Gabriel Garcia Marquez

UNESCO Courier, Oct, 1991 by Manuel Osorio

Born in the Colombian village of Aracataca in 1929, Gabriel Garcia Marquez made his mark as a master of the modern novel with the publication of Cien anos de soledad in 1967 (published in English as One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1970). His reputation was cemented with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. In this interview he speaks of his personal vision of Latin America and evokes some of the principal themes of his work, in which elements of fantasy and the marvellous mingle with the most banal reality to give everyday life a mythical and universal dimension.

Garcia Marquez's other major works published in English include No-one Writes to the Colonel, (1968), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1976) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, (1983). His most recent work is Love in the Time of Cholera.

In Latin America different cultures have come together to create something new and rich. Are Latin Americans aware of this intermixing?

Speaking for myself. I only became aware of it a few years ago, even though my experience as a writer and my frequent contacts with different societies and political systems have increased my understanding of other aspects of Latin American culture.

When I was travelling in Africa, I noticed similarities between some forms of popular art there and those of various Caribbean countries. t gave me a clearer understanding of our own cultural situation as well as of the relationship between elements of different cultures generally.

Through such insights, you can discover both what is unique and what is universal in a culture. There is a whole network of links between peoples that they may not necessarily be aware of.

Isn't that the starting-point of your novels? Their main theme, even?

I wasn't really conscious of the multicultural influence when I was writing them. It came to me of its own accord. It was only afterwards that I realized that almost unintentionally there were elements of this cultural mingling in my work, elements that had crept in gradually as I was writing.

In Latin America various influences have mixed and spread across the continent: Western culture, the African presence, even some Oriental elements, all added to the native, pre-Columbian tradition. That's why I don't think one can talk of a Mexican or Colombian culture as such. Speaking personally, I no longer think of myself as Colombian; first and foremost I am Latin American, and proud of it.

I should add that it's a mistake to think of the history of Latin America as starting with the Spanish conquest. That's a colonial viewpoint. We must never forget that the nations forged by the Spanish viceroys were the results of arbitrary decisions from outside, not of our own special needs.

To understand our current problems, we have to go back to the time before the Conquest. The borders that were drawn between the Latin American countries were only created to manipulate us, and still, whenever there's a need for it, the cry of nationalism goes up. Obviously, that only sets us against one another, stops us from seeing and feeling the problems that we have in common. Each country has its own special circumstances, but what really matters is our underlying common identity.

So is there such a thing as a Latin American culture?

I certainly don't think one can say there is a homogeneous Latin American culture. For example in Central America, the Caribbean re on, there is an African influence that has resulted in a culture different from that of countries with a sizable indigenous population, like Mexico or Peru. You could make a similar point about many other Latin American countries.

In South America, Venezuela and Colombia have more in common with the Caribbean than with the Andean Indians, even though both countries have an Indian population of their own. In Peru and Ecuador, there is a divergence between the coastal regions and the mountains. Similar situations exist throughout the continent.

These diverse influences come together to give Latin American civilization its special flavour, its uniqueness in relation to the world's other cultures.

What part does Spanish influence play in this context?

There's no denying the strength of Spanish influence in Latin America, and of Portuguese influence in Brazil. It is there in every aspect of our lives. We even speak Castilian Spanish.

It is a very rich influence, if also a controversial one that is often disparaged. Even though the heritage is part of our cultural personality, there is a mistrust of everything Spanish in Latin America that complicates everything and seems to me to be excessive and dangerous. As far as I'm concerned, I am proud to have inherited that culture, I'm not ashamed of it in any way. Spanish colonization is no longer a problem today. It's true that we were created in a way from a European overflow, but we're no mere copy of Europe. Latin America is something else again.

Where did the urge to write come from, the storytelling inspiration that gave us One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera... ?