One Hundred Years of Solitude - Historical Context

Historical Context

The critical interpretation of Colombian history that is the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude draws from the nationally agreed-upon history to establish the world of Macondo, where a man's will to power allows him to invent the world according to his perceptions.

Before the Spanish colonisation of the Americas by "right of conquest", the northern region of South America that is contemporary Colombia had no culture akin to that of the (Peruvian) Incas, the (Central American) Mayas, or the (Mexican) Aztecs. That region was populated by the Tairona and Chibcha Indian tribes, who were organised as clans, from which derived the local monarchy who governed pre–Hispanic "Colombia". In 1509, Vasco Núñez de Balboa established the first settlement and is now named the first city of Colombia, as an advanced guard of the Spanish invasion and conquest. The founding of Macondo by the patriarchal Buendía Family is metaphor of the colonisation of the future "Colombia".

After Gonzálo Jiménez de Quesada's conquest of the Chibchas in 1538, Bogotá became the center of colonial Spanish rule. In 1810, upon the collapse of the Spanish Empire in Colombia, provincial juntas soon arose to challenge the political authority of the national government in Bogotá; yet six years later, in 1816, the royalist armies of Count Pablo Morillo restored Spanish rule to Colombia. Three years later, in 1819, when Simón Bolívar began a second war of independence from the Spanish Empire, he proclaimed the supranational state of la Gran Colombia (Greater Colombia, 1819–31), its capital city was Bogotá, and comprised northern South America and Southern Central America (contemporary Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama), the previous Viceroyalty of New Granada.

Gran Colombia's Independence in 1819 revealed many obstacles to nationhood; the geography was a formidable obstacle to modernization, such as paved roads, thus, the high cost of transport facilitated the establishment of economically and politically discrete autonomous communities like Macondo. Colombian society had wrestled with Modernity and modernism since the eighteenth century, and the social and philosophic dynamism of the modernizing capitalist revolution presented the Colombian ruling classes with a choice: either progress into the modern industrial world or perish in backwater barbarism. To incorporate the country to the world, Colombians looked to the European and U.S. models of government, politics, and economy.

As nineteenth century Colombians explored, described, and colonized their interior, they mapped racial hierarchy onto an emerging national geography composed of distinct localities and regions. This created a racialized discourse of regional differentiation that assigned greater morality and progress to certain regions that they marked as "white". Meanwhile, those places defined as "black" and "Indian" were associated with disorder, backwardness, and danger; technology and modernization became associated with race.

The nation of Colombia began violently — from Bolivarian wars for independence from empire to the contemporary Marxist–Leninist guerrillas of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). The initial, Bolivarian, violence was for liberation (1810–21) from the Spanish Empire. After independence, there arose well-defined socio-economic regions, divided north-south, by parallel spurs of the Andes mountains, which contributed to continued civil and political instability, even after having expelled the Spanish Crown. Moreover, Colombia's geographically and culturally dispersed populations and natural resources much hindered the government's modernization of the country and the nation.

In 1934, the reformist President Dr. Alfonso López Pumarejo, unanimously voted to office by the Colombian Liberal Party, installed La Revolución en Marcha (The Revolution on the March), characterized by labour law and social services reforms benefitting the working class and the Indian peasants, much to the anger of the reactionary Conservatives. Twelve years later, in August 1946, Mariano Ospina Pérez assumed office as the first Conservative party President of Colombia — the beginning of the political dysfunction that degenerated to undemocratic authoritarian rule. Two years later, on 9 April 1948, the assassination of the popular and influential Liberal candidate, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán began the decade period (1948–58) of Colombia's history known as la Violencia (the Violence), between the right-wing and the left-wing of the national political spectrum.

By the mid-1960s, the country had suffered some two hundred thousand assassinations; from 1946 to 1966, la Violencia had occurred in five stages: (i) resumption of political violence, before and after the presidential election of 1946; (ii) popular urban insurrection responding to the Gaitán assassination; (iii) guerrilla warfare — first against the Conservative government of Ospina Pérez; (iv) incomplete pacification and negotiation from army General Rojas Pinilla, who deposed Laureano Gómez; and (v) disjointed fighting under the Liberal–Conservative coalition of the "National Front," from 1958 to 1975.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) the political violence characteristic of Colombian national history is paralleled in the life of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, wars against the treasonous Conservatives facilitating the politico-economic power of foreign imperialists in the national affairs of Colombia. The banana plantation owners (i.e. the United Fruit Company) possess a private police force with which the business corporation attacks Colombian citizens at will.

Technically, using of particular historical event and character narratively renders One Hundred Years of Solitude an exemplar work of magical realism, wherein the novel compresses centuries of cause and effect whilst telling an interesting story. Moreover, One Hundred Years of Solitude illustrates that contemporary Latin America has resulted from the absence of purposeful political organisation and will required for progress. The tragedy of Latin America is the lack of a definitive national identity, without which there is only self-destruction, not preservation. This might be partly attributed to five centuries of Spanish colonialism; nevertheless, the continual violence, repression, and exploitation, rob the Colombian of a definite identity. The historical reality of Latin American countries occurs as the recurring fantastical world of Macondo. The desire for change and progress exists in Macondo as in the countries of Latin America, however, the story's temporal cycles symbolize the nationalist tendency for repeating history.