The following piece is an opinion and does not reflect the views of The Eagle and its staff. All opinions are edited for grammar, style and argument structure and fact-checked, but the opinions are the writer’s own.
If I told you there is a town where family is more important than a map, yellow butterflies fly around workers who are in love, “gitanos” pass by selling marvelous artifacts, people forget how things were named because of an insomnia plague and where “the secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude,” you might think it is fictional.
And, if so, you would be right. There is no physical space like this. However, it exists.
A journalist born on the north coast of Colombia discovered this place and described it in a song of three hundred pages, in what he called his discovery. If I told you that this song represents a big part of Colombian culture and history, you might wonder when it begins to talk about drugs and crime, stereotypes by which the country is known.
Thankfully, the book does not depict that.
The journalist and writer Gabriel García Márquez found a way to tell the world how magical Colombia is, despite its bloody history, by telling the story of Macondo, a fictional town that exists within the 300 pages of “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
García Márquez belonged to a group of writers who, through the magic of their words, exported the potential, talent, culture, and history of Latin America. Next to Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso and Mario Vargas Llosa, García Márquez formed what is known as the “Latin American Boom.”
The boom was marked by how these writers showed the world what life was like in Latin America, describing the daily life of fictional characters who were not special but just normal people.
These writers explored concepts like love, loneliness, education, relationships, life and death while telling a story that the world had never seen before at that time: the Latin American way of life. The “boom authors” created a new writing style while exposing the social and political problems in their home countries.
Cortázar involved readers by breaking the timeline of his book “Rayuela,” which translates to “hopscotch” in English. There is no correct way to read this book; you read it by jumping to a random chapter, similar to jumping from square to square in hopscotch, while exploring the love story between an Argentinian and a Uruguayan.
Fuentes showed Mexican culture to the world by shifting between narrators, presenting all the characters’ perspectives on the story’s main problem: the will of a corrupt soldier. He incorporated the Mexican Revolution and the influence of American soldiers into the main plot. He unfolds the social context of Mexico in the past and shares the folklore of the rich and beautiful country.
Vargas Llosa, the last boom author to die, left the world by writing about his experiences in a way he could only express with a splendid use of Spanish. Like his counterparts, he broke the traditional norms and rules of the narrative process.
Vargas-Llosa wrote a novel composed of three segments about the experience of living under the dictatorship and the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. He explored the cruel reality of living through an oppressive dictatorship, something that many, if not all, of these authors had to live through, a fact that is often ignored by many globally.
Finally, José Donoso demonstrated how traditional myths of Chile can inspire complex novels that challenge the world’s perceptions about segregation, self-perception and the belief in the cyclical process of our lives.
In his novel, “The Obscene Bird of Night,” he successfully combines complex philosophical debates, such as the purpose of life and the origin of rational thinking, with traditional Chilean beliefs and myths. The main character faces deconstructions of his personality to explore the existential paradox.
During my time at American University, I have been surprised by the considerable number of people who say they want to read more about these authors, having heard they are talented, but don’t because they believe knowing Spanish is required to read their books. However, many of these authors have excellent English translations of their masterpieces, and in some cases, like Jorge Luis Borges, they even supervised the translation of their pieces.
If students could make the time to explore this literature and allow themselves to read Latin American authors, they would both contribute to restoring the attention these authors deserve and change the way people gather information about Latin America. I have never heard a comment from an American about García Márquez's masterpiece when I say I am Colombian; I always encounter the typical comment about Pablo Escobar and the bloody history of Colombia.
Take the chance to learn about Argentina, not only through Lionel Messi or Diego Maradona, and to know what Mexico is truly like. Avoid the misconception that their culture is defined only by tacos and tequila. Latin Americans have historically been excluded from many global debates; now is the time to bring them back to the international literature discussion. I can assure you that you will gain a deeper understanding of what is happening in Latin America by immersing yourself in the region’s literature.
Latin America is not a source of problems, drugs and crime; it is a source of magic, art, literature and wisdom. Don’t let movies or other forms of media tell you otherwise.
Jeronimo Freydell-Cristancho is a freshman in the School of International Service and a columnist for The Eagle.
This article was edited by Quinn Volpe, Alana Parker and Walker Whalen. Copy editing done by Sabine Kanter-Huchting and Ariana Kavoossi.
