Gabriel Garcia Marquez Essay -- essays research papers

Gabriel Grcia MrquezGabriel Jos Garca Mrquez was born on March 6, 1928 in Aracataca, a town in Northern Colombia, where he was raised by his maternal grandp arents in a house filled with countless aunts and the rumors of ghosts. But in order to get a better delve on Garca Mrquezs life, it helps to understand something early about both the history of Colombia and the unusual background of his family.ColombiaColombia won its independence from Spain in 1810, technically fashioning it one of Latin Americas oldest democracies, but the sad fact is that this "democracy" has rarely known peace and justice.     In the beginning, there was of course Spain and the Indians, happily hating each otherwise as the Spaniards tore the land up in quest for gold, El Dorado, religious converts, and political power. The English, too, played their part, with Drake attacking Riohachi in 1568 and the countless colonial squabbles of the adjoining few centuries. Declaring itse lf independent from Spain when Napoleon ousted the Spanish King in 1810, the new country experienced a brief finale of freedom and then was chop-chop reconquered in 1815 by the unpleasant and bloody campaigns of General Murillo. So much did their internal bickering allow their fledgling country to fall to the sword of Murillo, the period is immortalized in Colombias history with the colorful name of la Patria Boba, or "The Booby Fatherland." Round two, however, fell to the Colombians, when Simn Bolvar reliberated the country in 1820 and became its very first president. In 1849, the country was sufficiently advanced enough to concretize their squabbling in the form of two political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, who exist to this day. These two parties form the political manikin for much of Garca Mrquezs fiction, and understanding their true natures is both a key to his writing and, unfortunately, an important insight to Latin American politics in general.Alt hough initially forming around the nucleus of two distinct and different ideologies, long years of bloody conflict have served to significantly erode the distinctions between the parties. The Conservatives and the Liberals are more like warring factions or clans than any parties with firmly established and radically different ideologies. Both tend to be repressive, both are corrupt, and bot... ... and in the same year he wrote Viva Sandino, a screenplayabout the Sandanistas and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Politics, however, would be farfrom his mind for his next work of fiction, which would be a crawl in story. Turningagain to his rich past for inspiration and material, he reworked his parents strangecourtship into the form of a decade-spanning narrative. The story would be about two forestall lovers and the long tome between their second courtship, and in 1986 Lovein the Time of Cholera was unveiled to the anxious world. It was highly received,and there was no question that Garca Mrquez had become a writer with universalappeal.By now one of the most famous writers in the world, he eased into a life-style ofwriting, teaching, and political activism. With residences in Mexico City, Cuernavaca,Paris, Barcelona, and Barranquilla, he finished the decade by publishing TheGeneral in his Labyrinth in 1990, and two years later freaky Pilgrims was born.In 1994 he published his most recent work of fiction, Love and Other Demons.Today, Garca Mrquez lives with Mercedes in Mexico City, where he has quitsmoking and is in the perpetual state of "writing a novel."