Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude is an elaborate book in which he weaves a large number of themes and motifs throughout; but, one of the most interesting and complex elements is that the Buendias are simultaneously both the conquerors and the conquered. At the start of the novel when Macondo was first founded, they were the counquesters. They found not only a new land, but a new world. Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendia were compared to Adam and Eve and the creation story, who upon their creation discovered a new world. Both couples set out on discoveries and named all the new oddities around them. They were both part of idyllic utopias, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the Buendias is the pure socialist haven of Macondo. These parallels can also be seen as having connections to the spanish conquistadors who first invaded modern day colombia. Like Adam and Eve and the Buendias, they though they were discovering a “New World” where they could make a paradise of their own, and discovering new things that had never been seen before. There were even rumors of utopias such as El Dorado or the fountain of youth waiting in this idyllic land. But, this was no new world, it had long been inhabited by the natives, and all things had already been discovered and been given names. Similarly, the land where Macondo was born can assumed to be long ago already discovered by natives, and all things already named. They were not necessarily an Adam and Eve, founders of a new humanity, but simply invaders claiming a “new world” that had became old long ago. Like the conquistadors, they had natives working below them in their households as servants. Yet, the roles soon become reversed, starting with the arrival of Moscote. He was a representative of the government, who the residents of Macondo had never interacted with before, and tried to impose a seemingly foreign power on them that they had no respect for or knowledge of. Moscote eventually brought in troops and threatened violence in order to enforce his power. Jose Arcadio Buendia eventually made peace with and compromised with Moscote, but let him to stay, a move which allowed Moscote to enforce the government’s power onto Macondo later on and eventually corrupt the utopia that was Macondo. In this scenario, the Buendias and Macondo were the conquested. Again like the spanish conquistadors, the colombian government invaded Macondo using violence, imposed their power on the native residents through ways unknown to them such as official decrees on paper, and eventually took over and corrupted their society. This happens again later on with the American banana company, who when they come in they treat their workers horribly. They have unsafe working conditions, their housing and health care is abysmal, are paid wages of next to nothing, and are eventually shot down in a massacre. There is a parallel here to the spanish conquistadors, who enslaved the natives under the guise of helping and providing for them under the encomienda system and eventually killed them off, but there is also a much more blatant parallel to American Imperialism. The massacre that took place in the book was directly based on one in Colombia that occurred when Marquez was five. Either way, it represents invasion and oppression by a foreign power.
So, why were the Buendias and Macondo shown to be both the conquerors and the conquered? It is to represent the history that colombia has with conquest and the cycles in has gone through. The Buendias and Macondo overall represent the spaniards. They first came over to Colombia as conquistadors, convinced they had found a new world in which to make a Utopia. They ripped the land away from the natives who were their long before them and enslaved them. But, years go by, they find their own unique identity and culture in this land, and practically become natives themselves. This is when they come under attack of foreign powers via imperialism, especially american imperialism.Western countries come over looking to make a profit through different companies. Workers are practically enslaved and are abused. The conquerors have become conquered and the cycle start again. Marquez was clear that 100 Years of Solitude was not a story about Colombia, but a history, and this is one of the many examples of how he showed Colombia’s history in his novel.
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