By: Sandra Beatriz Ludena
Actually, his name is Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez and by antonomasia he is known by the nickname of Gabo. I affirm that he is called because I do not believe that, by no longer being present in this dimension, —only for this reason—, he has ceased to be.
Gabo left on April 17, 2014, but his ideas are still valid. In this land that shelters us, he was born in Colombia and became a writer, screenwriter, editor and journalist, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, for all this, I believe that he actually inhabited a higher world, magical realism, from which you can have a better vision and control of things.
When I was fourteen years old (1984), I had a special taste for magical realism, so I started reading one hundred years of solitude that magically seemed like a thousand years strung together in a story, I got to know Macondo and the ability of a writer to grasp the thread of imagination and show the reality that before or after could not be compared with anything.
then i met A breaking latest news of a Death Foretold, where I saw injustice for the first time, when Santiago Nasar, —the Turk—, was assassinated for a slander. Aracataca, a small village in the Andes of Colombia, is the setting for this plot of events, in which the murderers are in charge of announcing throughout the town that they would kill the victim for revenge, since he was accused of stealing a woman’s virginity. local lady.
Everything takes place in threatening situations, of which Santiago knows nothing, until his death. The author narrates something unspeakable, the murder of innocence. The victim is stabbed and walks around holding his viscera in his hands. I think that while reading I was struck by the pain and pestilence of injustice.
In The colonel has no one to write to him, I found out about a veteran of the “Thousand Days War” who served under the orders of Aureliano Buendía. It is the story of a servant of the country, who for fifteen years has been waiting for his retirement pension. Thus the colonel goes to the post office every Friday, hoping to be notified with his pension, but this does not happen. Thus, together with his elderly wife, they live in precarious situations.
This last work to which I refer is a reflection on the principles and values that are not negotiable, despite the indifference in societies that value opulence, political power at the cost of anything else in life.
In this way, all of García Márquez’s work is a social denunciation, it deals with reality juxtaposed to myth, that particular way of narrating that has been framed within magical realism, although magic is valued more. to tell that reality, —that few explore—, well, on embers there is a risk of burning.