45 pages • 1 hour read
Gabriel García MárquezThe General in His Labyrinth
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Cultural Context: Spanish Colonialism in Latin America
The Spanish Empire began colonizing the Americas in 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed from Europe to the Caribbean. The expansion of colonial control over the ensuring centuries led to almost the entirety of South America being turned into Spanish colonies, with the exception of Brazil (which was colonized by Portugal) and several smaller territories. As a result, the Spanish language spread across the continent and replaced the thousands of indigenous languages and dialects that were previously spoken. During this initial period of colonization, as many as 80% of the local population died or was killed. The spread of disease, enslavement, and brutal genocides committed by Spanish colonial forces greatly diminished the number of Indigenous people, enabling the Spanish’s takeover of the region . During the period of colonization, the eastern regions of the continent under control of the Spanish Empire were divided into several semi-autonomous provinces. These provinces included areas that resemble modern day Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Peru though their borders and areas of control changed over time.
Part of South American colonization was the introduction of Roman Catholicism through a long period of missionization. Between the 16th and the 19th centuries, many missions were sent from Europe to South America to evangelize in areas from Mexico to Argentina to Chile. The process of Catholicization was integral to the colonial project. By converting the remaining local people to Catholicism, Spain was able to introduce European bureaucracy, culture, and religion to the people. For the missionaries, the prospect of redeeming the souls of non-Christian people was a vital project: Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, and more orders of priests sent missionaries across the continent to convert people. These conversions were often rejected by the local people, who had their own religions and cultures. Local uprisings took place during the 16-19th centuries, in which the people fought back against the priests who were trying to eradicate their local culture. Missionaries were often vectors of disease: Typhus, smallpox, and measles were all spread through South America, partly by the priests and missionaries who sought to convert the local people. Despite the resistance, Catholicism became the dominant religion of the region, and, by the time The General in His Labyrinth takes place, the majority of people in South America considered themselves Catholic.
Biographical Context: Simón Bolívar
Simón Bolívar was born on July 24, 1783, in Caracas, Venezuela. At the time, Caracas was part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, a province in South America under the jurisdiction of the Spanish Empire. Bolívar was born into a wealthy family, who owned a string of copper and gold mines. In 1799, following the death of his parents, he moved to Spain. There, he continued his education and married a woman named María. In 1803, the young couple took a trip to Venezuela where María contracted yellow fever and died. On returning to Europe after his wife's death, Bolívar became more interested in politics. He met Napoleon Bonaparte and then permanently returned to Venezuela in 1807. When Bonaparte appointed his older brother, Joseph, as the King of Spain and its attendant South American colonies, Bolívar decided to join the resistance movements in his native Venezuela. This movement was successful: in 1810, the group gained independence for Venezuela, and Bolívar was part of the new country's first diplomatic mission to Great Britain that same year. While he travelled, the fight against Spanish colonialization continued in his absence.
Bolívar returned to South America with a purpose: He sought to unite the Spanish-speaking countries of South America (most of the continent, with the exception of the Portuguese-speaking Brazil) into a unified republic. This so-called Admirable Campaign was launched in 1813 and, once the Venezuelan Second Republic was founded, Bolívar was nicknamed The Liberator. The new independence was immediately threatened by a civil war, however, and Bolívar fled to Jamaica. Here, he refined his ideas for a Spanish-speaking Republic. A key part of the Republic would be the position of President, a role he intended to hold for life, so that it would be immune to changing political moods. With support from countries such as Haiti, Bolívar returned to South America and—after a series of impressive military victories—succeeded in forming a new republic named Gran Colombia with himself as the president. The republic included modern Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.
The Republic of Gran Colombia did not last long. Forces within the country opposed Bolívar's ambition to create a loose federation of states resembling the United States. After declaring himself dictator and escaping a series of assassination attempts, Bolívar resigned in 1830 and accepted his exile to Europe.
García Márquez presents a fictionalized account of Bolívar's final journey from Bogotá to Europe in The General in His Labyrinth. Bolívar never reached Europe: he died on December 17, 1830, likely from tuberculosis. After his death, the republic fell apart, but he is still remembered in South America for his fight for independence.
Literary Genre: Historical Novels
The General in His Labyrinth is considered a historical novel. The novel uses real events from history—namely, the last days of Simón Bolívar—to tell a larger, fictional story. García Márquez captured the authenticity of the time period and the events depicted based on years of research and personal knowledge; García Márquez grew up near the Magdalena River where Bolívar spends his final days. Despite the years of research García Márquez conducted, the novel has been criticized for its lack of accuracy. This criticism is often applied to historical fiction, which uses the events of history as a foundation on which to build a narrative. Historical fiction, unlike works of nonfiction, does not claim to be authentic in every element: The truth about the past is woven together with narrative and genre expectation, telling a story more than it attempts to establish historical facts.
Within the genre of historical fiction, The General in His Labyrinth is categorized as a dictator novel. The dictator novel is a subgenre of historical fiction which has its roots in Latin American literature. During the 19th and 20th centuries, strong, authoritarian figures have asserted control over South American nations. Bolívar, for example, named himself as the dictator of Gran Colombia and was criticized for doing so. These political strongmen are referred to in Spanish as a caudillos, while the theme of the dictator novel is referred to locally as caudillismo. The genre challenges the role of the dictator in society, as well as the ideas of authority, authority figures, and authoritarianism in general. Examples of dictator novels include I, the Supreme by Paraguayan novelist Augusto Roa Bastos, which is set in Paraguay, and The Feast of the Goat by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, which is set in the Dominican Republic.
As a historical novel, The General in His Labyrinth marked a departure from García Márquez's usual genre. García Márquez was largely associated with magical realism, particularly for his award-winning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) though his book The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) explored many elements of the dictator novel with a fictional protagonist. Because Bolívar was a heroic historical figure, García Márquez received criticism for his depiction of the General: He was accused of profaning the legend of a heroic figure by portraying Bolívar as a flawed man, with constipation, poor health, and narcissistic tendencies. García Márquez's depiction of Bolívar is not that of a saint, which prompted politicians and national figures to refute Márquez's work. This depiction was also praised, however, for depicting Bolívar as a real person rather than an idealized legend.
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