After so many years of writing the majestic work One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marques: what is known about Macondo? Is it really a site of the author's imagination? Is it allegorically any town in our beloved and controversial Colombia? Or perhaps, is it a specific geographical site that served as inspiration for our Nobel Prize winner to develop his magical story there?
Macondo, imagination or reality
At the National University of Bogotá, there is a beautiful collection of maps, in which rests one that was drawn in 1928 commissioned by a banana company of the time. This information is mentioned in one of the documentaries of the university for the series #lahistoriadetrasdelascosas in which the historian Sebastián Diaz Ángel affirms that "on said map there is a farm called Macondo that fills a space where the specific irrigation channels of the banana plantation and next to it there is a forest that is also called Macondo, as a kind of reserve crossed by a railway line, canals and is within an even larger banana district. Districts formed not as the Colombian state does but as organized by the banana company”
Macondo time
What we all know is that Gabo or Gabito was born in Aracataca municipality of Magdalena on March 6, 1927. During this time, the presence of the aforementioned banana company called United Fruit Company was of great influence in all areas of the communities. of the region, not only in terms of the economy, but his presence was visible in culture, politics, ports and all the corners and activities of that time, which is why our Nobel Prize winner had some kind of contact with said estate, whether he saw it in passing when he was traveling through said places or ever heard his name.
Behind the inspiration of Macondo
In various investigations, trying to find the origin of the sound word Macondo, some scholars have found a softwood tree, apparently of African origin, which is found under different names in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and in Colombia where it is called Macondo. Others say they have seen play in the Caribbean, a game that consists of throwing a spinning top or pirinola and when one of its six sides that had the Macondo tree drawn on it came out, the winner was defined. Hence the game also got the name of Macondo. This made us think for a long time that Gabo had been inspired by this tree or game to name the setting of his novel.
But it is in 2002 in the memories Live to tell them, when the same writer says: “The train made a stop at a station with no town and shortly after it passed the only banana farm on the road that had its name written on the door: Macondo. This word had caught my attention since the first trips with my grandfather, but it was only as an adult that I discovered that I liked its poetic resonance .
So now we know where the word Macondo comes from!
