One Hundred Years of Soiitude. Indigenous Myth,
and Meaning
Jav
University of Cape Town, South Africa
Much of the initial critical reception of One Hundred Years of Solitude suggests parallels
between the novel and the Old Testament (specifically the Pentateuch, the first five books
thereof). It is an obvious source because the myths are widely known to Western readers.
However, steadfast adherence to Biblical versions of creation, flight, and destruction in
certain later critical interpretations of One Hundred Years of Solitude may have resulted
in circuitous or needlessly cryptic interpretations. We may best consider this initial phase
of analysis as a reasonable start, but not definitive or conclusive, and then propose other
meaningful sources which may yield clearer, more precise parallels, which could be then
be relied upon for a more expansive interpretation. We view One Hundred Years of Solitude
as a distinct work, specific to the Americas; therefore, it may be considered in the light
of the known history of the American continents, including pre-Hispanic history, myth
and ritual. We may be remiss in examining such a novel only within a zone of canonical
security. We may also consider that we, who are peoples of the American continents, are
largely responsible for a lingering colonial mentality which rejects our mixed origins in
favour of a false mimetic Europeanized identity, and that as a result we may have missed
that precise criticism in the novel in our quest for understanding, by overlooking the
novel's apparently non-Western symbolism.
The first well-known critical review of One Hundred Years was penned by Reinaldo
Arenas in 1968. It sets the tone for other scholarship on the novel by addressing its
mythological qualities as follows: "En gran medida. Cien años de soledad está enmarcada
dentro de una concepción bíblica, comenzando, como es lógico, por el surgimiento del
mundo (Macondo, el pueblo imaginario, escenario donde se han desarrollado todas las
novelas y relatos de Gabriel García Márquez), pasando luego por el diluvio, los vientos
proféticos, las plagas, las guerras y las variadas calamidades que azotan (y azotarán) al
hombre, culminando, desde luego, con el Apocalipsis."' The statement is logical, drawing
apparent parallels between an ancient text and a modern one. We may contend that in
terms of a book review this essay is brilliant and meditative, and it is an invitation ab initio
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to critics to investigate Arenas' terms of reference more thoroughly, perhaps exhaustively.
We may contend that Arenas' review is canonical, and that his prima facie conclusions were
investigated thoroughly. Further criticism, while delving into the question of mythological
origins, suggests that the Biblical parallels drawn by Arenas are more tenuous than they
initially appeared to be. The closer one looks at the two texts, the less similar they appear
to be.
In Claves simbólicas de Gabriel García Márquez, Graciela Maturo states that "Tres son
los principales temas bíblicos de García Márquez: la Greación, la historia de los Patriarcas
y el Apocalipsis de San Juan" (151). Maturo's point about creation is examined in depth
by Germán Garrillo, perhaps more emphatically as he states that "Lo que más parece
llamar la atención de un lector asiduo de Cien años de soledad...es el no poco número
de alusiones y comparaciones... en tre los Buendía de Macondo y Adán en el Paraíso. La
primera está justamente en el tercer renglón de la primera página... .Es el universo adánico,
abundante en riquezas... .lugar en donde los Buendía, como Adán, participan del prodigio
de la Greación con la prerrogativa de dar nombre a las cosas que les rodean" (Garrillo 22).
We are confronted by similes, prefaced by the fact that to a great degree our main source
of comparative myth is Biblical. There is an insistence that the source is precise, yet at the
same moment it is a tacit admission that closer scrutiny yields very little, and we are left
slightly adrift.
The tenuousness of Arenas' initial classification of the mythical framework of One
Hundred Years becomes more apparent in Ricardo Gullón's examination of the character
of Melquíades: "Las figuras del mito, míticas han de ser: Melquíades ante todo. Inútil
asignarle una contrafigura simbóhca precisa..." (Gullón 145). At this juncture it could
have been useful for criticism to have ventured beyond the pale, because as Gullón clearly
indicates, at a certain point Biblical parallels proffer no further clues or answers but rather
leave us to consider other sources.
Whereas alternative sources of myth in the novel could have been explored after
Gullón, this has not been not the case. According to Lois Parkinson Zamora, "Like
Revelation, Cien años de soledad sums up the Bible, projecting its patterns of creation,
empaire, decadence, renovation, catastrophe onto history," (Bloom 51). In the short span
of a decade, between Arenas and Parkinson Zamora, the original supposition that myth in
One Hundred Years is Biblical has become canonical. Emir Rodriguez Monegal later writes
that: "[I]t is not necessary to resort to the Kabbalah...nor to the better known example
of Nostradamus's prophecies...nor even to Mallarmé's famous dictum that everything
culminates in a book, to discover that this concept which connects the book and the
world is at the core of the basic religions of the West, as Borges has shown... it is obvious
that Garcia Márquez arrives at this concept in his novel not only through the reading of
the Bible... but also through Borges and his total reading of literature as text" (McMurray,
1987). The claim has now grown to include, if not demand, that One Hundred Years is
founded on Occidental sources.
Further insistence from the early 1990s underscores that the Biblical (and
consequently Western) mythology is not the main source of inspiration for One Hundred
Years but that it is the only one: "It would be surprising if the text did not make an
implicit, ironic comment on the relevance and value of Western culture in those allusions
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to Nostradamus and the Venerable Bede, but through them the text lays claim to the
whole of the West. Moreover, it does not attempt to revive or to celebrate a lost indigenous
culture" (Janes, 121). The same critic forces this view further: "If the reader feels this
world is primitive and childlike, it is still the reader's own culture whose childhood
Garcia Márquez is evoking. There is no pre-Golumbian local history, no Tupac Amaru or
Macahueles, not even El Dorado. No spirit of Anahuac or the Ghibcha rises to grumble
at the passing events" (Janes, 121). There is no evidence to support the contention that
there is no pre-Golumbian local history. Furthermore, it demonstrates the extent to which
critics have been willing to demand that the mythological content of One Hundred Years
is of Western origins. Despite the brazen dismissal of historical and prehistoric American
sources, it is amusingly the Ghibcha mythology which may prove to bear the strongest
resemblances thus far suggested to character and thematic sketches in the first sections of
the novel.
The first character described on the first page of One Hundred Years is Melquíades.
He is bearded, a foreigner, and he bears elements of culture known to the outside world
but unknown to the people of Macondo. This is parallel to Nemquerequeteba or Bochica,
emissary of the gods or the sun god, depending on the source, a bearded man who is
racially distinct to the Ghibcha people; he arrives from time to time in their recorded
mythology to bring elements of culture to the Ghibcha unknown to them but part of
the cultures of the world beyond their reach. He is called a Buddha of the Muisca by
Humboldt, and compared to Quetzalcoatl and Manco Gapac.^
Roberto González Echevarría notes that Gullón cites five Old Testament myths,
including Exodus, referring to the departure of José Arcadio Buendia and Úrsula
Iguarán from Riohacha.^ While retaining certain scepticism about the validity of these
comparisons: "No single myth or mythology prevails." González Echevarría classifies José
Arcadio Buendia as a sort of Moses (Myth and Archive 19). There is doubtlessly a playful
reference to Exodus in the novel's second section regarding "la tierra que nadie les había
prometido." If allowed to make a supposition, one might contend that the inference in
the "the land that no one promised them" (33) is anti-Biblical, and that it may be polar
rather than parallel. Likewise the word "éxodo" is used in the novel in reference to the
group departure,^ which seems to beg for analogies or comparison, but to what degree is
questionable. José Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguarán are not fleeing an angry Pharaoh
to a promised land with the help of the Hebrew god of the Tetragrammaton; in fact, there
is no authority divine or otherwise involved in their decision to leave, only sorrow and guilt
manifest in the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar and no one prevents them from departing. Yet
their flight is not serious for some reason: "Fue un viaje absurdo" (35).
There is a closer correspondence to the creation of Macondo in the Ghibcha myth of
Hunzahua. Hunzahua was the first Zaque of the city of Tunja according to oral tradition.
He committed incest with his sister and they went on a long journey to escape scrutiny
and condemnation. Hunzahua's sister bore a child on their long flight and they left it in
the town of Susa. At the end of their journey Hunzahua and his sister jumped into the
Bogotá River and turned to large stones below the Tequendama Falls. From this legendary
union it was said that the Zaque of Tunja customarily married his sister. In another version
Hunzahua and his sister were turned into snakes for having committed incest.
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The myth of Hunzahua is may further considered given that the first character
described in Cien años de soledad bears remarkable similarities to Bochica, the Chibcha
emissary of the gods. The myth begins with incest, the coupleflees,have a child along the
way, and end their journey at a river. There is no struggle in comparing this Chibcha myth
to Garcia Márquez's fictional characters and their deeds. It is more than likely that Garcia
Márquez was familiar with the sketches of the Chibcha mythology given that they are well
known element of Colombian history. Old World myths do bear some similarity to these,
but in consideration of the beginnings with a character who resembles Bochica in form
and content, and a couple whose flight is initiated by hostility over incest who end their
journey at a river, the initial perceptions of Old World mythological dominance begin
to wane. Regina Janes begins an essay by stating that One Hundred Years is, according to
the author, deeply based in Colombian history. 5 We may take the author at his word, and
preface this by stating that Fray Pedro Simon's Noticias historiales (1627) and Rodríguez
Freyle's El Carnero (1636), both of which contain substantial information about the
Chibcha, their myths and rituals, are standard foundational works of Colombian history.
If we do take Garcia Márquez at his word, in which he clearly states that meaning in
One Hundred Years of Solitude is heavily reliant on Colombian history, we may equally
suppose that his knowledge of it includes the Chibcha mythology as recorded in the afore
mentioned chronicles.
Genesis in the Bible includes the creation, the tree of knowledge, Adam and
Eve, the flood, Noah, etc. Apart from the idea of the novelty of divine creation and the
punishing flood, there is only a side story of incest and flight, i.e.. Lot and his daughters.
But the incest occurs between them after flight has occurred from Sodom, and because
the daughters believe that they will have no husbands. That leaves only one other event
in common with One Hundred Years, which is the flood. But unlike Genesis there is no
boat, no special character warned previously of the arrival of divine punishment in Garcia
Márquez's novel. It is therefore more unlike Genesis than similar to it.
The Chibcha versions of creation or rather of procreation are limited to two parallel
stories, one about Chía (or Furachoque) and the other about Bachué. Chía is the good
goddess who emerges from the Iguaque lagoon with a three year old child, her own, and
when he is of age they procreate very quickly, populating the world of the Chibcha. Once
the lands are full of people Chía returns to the lagoon, or becomes the moon, depending
on the sources of the myth. In the other variant, Bachué, known as a goddess of drunken
debauchery, emerges from the same lagoon with her three year old son in tow, and at his
coming of age procreates and populates the land with him. Bachué either becomes the
moon or is turned into an owl as punishment for her incest. These two versions of tribal
origin correspond well with the two mother progenitors of the Buendía family in One
Hundred Years: Úrsula Iguarán and Pilar Ternera. Úrsula Iguarán is the legitimate wife of
José Arcadio Buendía and would represent the image of Chía; Pilar Ternera, who bears
two grandsons of José Arcadio and Úrsula, arranges trysts and ends in a wicker chair in a
brothel, surrounded by weeping prostitutes, is much in keeping with the image of Bachué.
Similarly the Chibcha myths of procreation relate only to the Chibcha people and their
origin, as Úrsula Iguarán and Pilar Ternera are matriarchs only of the Buendía family. A
very short summary of One Hundred Years to this point might follow thus: A bearded wise
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foreigner arrives in the town of Macondo, bringing with him elements of culture known
abroad but not by the people of the town. The principal inhabitants of the town are a man
and his wife, who fled to settle this place on the banks of a river, arriving after a very long
journey and having had a child along the way, the result of (the idea of) incest. The man
and his wife have two sons, both of whom father children with a woman who revels in
arranging trysts and reads the future, adding generations to their family, which is born of
a myth of incest. Both the bearded man and the former have supernatural qualities (his
ubiquity, her fortune telling). The basic elements of the foundation of Macondo and its
initial generations are fundamentally indistinct to the Chibcha myths of origin.
The story of thefloodin One Hundred Years bears little similarity to the Biblical myth
except for the occurrence of a great flood. However, there is scarcely a world mythology
that does not recount the event. Western familiarity with the Bible would explain why it
has been the focal point of research into the novel's mythological sources, even though
One Hundred Years is bereft of a Noah-like figure and the construction of a boat, and no
figure of Mount Ararat in the background where such a boat might land. Conversely the
Chibcha myth of the flood is simplistic: it is attributed to Chibchacum, a very unpleasant
deity, who afterwards is punished by Bochica and forced to bear the weight of the earth on
his shoulders. There is no manner of ascription of the Chibcha flood myth as the source
of Garcia Márquez's work, but less still for Genesis. Part of the reason for that may be that
flooding occurs during the family's fourth generation when José Arcadio Buendia and
Melquíades are both long dead and the tone of the novel has shifted from the mythical to
the mundane. The Chibcha myths most relevant to One Hundred Years relate mainly to
the beginning of the novel: the emissary of the gods, incest, flight, and the disappearance
of these characters or their transformation. A closer parallel to the flood sequence may be
found in the Popol Vuh, in which there is no divine emissary to forewarn of a coming flood,
sent to destroy the second incarnation of man which no longer venerates its forgotten
gods.
The most widely dispersed legend about the Chibcha to have spread beyond Latin
America is that oí Fl Dorado. Rather than afictionalexplanation of how the constellations
took their forms or how the earth was populated. El Dorado was the legend of a man
dusted in gold, based on events that occurred at the Guatavita lagoon in the Chibcha
region of Central Colombia. The ablutions that occurred there attested the wealth of the
Chibcha. The ritual bathing which inspired the western myth of El Dorado are present
in the novel in two characters: Remedios, the beauty, and the last José Arcadio Buendia.
It is the latter whose baths relate specially to the discovery of the gold that Úrsula Iguarán
had long before buried. The boys who wash him repeat the ritual of the priests of the
Cacique of Chía, and the immersions that took place in the Guatavita lagoon. The last
José Arcadio Buendia is not covered in gold but rather in possession of it and the boys he
invites for debauchery murder him, taking the gold he has discovered. Like the first José
Arcadio Buendia, he is unable to escape his own history and origins, even though he may
be unaware of them. That this has been overlooked in interpretations may be related to the
hammering critical insistence that One Hundred Years is Western. One might begin at the
end of the commentary to note that the Chibcha need not rise to grumble at the passing
events because their myths are present from the first page, that El Dorado is carefially,
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cleverly interwoven into the text in the character of the last José Arcadio Buendia and his
entourage.
Another of the novel's motifs apparently unrelated to Biblical or Western mythology
is the manufacture of small gold fish. Gold is of course the major element in the novel and
references to it abound. At the start of the novel, José Arcadio Buendia buys magnetized
ingots from Melquiades because he is convinced he will find gold; his son Aureliano later
manufactures small fish made of gold. Once again there is no direct or indirect allusion in
this to the Bible. It may be too far a stretch to speak of King Solomon and his mines but
that has not prevented anyone from making the comparison on occasion. The historical
precedent for the golden fish is likely to be pre-Hispanic and Colombian. The discovery
of small golden fish, dated to the Second Century AD in Quimbaya burial mounds in
the province of Quindio in Colombia, was noted by Luis Duque Gomez in his history of
Colombia (Duque Gomez, 309).^ The golden fish in One Hundred Years are also linked
with death, as every character who is offered or receives one ofAureliano Buendia's creations
dies prematurely and violently, including Remedios Moscote, the seventeen illegitimate
Aurelanios, and Gregorio Stevenson. The connection between gold and death in the novel
has been made in the literature but perhaps never in this particular vein, nor has it been
linked previously to any pre-Columbian artefacts; that there are such objects related to
death in the form of funeral offerings lends credibility to the idea that the motif originates
in Colombia and specifically in its indigenous past.
While pre-Hispanic rituals involving gold and bathing recount the myth of
El Dorado, there are other indigenous Colombian rituals incorporated into the text.
Rebecca's arrival in Macondo with a canvas bag bearing the bones of her parents is a clear
allusion to Guajiro ritual cleansing of the bones of the deceased by a female descendant,
as a preparation for the second burial and the transportation of the deceased to the spirit
world. This is described aptly in The Way of the Dead Indians, Michel Perrin's 1976
anthropological study of the Guajiro people (Perrin, 109—111). It may have been taken
as coincidental that the unburied bones were brought in a canvas bag, just as Perrin's
description of the ritual suggests, but for the fact that Rebeca is from Manaure and speaks
Guajiro with Amaranta, Arcadio, Visitación, and Cataure. As he stands before the firing
squad Arcadio recalls never having been understood as well by anyone as by Visitación and
Cataure in the Guajiro language (133). In short there is purpose to these references to the
Guajiro people, language, and culture.
On her arrival in Macondo, with the bag containing her parents' bones, Rebeca
is in the midst of a process related uniquely to the Guajiro. It is described by Perrin in
the following passage: "A close kinswoman of the dead person, usually belonging to that
person's lineage...sorts and cleans the bones. She places them in a terra cotta urn... in a
close-meshed net bag, or, nowadays, in a cloth bag, held by another woman. Very often
several corpses belonging to the same matrilineage are removed at the same time from
the various places where they were buried" (Perrin, 111). This process is called anajawat
jipa, which means "the ordering of the bones," and according to Perrin is performed in
preparation for afinalburial of the deceased. Perrin also states that in the strictest tradition
women performing this ritual should not touch food but must receive it from the hands of
others because of a disease which shamans calls "contagion through bones." The apparent
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inclusion of currently performed indigenous Golombian rituals may suggest that the
vision of Golombia presented by the novel is inclusive of its original inhabitants, and lends
further support to the notion that Golombia's earlier mythologies may have played a much
greater role than previously envisaged in attempts to unravel the novel's mythological base.
Others questions arise from this episode in the novel. The issue of kinship with
Rebeca is never clear, though a note which arrives with her states that her parents are
both cousins of Ursula Iguarán and more distantly related to José Arcadio Buendía. That
lends the reader to suppose that José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán both have some
Guajiro ancestry. That would not be unusual in people from Rio Hacha or Manaure.
They are never described physically except in a single phrase of the novel, in comparison
to the men and women who arrive with Úrsula on her return to Macondo after leaving
to search for her son: "No eran gitanos. Eran hombres y mujeres como ellos, de cabellos
lacios y piel parda, que hablaban su misma lengua y se lamentaban de los mismos dolores."
(García Márquez, 48). Although Rebeca is not described physically there is no great shock
expressed when she is found to understand and speak Guajiro. Furthermore it is only
when Rebeca begins to eat with the family that the insomnia plague begins. Visitación
and Gataure do not mention the bag of bones, but very little dialogue emerges from them.
The theme is not gratuitous; at this a line should be drawn between normal local culture
and the magical realism with which it might be confused in the mind of a reader or critic
who finds the bag of bones other-worldly. The insomnia plague is unreal; on the other
hand it might easily have been inspired by apulainwa jipii, contagion via human remains,
i.e. bones. It would be difficult if to imagine that, having knowledge enough to describe
a girl in the midst of a Guajiro ceremony, the author could be ignorant of other aspects
of the same culture, especially those surrounding the very ceremonies he alludes to, and
then invent a plague that is unrelated to the cultural traditions he has just described.
The traditional approach in the novel's criticism is to list the insomnia plague along with
others in attempts to connect them with the Biblical Exodus, even though their only
commonality is the word "plague."
What Rebeca brings to Macondo is the presence of La Guajira and its customs,
traditions, and also its myths, much more so than Visitación and Gataure, who serve
mainly to amplify those themes with their mythical presence. The majorfiguresof Guajiro
mythology are Juya and Pulowi, present at least partially in the figures of Visitación and
Gataure. They are considered husband and wife, but also bitter enemies. Juya is the
god associated with rain, and Pulowi is associated with the dry season. Each is greatly
exaggerated on the level of sexuality: Juya is the most virile of men, Pulowi has the powers
of attraction of a siren. This is not evident in either Visitación or Gataure, who are not
described physically in the novel. These mythological figures are more apparent in two of
the major characters of the novel, José Arcadio and then later on in Remedios, la bella.
After the death of Remedios Moscote an enormous man enters the Buendía house
and seduces a woman in seclusion whom he has never known but who is considered
his sister, even if not by blood. That is José Arcadio who disappears before the arrival of
Rebeca. Physically he is described as tattooed from head to toe and as having superhuman
strength and very large sex organ. Mythical to be sure, this is the embodiment of Juya, the
Guajiro god of the rains. One of the attributes of Juya is his seduction of virginal young
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women in seclusion. Michel Perrin records a myth from Guajiro oral tradition which
recounts the arrival of a virile man with the rain, who comes to a young woman's house,
asking to see his younger sister. The young woman does not know of a brother was lost
and calls her parents. Her parents recall that a son went missing. While the maid tells the
parents that the man wants to take his sister they go back to stop him, but it is too late, and
they realize she has been taken away by Juya (Perrin, 57—59). This is basically the plot line
of the episode of the return of José Arcadio and his seduction of Rebeca in One Hundred
Years. The parallel is strong enough to suggest that parts of this novel are deeply rooted in
Guajiro mythology and folklore. There is no thematic precedent in the Bible or Glassical
mythology for the overt virility of José Arcadio or his seduction of a young woman who
is identified as a younger sister, even though Rebeca is of a more distant kinship. There is
no need to look beyond or overlook the mythology of La Guajira to find deeper meaning
in this episode of the novel. It is precisely because the native mythologies of Golombia
have been overlooked in the interpretations of this novel that we cannot understand it.
This has occurred because we have been remiss in not recognizing that we cannot divorce
art from history, and because we have allowed ourselves to be colonized again and again,
dismissing our own past, and denying who we in the Americas really are. Garcia Márquez
should be credited with weaving the mythologies of his country into a multilayered novel
that enchants and befuddles, and even if the techniques he uses are of European origin he
nativizes them in his text in the creation of a work of art that sparkles in the wealth of the
American continents.
If the novel were about the West, or at least constructed on ideas that emerged solely
from the West and were later transplanted to the Americas, why would its meaning still seem
cryptic after forty years of critical analysis employing Western materials? If its mythology
is Biblical and Glassical, contorted to suit the framework of an interesting novel, why is
the meaning of the novel misunderstood? What is apparent is that attempts to decipher
the novel, such as the very characters' attempts to decipher Melquíades' manuscripts, have
not brought about a clearer understanding of the work or its title. This may begin to
emerge once we consider that Genesis, Exodus, and the Apocalypse are not the stories of
the Americas, much less Golombia. The Americas were not included in the creation in
Genesis, written by the hands of a person who was unaware of these continents or of the
people who would build the pyramids at Teotihuacán, create the empire of Tahuantinsuyu,
or the Anasazi cities. On a more localized level. One Hundred Years appears to gather the
remnants of the pre-Hispanic Ghibcha mythology and present them as the beginning of
history in his work. Further along the Ghibcha rituals mythologized as El Dorado are
repeated as ablutions associated with gold. Theft of the gold at the end of the novel is a
parable of Golombian history, plundered of its wealth by armies of foreign invaders.
Because Melquíades' parchments cannot be deciphered before one hundred years
have elapsed, the author may have been defying critics to figure out the meaning of his
novel within such a period of time, if one accepts as reasonable the critical conclusions that
the parchments are the novel. One tends to think of parchment in relation to the Torah,
the Holy Scriptures of the West, but only because of one is saturated with information
about all things Western, including in the Americas. But parchment was used before
paper was affordable and plentiful, and it played a key role in recording of history of
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Colombia. Alexander Von Humboldt bemoans the sad state of libraries and archives in
the Equinoccial regions of the new continents: "I have shown that winged insects which
live in society and whose suckers contain a linquid that irritates skin make vast territories
virtually uninhabitable. Other insects, just as small, called termites create insuperable
obstacles to the progress of civilization in several hot countries. They rapidly devour paper,
cardboard and parchment, and thus destroy archives and libraries. WTiole provinces of
Spanish America do not have any document that dates back more than a hundred years"
(Humboldt, 210). That Humboldt mentions insects devouring parchment and that entire
regions were left without a single document that survived one hundred years could be
reduced to coincidence but for the fact that it is alluded to directly in the novel. As he
is busily editing his manuscripts just previous to his death, Melquíades is overheard by
Aureliano: "In reality, the only thing he could make out in his rocky paragraphs, was the
insistent hammering of the word equinox, equinox, equinox, and the name of Alexander
Von Humboldt" (García Márquez, 89). The meaning of the novel's finale alters slightly in
view of Humboldt's assessment. All focus is on Colombia and its history. If in Colombian
history archives written on parchment were devoured, lost to the elements, forever
irretrievable, and invaluable information forever lost, including birth certificates, death
certificates, records of marriages and baptisms, tax collections, deeds to properties, and
the histories of new settlements, then those historical blanks, tantamount to the quotidian
affairs of people in different regions would also be lost and the memory of them as well.
Thus, One Hundred Years is a lament of the loss of history. There is no opportunity for the
characters to be recuperated because, like the historical papers and parchments on which
much of the history of Colombia was written, their history and future are devoured by
insects.
The time frames described at the novel's end are parallel to those at its start and
in the parchments: manifold and all occurring simultaneously, with beginning and end
in the same phrase. Macondo is wiped off the face of the earth by the biblical hurricane.
The biblical hurricane is a clear, direct reference to a Mayan deity, Hurakán and the book
he emerges from: The Popul Vuh. This is a conclusion one may draw when considering
that the word "biblical" or "bíblico" refers to any book, not particularly the Bible, and
the name "huracán." Hurakán was venerated all over the Caribbean as the god of thunder
and lightning, and in the Popol Vuh this god works with Gucumatz, the plumed serpent
deity, in the creation and destruction of the three incarnations of mankind. The Popol Vuh
is often referred to as the Bible of the Americas. This has probably escaped our attention
because we have clung to the notion that the only sources of reference in the novel are
Western. Perhaps referring to our unique origins is still taboo and we have yet to dispense
with the ball and chain of colonial era denial of our past and indigenous ancestry and all
its trappings, outside of Anthropological studies and museums.
Noting that the beginning and ending of One Hundred Years both draw heavily
on indigenous American mythologies, what emerges is not a claim to the whole of the
West, as Regina Janes once stated. Rather there is a harmonious connection of the people
to the land and essentially to the current cultures of the Americas which are built on
an autochthonous base. The novel's ending is not as pessimistic as it might seem to an
untrained eye. It recalls the sign placed on the main street of Macondo that reads "God
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exists." Once that sign is placed over a street in Macondo, during the worst of the insomnia
plague, Melquíades returns from the dead to reinstate the people's memory. That might
answer which god is evoked, to magically offer his people another opportunity to recall the
past and their origins. Once he is truly dead and forgotten and only his spectre remains,
there can be further chances to remember. Thus One Hundred Years is a call to us to
remember that we are distinct, that we have another history.
In One Hundred Years it is not the God of the Old Testament but Hurakán who
returns to destroy a creation his is unsatisfied with, just as in the Popol Vuh. The last
generations of the Buendia family do not know or remember their gods, just as the second
incarnation of man in the Popol Vuh. In One Hundred Years, the gods of the first word in
Latin America are given thefinalword. Far from pessimistic, the end of One Hundred Years
ofSolitude is an allegory of the mindset of much of the Americas which continues striving
to be Western. Reigning interpretations of this novel, addressing the temporal realities
of the novel while rejecting the pre-conquest languages and cultures, reflect the forces of
oblivion and rejection endemic in the characters in One Hundred Years ofSolitude. It may
be better to reassess initial investigations into the novel, to consider them a good starting
point while recognizing as well that they have not provided the deeper understanding
of the novel they once promised, and that, perhaps, because we have examined those
documents without consideration of Colombia itself And we may begin to reassess based
on what we already understand, which is that One Hundred Years of Solitude relies heavily
on Colombian history and apparently Colombian pre-history for deeper meaning of its
allegories.
Notas
' Reinaldo Arenas. Casa de las Americas, num. 48 (mayo-junio, 1968), pp. 134—138.
2 Quetzalcoatl, Botchica y Manco Capac son last resfiguresmíticas a las que se remontan los principios de
la culturas de los aztecas, muiscas (propiamente chibchas) y peruanos...Botchica o, mejor dicho, el emisario
divino Nemterequeteba, barbudo también y vestido con luengo ropaje (un Buda de los muiscas), llega a la
altiplanicie de Bogotá procedente de las estepas herbáceas del este de la cadena andina" ( Humboldt 358) .
3 "Polemic: With Borges in Macondo," p. 57.
^ CAS 40. "Se llamaba Pilar Ternera. Había formado parte del éxodo que culminó con la fiindación de
Macondo..."
5 Regina Janes, "Liberals, Conservatives, and Bananas: Colombian Politics in the Fictions of Gabriel Garcia
Márquez," in Bloom, pp. 125-146. The noted sentence reads: "Garcia Márquez once remarked that the
reader of Cien años de soledad who was not familiar with the history of his country, Colombia, might
appreciate the novel as a good novel, but much of what happens in it would make no sense to him. "
'' "En la región del Quindio se han hallado piezas de orfebrería en forma de peces, en tumbas de planta
rectangular revestidas con lajas de piedra, especialmente en Albania y en Callelarga. En este último sitio
se excavó una sepultura de la forma referida, que consistía en 60 piezas de oro en forma de sardinas. La
estructura de las demás tumbas halladas aquí, lo mismo que la ofrenda funeraria, eran idénticas."
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