Literature

It is a fact worth noting that magic realist fictions are often set in areas that are rural and away from political power centres. The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez sets the majority of his novels in a fictional town called Macondo.  This means that much of magic realism has originated in postcolonial countries that are still battling against the influence of their previous colonial rulers. It has also become a common narrative mode for fictions written from the perspective of the politically or culturally disempowered.

One Hundred Years of Solitude portrays a period of time that encompasses Colombian civil wars, neocolonialism, political violence, solitude  in the midst of other dominant themes. These concerns are treated through a magic realist format that leaves many readers unaware of the historical, political, and ideological content of the novel’s background

The violence of One Hundred Years of Solitude focuses on the historical fight between a pair of opposing political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, which had the greatest rivalry Colombia had ever known. The novel’s account of how Colonel Aureliano Buendía fought thirty-two wars and lost them all seems to capture the exaggeration of magic realism. In the same vain, the narrative makes references to American colonialism as expressed through the exploitation of banana plantations. To this effect, the narrative describes the banana strike of 1928, once again mixing fact and fiction.

The novel makes way for Latin American culture where the coming of a train(European realism) is seen as absurd, but instances such as yellow butterflies flying around Mauricio Babilonia, and Remedios the Beauty ascending to heaven are seen as normal. This is the power of Márquez’s magic realism.