the Colombian civil war from 1899 to 1902. One of the main characters, Aureliano Buendia, even becomes a colonel of the Liberal armed forces. This is very similar to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's grandfather who was a veteran of the 1,000 Days War (Diez-Bundo). The fighting between Liberals and Conservatives affects the fictional town of Macondo because the armies also killed innocent bystanders. In episode 7 of the show, we see town people getting attacked by both parties and people become too afraid to leave their homes. Conservatives wanted a strong central government whereas Liberals wanted to give more power to regional governments (Minister). Liberals represented the coffee farmers and import-export merchants, who had been excluded from the government in earlier elections (“The War of a Thousand Days: Colombian History”). In the 1,000 Days War about 100,000 Colombians were killed. You could argue it was the start of decades of violence to come.
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Fruit of the Drunken Tree depicts more modern violence in Colombia. Two of the most important themes are drug trafficking and FARC, the guerilla group. On page 35 Conteres says, “A car bomb exploded in Bogota just two hours ago leaving seven dead and 30 injured. Among the dead is a seven year old.” The car bomb goes on to haunt Chula who had seen the aftermath on the news. The man in charge of this car bomb was Pablo Escobar, the most famous drug lord in Colombia. Some people have attributed 10,000 killings to him (Press). Another dominant issue of the 1990s was the different guerilla and paramilitary groups. In the book Contreras talks about how they have a map that tells them which areas are controlled by guerillas and which by paramilitaries (Fruit of the Drunken Tree). It was unsafe to travel and the government had very little to no control over certain areas.
FARC was formed in 1964 with the aim of overthrowing the government and redistributing wealth. Later, they lost a lot of support from people because of involvement with drug trafficking and kidnappings of civilians. Eighty percent of deaths because of this conflict were civilians and in total 220,000 people died between 1958 and 2013. What might surprise people is that the paramilitaries were responsible for 45% of deaths (“Colombian Conflict”). By the early 2000s, the government funded the paramilitaries. These paramilitaries did not abide by normal warfare and killed lots of innocent civilians. To learn more about the fighting that Contreras depicted in Fruit of the Drunken Tree, we went to a museum in Medellin memorializing the conflict where I got to learn about the impact of the violence. Even though I have not seen violence in Colombia, I have been told that it is still a problem. According to Alejandro, our tour guide in Perera, the city is still unofficially controlled by the paramilitaries.
There is one main difference between Garcia Marquez and Contreras’ depiction of violence. Contreras focuses on the average person's experience, especially from the point of view of children. Marquez, on the other hand, focuses on the perspective of adults. Ultimately, violence throughout Colombian history affected every aspect of Garcia Marquez and Contreras’ character. This is not fictional violence it really happened and is still happening today.
Section 3
A similarity between the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ingrid Contreras is their depiction of gender roles. Both authors show men getting away with cheating whereas women were expected to stay faithful. In The Man Who Could Move the Clouds, Contreras’s grandfather is unfaithful to his wife. We know this because on page 18 it states “Nono [the grandfather] had many girlfriends”. According to Ingrid Contreras on the podcast Writing Latinos, “machismo” was a very common practice for people in her grandfather's generation. In the Chronicle of Death Foretold, Garcia Marquez writes on page 21, “ [Angela Vicario] had been returned to the house of her parents because her husband had discovered she was not a virgin.” She would go on to be beaten by her mother because she had brought disgrace upon her family (page 28). Later, Angela Vicario recounts, “‘The only thing I can remember is that she was holding me by the hair with one hand and beating me with the other with such rage that I thought she was going to kill me.” This shows how much more important the chastity of a woman was than a man.
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However, how these authors talk about these gender roles is different. Contreras seems frustrated about how women are treated and even scared of men because of the stories she had been told. On page 168, Mami, Contreras' mother, and her friends are talking about their suffering and Contreras writes, “But I listened clinically, methodically plotting a way to escape a similar fate.” On the other hand, in Chronicle of Death Foretold Marquez accepts and normalizes the double standards. On page 38, Garcia Marquez writes, “women lost their virginity in childhood accidents.” This statement is said in a way as if this is a normal occurrence. Unlike Contreras, Garcia Marquez depicts women as simply accepting their fate.
The gender roles in these books are connected to the real world in Colombia. UN Women found that in 2014 there were 37,881 registered cases of violence against women by an intimate partner (UN Women). In total, there were 16,088 cases of sexual violence against women. However, Colombia is also trying to improve because the Colombian government has passed more laws making sure victims of sexual violence receive justice (UNWomen). To combat machismo, NGOs have established sessions where they teach men how to take care of children, braid hair, and cook (“Challenging Machismo Culture” ).
These books are both reality or based on reality so they talk about gender, but the way they address gender roles drastically changes the tone and narrative of the book.
Conclusion
I have learned a lot about Colombia by working on this project, both good and bad. Seeing Colombia through the point of view of the authors has helped me understand more about Colombian culture. However, I must admit I do like Contreras style of writing more than Gabriel Garcia Marquez's. For me, her books are much more accessible. I think this is because she saw violence as a child and describes her experiences from said perspective. Garcia Marquez was an adult, so he writes from that perspective which is harder for me to understand. I believe that their writing is also different because they are different generations, so they have different morals. It is clearer to me that Contreras wants to end the violence and gain more gender balance for Colombian women. This idea can be applied to the whole world: younger generations are constantly striving for a more equal place.
Bibliography
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