Gabriel García Márquez, History and the Labyrinth of Literature

Gabriel García Márquez’s novel centered on Simón Bolívar, The General in His Labyrinth (El general en su laberinto, 1989) provoked mixed reactions from the literary critics. Some of them praised another masterpiece, whereas the others accused the Colombian author of creating a disrespectful portrait one of Latin America’s most important historical and symbolic figures The novel combines historical data and fiction in order to humanize the character of the Liberator and to destroy his nearly mythological image while at the same time examining the implications of previous literary discourse on the contemporary Latin American novel. Moreover García Márquez finds an original means of establishing a profound relationship between the magical realist aesthetics he used in One Hundred Years of Solitude and this particular form of pseudo-historical narrative that succeeds in expressing the humanity of its protagonist.