474 García Márquez, Gabriel
America’s 20th-century literary explosion. Among
these themes are family and community, memory
and history, reality and magic. Its complex
structure parallels the complexity of Latin American
civilization. Its many layers—family, community,
nation, region—provide insight into a culture col-
ored by contrasts and conflicts and one that seems
eternally doomed to repeat its mistakes.
Anne Massey
community in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Communities define themselves through shared
interests, goals, or values and by the manner in which
the group distinguishes itself from outside influ-
ences. Macondo, although a fictional village, serves
as a model for examining the processes whereby
Latin American communities define themselves.
To accomplish this, the narrative traces Macondo’s
history from its founding by the Buendías to its
destruction by the apparently unavoidable winds of
eternal return, a concept in which events, although
appearing to move forward, destructively revert
to their origins. Macondo represents a commu-
nity sharing an interest in progress but ultimately
doomed to fail in the face of internal and external
forces.
At first, Macondo’s progress appears to be
deterred primarily by outside influences. The vil-
lage begins as an apparent utopia with founder José
Arcadio Buendía arranging the homes so that all
have equal sun and river access, but this spirit of
social initiative ends with the fever of invention.
The fever, spawned by interactions with the Gypsies,
outsiders who thrill to technological marvels—such
as magnets and ice—instills in José Arcadio a desire
to move Macondo to a place more accessible to sci-
ence. Only intervention by his wife, Ursula, prevents
the move.
Another outside threat seems linked with the
arrivals of Visitación and Rebecca. Shortly after
their appearance in the community, Macondo begins
to suffer from a plague of insomnia, an illness in
which its sleepless victims forget everything, includ-
ing the memories of their own identities. Unable
to fall asleep, the villagers tell stories and plan
strategies to compensate for their failing memories.
This threat would have destroyed the community
except for a magical potion provided by the wise
Melquíades.
Two final outside entities influence Macondo:
the federal government and the banana exporters.
Government interference includes tampering with
ballot boxes and involvement in the war between
Liberals and Conservatives. The corruption and
the futility of the violence threaten Macondo.
Even Colonel Aureliano Buendía, an active military
leader, eventually becomes “weary of the uncertainty
of the vicious cycle of the eternal war that always
found him in the same place but always older, wea-
rier, even more in the position of not knowing why,
or how, or even when.” The banana company brings
its own changes of order, entering Macondo in a
“tumultuous and intemperate invasion.” Eventually,
the government and the banana company conspire
against the village, massacring thousands when the
banana company workers strike.
However, outside influences are not entirely
to blame for Macondo’s demise; issues within the
community create havoc as well. Key among these
is the incestuous relationship of its founding fam-
ily, symbolized by the confusing and repetitious
use of proper names for the Buendía offspring and
predicted from Macondo’s inception as the cause of
future problems. Throughout, various characters fear
that such relationships will produce children with
pigs’ tails, an indication of the inappropriate nature
of these unions.
Jealousy and disputes over behavior divide the
community as well. For instance, when both Ama-
ranta and Rebecca fall in love with Pietro Crespi, the
girls enter a complex cat-and-mouse game that ends
only when Rebecca marries the son of Macondo’s
founder and his wife Ursula. However, Ursula, con-
sidering the marriage disrespectful, as the adopted
Rebecca and her new husband have been raised as
siblings, forbids the couple from entering her home
again. Fernanda, who has married into the Buendía
family, considers Macondo’s citizens beneath her
social standing and separates herself and her family
from the community at large. Representative of this
posture are the closed windows of her home and the
gold chamber pots bearing her family crest.
Despite Macondo’s auspicious beginnings, in the
end both community and outside influences erode