Cien aos de soledad: The Novel as Myth and Archive

Author(s): Roberto Gonzlez Echevarra

Source: MLN, Vol. 99, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 1984), pp. 358-380
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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de soledad:The Novel as
Cienanfos
MythandArchive
RobertoGonza'lezEchevarria

I
To most readers the Latin American novel must appear to be obsessed with Latin American historyand myth.1Carlos Fuentes'
TerraNostra(1976), for instance,retellsmuch of sixteenth-century
Spanish history,including the conquest of Mexico, while also incorporating pre-Columbian mythsprophesyingthat momentous
event. Alejo Carpentier'sEl siglode las luces(1962) narratesLatin
America's transition from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth, focusing on the impact of the French Revolution in the
Caribbean. Carpentier also delves into Afro-Antilleanlore to show
how Blacks interpretedthe changes brought about by these political upheavals. Mario Vargas Llosa's recent La guerradel fin del
mundo(1980) tells again the historyof Canudos, the rebellion of
religious fanatics in the backlands of Brazil, which had already
been the object of Euclydes da Cunha's classic Os Sertoes(1902).
Vargas Llosa's ambitiouswork also examines in painstakingdetail
the recreation of a Christian mythologyin the New World. The
listof Latin American novels dealing withLatin American history
and mythis very long indeed, and it includes the work of many
lesser known, younger writers.Abel Posse's Daimon (1978) retells
1 This
paper was originallythe keynoteaddress in a Symposiumon the Works
of Gabriel Garcia Marquez held at Wesleyan University,on April 9, 1983. I wish
to thankProfessorsDiana S. Goodrich and Carlos J. Alonso fortheirinvitationand
hospitality.I also wish to thank the Guggenheim Foundation for a fellowshipthat
allowed me to do some of the research thatled to manyof the ideas put forth'here.

358

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359

the storyof Aguirre, the sixteenth-centuryrebel who declared

himselffree fromthe Spanish Crown and founded his own independent countryin South America.2As the titleof the book suggests,Posse's fictioncenters on the mythof the Devil and his reputed preferenceof the New World as residence and field of operations, a theme that had been importantin two earlier Latin
American masterpieces: Alejo Carpentier's El reinode estemundo
(1949) and Joao Guimaraes Rosa's Grandesertdo,veredas(1956).3
Given thatmythsare storieswhose main concern is withorigins,
the interestof Latin American fictionin Latin American history
and mythis understandable. On the one hand, American history
has always held the promise of being not only new but different,
of being, as it were, the only new history,preservingthe force of
the oxymoron. On the other hand, the novel, which appears to
have emerged in the sixteenthcenturyat the same time as American history,is the only modern genre, the only literaryformthat
is modern not only in the chronologicalsense, but also because it
has persistedfor centurieswithouta poetics,alwaysin defiance of
the verynotion of genre.4Is it possible,then,to make of American
historya storyas enduring as the old myths?Can Latin American
historybe as resilientand as useful a hermeneutictool forprobing
human nature as the classical myths,and can the novel be the
vehicle for the transmissionof these new myths?Is it at all con2 Abel Posse
(Argentina,1934), is the author of Los Bogavantes(1967), La bocadel
tigre(1971 -Premio Nacional de Literatura),Daimon(1978) and Losperrosdelparaiso
(1983).
3 The
topic of the presence of the Devil in Latin American culture has been the
object of many studies. A useful introductionto the topic in relation to literature
may be found in Sabino Sola, El diabloy lo diab6licoen las letrasamericanas(Madrid:
Castalia, 1973).
4
Ralph Freedman made a useful suggestionabout the studyof the originsof the
novel thatis mypointof departure here: "Instead of separatinggenresor subgenres
artificiallyand then accounting for exceptions by stipulatingmixturesand compounds, it is simpler to view all of prose fictionas a unityand to trace particular
strandsto differentorigins,strandswhichwould include not onlythe Englishnovel
of manners, or the post-medievalromance, or the Gothic novel, but also the medieval allegory,the German Bildungsroman,
or the picaresque. Some of these strands
may be close to folk materialor to classical epics, others may have modeled themselves on traveloguesand journalisticdescriptionsof events,and othersagain suggest drawing-roomcomedies and even lyricalprose poetry,yet all, to varyingdegrees, seem to mirrorlife in aestheticallydefined worlds (life as myth,as structure
of ideas, as worlds of feelingor quotidian reality).. ." "The Possibilityof a Theory
of the Novel," in The Disciplinesof Criticism.
Essaysin LiteraryTheory,
Interpretation,
and History,
ed. Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene and LowryNelson Jr. (New Haven:
Yale UniversityPress, 1968), p. 65.

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360

ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

ceivable, in the modern, post-oral period, to create myths?Latin

American historyis to the Latin American narrativewhat the epic
themes are to Spanish literature:a constantwhose mode of appearance mayvary,but whichrarelyis omitted.A book like Ram6n
Menendez Pidal's La epopeyacastellanaa travesde la literatura
espanola
could be writtenabout the presence of Latin American historyin
the Latin American narrative.The question is, of course, how can
mythand historycoexist in the novel? How can foundingstories
be told in thismost ironic and self-reflexive
of genres? It seems to
me thatthe enormous and deserved success of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece Cien anos de soledadis due to the unrelenting
way in which these forms of storytellingare interwovenin the
novel.
II
In order to explain why and how mythand historyare present
in Cien anos de soledadI must firstgive a briefoutline of the broad
theorywithinwhich my argumentsare couched, a theorythat, I
hope, will allow me to bring a new perspectiveto the studyof the
origins and evolution of the Latin American narrative. It is my
hypothesisthatthe novel,havingno fixedformof itsown, assumes
that of a given document endowed with truth-bearingpower by
societyat specificmomentsin history.The novel, or what is called
the novel at various points in history,mimicssuch documents to
show theirconventionality,theirsubjectionto rules of textualengenderment similar to those governing literature,which in turn
reflectthose of language itself.The power to endow the textwith
the capacityto bear the truthis shown to lie outside the text; it is
an exogenous agent that bestowsauthorityupon a certainkind of
document owing to the ideological structureof the period. In sixteenth-century
Spain these documents were legal ones. The form
assumed bythe Picaresque was thatof a relacion(report,deposition,
letterbearing witnessto something),because this kind of written
reportbelonged to the huge imperial bureaucracythroughwhich
power was administeredin Spain and its possessions.5The early
historyof Latin America, as well as the firstfictionsof and about
Latin America, are told in the rhetoricalmolds furnishedby the
5 For furtherdetails on
this,see my "The Life and Adventuresof Cipi6n: Cervantes and the Picaresque," Diacritics,10, no. 3 (1980), pp. 15-26.

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361

notarial arts. These cartasde relacionwere not simplylettersnor

maps, but also chartersof the newly discovered territories.6Both
the writerand the territorywere enfranchisedthroughthe power
of this document which, like Lazarillo's text, is addressed to a
higher authority. The pervasiveness of legal rhetoric in early
American historiographycould hardly be exaggerated. Officially
appointed historians(cronistamayorde Indias) were assigned by the
Crown and the Royal Council of the Indies a set of rules which
included ways of subsuming these relacionesinto their works.
American historyand fiction,the narrativeof America,were first
created withinthe language of the law, a secular totalitythatguaranteed truth and made its circulation possible. It is withinthis
totalitythat Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, wrote his Comentarios
6 On the relaciones there are the following studies: Vittorio Salvadorini,
"Las 'relaciones'de Hernan Cortes,"Thesaurus(Boletin del InstitutoCaro y Cuervo),
18, no. 1 (1963), pp. 77-97; Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria,"Jose Arrom,autor de
la Relacion acerca de las antigiiedadesde los indios:picaresca e historia,"Relecturas:
cubana(Caracas: Monte Avila, 1976), pp. 17-35; WalterMignolo,
de literatura
estudios
"Cartas, cr6nicas y relaciones del descubrimientoy la conquista," in Luis Ifiigo
Tomo I "Epoca
Madrigal, coordinador, Historiade la literaturahispanoamericana,
Colonial" (Madrid: Catedra, 1982), pp. 57-110; Tzvetan Todorov, La conquetede
La questionde l'autre(Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1982); Roberto Gonzalez
l'Amerique.
Echevarria, "Humanismo, ret6rica y las cr6nicas de la conquista," Isla a su vuelo
sobreliteratura
(Madrid: Porrua, 1983), pp.
hispanoamericana
fugitiva:ensayoscriticos
9-25. Mignolo's work is particularlyuseful, for he carefullydistinguishesbetween
the various kindsof discourse available to chroniclersin thecolonial period, without
fallinginto the trap of consideringtheirworkliteraryor imaginativebefore taking
intoaccount firstwhateach textwas (letter,chronicle,history,etc.). Todorov's book
rediscoversa good deal of materialavailable in the extantbibliographyin Spanish,
which he apparentlydid not consult, and reaches conclusions that are fairlypredictable. Todorov was unable to keep clear of the dramatic moral issues raised by
the conquest of the New World, which have continued to determinemuch of the
scholarshipon the colonial period. His confessionof being chieflya moralistdoes
not absolve him for being banale: "Pour Cortes, la conquete du savoir conduit a
celle du pouvoir.Je retiensde lui la conquete du savoir,meme si c'est pour resister
au pouvoir. II y a quelque legerete a se contenterde condamner les mechants
conquistadores et a regretterles bons Indiens, comme s'il suffisaintd'identifierle
mal pour le combattre.Ce n'est pas faire l'eloge des conquistadoresque de reconnaitre,ici ou la, leur superiorite;il est necessaired'analyserles armes de la conquete
si l'on veut pouvoir l'arreterun jour. Car les conquetes n'appartiennentpas qu'au
passe" (p. 258). In my own work, as sketched brieflyin the text of this paper, I
intend to study how through notarial rhetoricthe newlydeployed Spanish State
controlledhistoricaldiscourse. To do so one has to followthe developmentof legal
rhetoric from Bologna to the Renaissance, and then its application in America
throughthe various institutionscreated or developed in the late XV and earlyXVI
century.For the historyof legal rhetoricsee Rafael Nufiez Lagos, El documento
medievaly Rolandino(notasde historia)(Madrid: Editorial G6ngora, 1951). I draw
from Nufiez Lagos' extensive discussion of the carta my assertionconcerningthe
cartasde relaci6n.

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362

ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

realesde los incas (1609), for one must not forgetthat the mestizo's
book is an appeal to restore his father'sname to an honorable
position.7
In the nineteenthcenturyLatin America is narrated through
the mediation of a new totality:science, and more specificallythe
scientificconsciousnessthatexpresses itselfin the language of travelers whojourneyed across the Continent,writingabout its nature
and about themselves.This was the second European discoveryof
America, and the scientistswere the chroniclersof this second
discovery.Except for a ground-breakingarticle by Jean Franco,
littleattentionhas been paid to this phenomenom, whose dimensions can be glimpsed by looking at the recent TravelAccountsand
Descriptions
ofLatinAmericaand theCaribbean1800-1920: A Selected
compiled by Thomas L. Welch and MyriamFigueras,
Bibliography,
and published by the Organization of American States (1982).8
Though selective,thisvolume containsnearlythreehundred pages
of tightlypacked entries. The names of these scientifictravelers
are quite impressive,ranging from Charles Darwin to Alexander
von Humboldt, and including the likes of the Schomburgk
7 For details of Garcilaso's legal maneuvers,see John Grier Varner, El Inca. The
Lifeand TimesofGarcilasode la Vega (Austin and London: The Universityof Texas
Press, 1968), pp. 213-26. The firstcenturyof colonization was characterizedby
spectacularlegal cases thatmatched the fabulous adventuresof the conquistadores:
firstColumbus and his successors,later Cortes and Pizarro. Even an adventurer
and marvellous storytellerlike Alvar Nufiez Cabeza de Vaca ended his life embroiled in costlylegal proceedings that left him as devoid of wordlygoods at the
end of his life as he had been among the Indians of North America.
8Jean Franco, "Un viaje poco romantico: viajeros britanicoshacia Sudamerica:
1818-28,"Escritura(Caracas), Afio4, no. 7 (1979), pp. 129-41. On scientifictravelers
there is also: Christian C. Chester,Jr., "Hispanic Literatureof Exploration,"Exploration(Journal of the MLA Special Session on the Literatureof Explorationand
Travel), 1 (1973), pp. 42-46; Evelio A. Echevarria,"La conquista del Chimborazo,"
Americas(Washington),35, no. 5 (1983), pp. 22-31; Hans Galinsky,"Exploring the
'Exploration Report' and Its Image of the Overseas World: Spanish, French, and
English Variants of a Common Form Type in Early American Literature,"Early
AmericanLiterature,12 (1977), pp. 5-24; C. Harvey Gardiner, "Foreign Travelers'
Accounts of Mexico, 1810-1910," The Americas,8 (1952), pp. 321-51; C. Harvey
AccrossthePampasand AmongtheAndes(Carbondale: Southern
Gardiner,ed. Journeys
Illinois UniversityPress, 1967); Mary Sayre Haverstock, "La fascinaci6n de los
Andes," Americas,35, no. 1 (1983), pp. 37-41; Ronald Hilton, "The Significanceof
Travel LiteratureWithSpecial Referenceto the Spanish- and Portuguese-Speaking
World," Hispania, 49 (1966), 836-45; S. Samuel Trifilo, "NineteenthCenturyEnglish Travel Books on Argentina: A Revival in Spanish Translation,"Hispania, 41
(1958), 491-96; VictorWolfgangVon Hagen, SouthAmericaCalledThem:Explorations
of theGreatNaturalistsLa Condamine,Humboldt,Darwin,Spruce(New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1945).

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363

brothers,Robertson, Koch-Grunbergh,and many others. Their

fictionalcounterpartis ProfessorChallenger in Sir ArthurConan
Doyle's The Lost World,whose voyage to the origins of nature
takes him to South America. A scientificconsciousness that expressesitselfin the language of the traveloguemediatesthe writing
of Latin American fiction in the nineteenth century. Domingo
Faustino Sarmiento'sFacundo (1845), Anselmo Suarez y Romero's
Francisco(1880), and da Cunha's Os Sertoes(1902) describe Latin
American nature and societythroughthe conceptual grid of ninescience. Like the chronicles,whichwere oftenlegal
teenth-century
documents,these are books thathave a functionalvalue and begin
outside of literature.Franciscowas originallypart of a report sent
to the British authoritiesdocumenting the horrors of slaveryin
Cuba.9 Latin America's historyand the storiesof adventurers,who
seek to discover the innermostsecrets of the New World, that is
to say its newness and difference,are narrated throughthe mind
of a writerqualified by science to search for the truth.Both the
self and science are, as Franco suggests,products of the power of
the new European commercialempires. Their capacityto find the
truthis due not to the cogencyof the scientificmethod,but to the
ideological constructthatsupportsthem,a constructwhose source
of strengthlies outside the text. The "mind" that analyzes and
classifiesis made presentthroughthe rhetoricalconventionsof the
travelogue. Sarmiento ranges over the Argentinelandscape in a
and self-affirmation.
In his book he dons
process of self-discovery
the mask of the travelingsavant, distanced from the realitythat
he interpretsand classifiesaccording to the interveningtenetsof
scientificinquiry.This particularmediationprevailsuntilthe crisis
of the nineteen-twenties
and the so-called novelade la tierra.10
The modern novel, of which Cien afos de soledadis perhaps the
best known example, avails itselfof a differentkind of mediation:
anthropology.Now the promise of knowledge is to be found in a
9 The book was not included in the report,whichdid contain the
autobiography
of the Cuban slave poet Juan Francisco Manzano: Poemsbya Slave in theIsland of
Cuba, RecentlyLiberated;translated
fromtheSpanishbyR. R. Madden,M.D., withthe
Two
HistoryoftheEarlyLifeoftheNegroPoet,Written
byHimself;To Whichareprefixed
PiecesDescriptive
(London: Thomas Ward and
of Cuban Slaveryand theSlave-Traffic
Co., 1840). There is a modern edition by Edward J. Mullen (Hamden: Archon
Books, 1981).
10On the novelade la tierrathe most advanced workis
by Carlos J. Alonso in his,
"The novelade la tierra:The Discourse of the Autochthonous,"Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University,1983.

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ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

scientificdiscourse whose object is not nature, but language and

myth.The truth-bearingdocument the novel imitatesnow is the
anthropologicaltreatise.The object of such studies is to discover
the origin and source of a culture's own version of its values, beliefs, and historythrough a culling and re-tellingof its myths.
Readers of Mauss, Van Gennep, Levi-Bruhl,Frazer, Levi-Strauss
and other anthropologistswill no doubt recognize the inherent
complexityof such works.In order to understandanotherculture,
the anthropologisthas to know his own to the point where he can
distance himselffromit. But thisdistancinginvolvesa kind of selfeffacement,too. This dramatic process has been beautifullyexa book in which he
pounded by Levi-Strauss in Tristestropiques,
devotes a good deal of time to his stay in Brazil. John Freccero
and Eduardo Gonzalez have studied how much this book has in
common withAlejo Carpentier'sLos pasosperdidos,a textto which
we shall have to returnshortly.11
Anthropology is the mediating element in the modern Latin
American novel because of the place this discipline occupies in
Western thought, and also because of the place Latin America
occupies within that discipline. Anthropologyis a way through
which Western culture indirectlyaffixesits own cultural identity.
This identity,which the anthropologiststrugglesto shed, is one
thatmastersnon-historicalculturesthroughknowledge,by making
them the object of its study.Anthropologytranslatesinto the language of the West the cultures of the others,and in the process
establishesits own form of self-knowledgethrough a kind of annihilationof the self. Existentialphilosophy,as in Heidegger, Ortega and Sartre, is akin to this process, because it is only through
an awareness of the other that Western thought can pretend to
wind back to the origin of being. The native,that is to say Latin
Americans or in general those who could be delicatelycalled the
inhabitantsof the post-colonialworld, provide the model for this
reductionand beginning.The nativehas timelessstoriesto explain
his changeless society.These stories,these myths,are like those of
the West in the distant past, before they became a mythology.
Freud, Frazer,Jung, and Heidegger sketcha returnto or a retention of those origins. Anthropologyfinds their analogon in the
11John Freccero,"Reader's Report,"Cornell University.JohnM.
OlinLibrary
BookmarkSeries,no. 36 (April 1968); Eduardo Gonzalez, Alejo Carpentier:el tiempodel
hombre
(Caracas: Monte Avila, 1978).

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contemporaryworld of the native. The modern Latin American

novel is writtenthroughthe model of such anthopologicalstudies.
novel turned Latin
In the same way that the nineteenth-century
America into the object of scientificstudy,the modern Latin American novel transformsLatin American historyinto originarymyth
in order to see itselfas other. The theogonic Buendia familyin
Cien anos de soledadowes its organizationto this phenomenon.
The historical data behind my hypothesis concerning the
modern novel and itsrelationto an anthropologicalmodel are vast.
Miguel Angel Asturias, as is known, went to Paris to study ethnology under Georges Raynaud, an experience that produced in
1930 his influentialLeyendasde Guatemala.One of Asturias'classmates at La Sorbonne was none other than Alejo Carpentier,who
was then writingiEcue-Yamba-O!(1933), a novel that is, in many
ways, an ethnological study of Cuban Blacks. Another Cuban
writerwas also preparing herself in Paris in those years: Lydia
Cabrera, whose pioneering studies of Afro-Cubanlore would culminate in her classic El monte(1954). In more recenttimesSevero
Sarduy has been a studentof Roger Bastide, and his De dondeson
loscantantesis, among manyother things,a sortof anthropological
study of Cuban culture, seen as the synthesisof the three main
groups inhabitingthe island: the Spanish, the Africans,and the
Chinese. Borges' 1933 essay "El arte narrativey la magia," where
the art of storytellingis compared to two kinds of primitivecures
outlined in The GoldenBough, is but one indication of the wideranging impact of Frazer on Latin America. Traces of this influence are visiblein Octavio Paz, Carpentier,Carlos Fuentes,as well
as in many others. Lydia Cabrera is perhaps the most significant
author here, for she stands for a very importantkind of Latin
Americanwriterwho sitsastrideboth literatureand anthropology.
Cabrera is a first-rateshort-storywriter,just as she is a first-rate
anthropologist.Her teacher, Fernando Ortiz, was also claimed by
literatureand his influence upon modern Cuban lettersis vast.
Examples of writersstraddling literatureand anthropologyare
plentiful.The most notorious in recent years is Miguel Barnet,
not only containsall the perplexing
whose Biografiade un cimarr6n
dualities and contradictionsof that relationship,but is also the
perfectexample of a book whose formis given by anthropology,
but whichwinds up in the fieldof the novel. But the PeruvianJose
Maria Arguedas is without a doubt the most poignant figure
a novelist,anthropologist,and
among theseanthropologist-writers:

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ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

raised by Indians, Arguedas whose firstlanguage was Quechua,

not Spanish, carried withinhim the contradictionsand the tragedy
inherentin the relationshipbetween anthropologyand literature
withsuch intensitythat he chose suicide in 1969.
Arguedas' radical gesture is a literalversionof the reductionof
the self inherentin the process of re-writingLatin American historyin the contextof the anthropologicalmediation.It is a gesture
that has its literarycounterpart,as we shall see, in Cien anos de
soledad.Arguedas' radical effacementof self,like the one practiced
by Barnet as he turns or pretends to turn himselfinto Esteban
Montejo, is part of the "unwriting"involved in the modern Latin
American narrative.For the modern Latin American narrativeis
an "unwriting,"as much as it is a rewriting,of Latin American
historyfromthe anthropologicalperspectivementioned.The previous writingsof historyare undone as the new one is attempted;
this is why the chronicles and the nineteenth-centuryscientific
traveloguesare present in what I will call the Archive in modern
fiction. The new narrative unwinds the historytold in the old
chroniclesby showingthat that historywas made up of a series of
conventionaltopics,whose coherence and authoritydepended on
the codified beliefs of a period whose ideological structureis no
longer current. Those codified beliefs were the law. Like the
Spanish galleon crumblingin thejungle in Cien afos de soledad,the
historyin the chronicles is a voided presence. Likewise, modern
novels disassemblethe powerfulscientificconstructthroughwhich
Latin America was narratedby demonstrating
nineteenth-century
the relativity
of itsmostcherishedconcepts,or by renderingliteral
the metaphors on which such knowledge is based. The power of
genealogy is literalized in Cien anos de soledad by, among other
devices, the streamof blood thatflowsfromJose Arcadio's wound
to Ursula. The presence of the European travelersRobertsonand
Bonplant in Roa Bastos' Yo el Supremoatteststo thissecond voided
presence. But the paradigmatic text among these unwritingsis
Alejo Carpentier's 1953 Los pasosperdidos.In thisfirst-personnarrative,a modern man travels up the Orinoco river in search of
nativemusical instrumentsthatwillunveil the originsof music. As
he travels upriver-clearly the river in which Melquiades dies
many years later-the narrator-protagonist writes about his
voyage as if it were a journey back not only through time, but
through recorded history. Hence he passes through various
epochs, the mostsignificantof whichare the nineteenthcenturyof

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the travelingEuropean scientists,who provide him witha way of

interpretingnature and time, and the colonial period of Latin
American history,characterizedby activitiessuch as the founding
of cities,the indoctrinationof Indians, the beginning,in short,of
historyin the New World as set down by the charters of those
institutions-the cartas de relacion. There are other epochs,
reaching all the way back to pre-historictimes,but the above are
the most importantones, because they are present not only thematically,but through the mediating textsthemselves:the era of
the petroglyphsis narrated in the language of the scientifictravelogue, and the foundingof citiesin thatof thelegalisticchronicles.
The narrator-protagonist's
text is organized according to a set of
rhetoricalconventionsthatreveal themselvesas such in the process
of reading. In the fictionof the novel, the narrator-protagonist
cannot remain in what he has termed the Valley-of-Time-Detained, the origin of time and history, for he needs to secure
enough paper to set down the music he has begun to compose. In
the fiction the quest for that degree zero of time and history
whence to inscribe a rewritingof Latin America historyhas not
been found. But in the writingof the novel a clearing has been
for the new Latin
reached, a razing that becomes a starting-point
American narrative.That razing involves the various mediations
through which Latin America was narrated, the systems from
which fictionborrowed truth-bearingforms,erased to assume the
new mediation, which requires this level-groundof self and history.This is the point at which Cien anos de soledadbegins,and the
reason whythe world is so recent"thatmanythingslacked names,
and in order to indicate them it was necessaryto point" (p. 1).12It
is also the point thatthe last Aureliano seeks at the veryend when
he discovers how to translateMelquiades' manuscripts.He reads
in a frenzy"discoveringthe firstindicationsof his own being in a
lascivious grandfather who let himself be frivolouslydragged
across a hallucinated plateau in search of a beautifulwoman who
would not make him happy" (p. 421). What is leftfor fictionafter
Lospasosperdidos?Clearly,onlyfiction;but novelsare nevercontent
with fiction,they must pretend to deal with the truth.So, paradoxically enough, the truthwith which they deal in the modern
12All referencesare to Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, One HundredYearsofSolitude,tr.
GregoryRabassa (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), and Cienanosdesoledad(Buenos
Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1967).

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ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

period is fictionitself.That is to say, the fictionsLatin American

culturehas created to understanditself,the mythsabout the origin
of its history.
III
The importance of mythin Cien anos de soledadwas noticed by
the firstcommentatorsof the novel and later studies have again
taken up the topic.13It seems clear thatmythappears in the novel
in the followingguises: 1) there are storiesthat resembleclassical
or biblical myths,most notably the Flood, but also Paradise, the
Seven Plagues, Apocalypse, and the proliferationof the family,
with its complicated genealogy, has an Old Testament ring to it;
2) there are characters who are reminiscentof mythicalheroes:
Jose Arcadio Buendia, who is a sort of Moses, Rebeca, who is like
a female Perseus, Remedios, who ascends in a flutterof white
sheets in a scene thatis suggestivenotjust of the Ascension of the
Virgin,but more specificallyof the popular renditionsof the event
in religious prints; 3) certain stories have a general mythiccharacter in thattheycontain supernaturalelements,as in the case just
mentioned,and also whenJose Arcadio's blood returnsto Ursula;
13 See, for
example, Ricardo Gull6n, Garcia Mdrquezo el olvidadoartede contar
(Madrid: Taurus, 1970) and Carmen Arnau, El mundomiticode GabrielGarciaMdrquez (Barcelona: Ediciones Peninsula, 1971). There have been many studies since
along these lines. The most convincingis by Michael Palencia-Roth,"Los pergaminos de Aureliano Babilonia," RevistaIberoamericana,
nos. 123-124 (1983), pp. 40317. Palencia-Roth'ssplendid piece argues in favor of the Biblical mythof Apocalypse as the principal one in the organization of the novel and insists on the
influence of Borges on Garcia Marquez. There is much to be learned from his
interpretation.However, it seems to me that Palencia-Roth allows himselfto be
intoxicatedby the mythicquality of the novel when he writesthat the meetingof
times at the end elevates time to eternity, and jumps to the conclusion that
Melquiades' manuscriptsare the novel. As I will argue furtherbelow, no myth
controlsthe novel, and no transcendenceis allowed by the constantlyundermined
and underminingworld of writing.To believe in the possibilityof eternal time,or
to thinkthat there is a text to which the titleof the novel gives a name, requires
that we accept that visions such as Colonel Aureliano Buendia and Aureliano Babilonia have in the fictionof the novel existoutside of the verbal realm. If we could
escape the verbal,then the sortof simultaneityand atemporalityof whichPalenciaRoth speaks so persuasively,and which are characteristicof myth,would be possible. On the influenceof Borges on Garcia Marquez, see: Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria,"With Borges in Macondo," Diacritics,2, No. 1 (1972), pp. 57-60 and Emir
Rodriguez Monegal, "One HundredYearsof Solitude:The Last Three Pages," Books
Abroad,47 (1973), 485-89. I have learned a good deal from this article,in which
the author singles out Melquiades' room as an importantfeatureof the novel, and
insistson the notion of the Book as a key to an understandingof the text.

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369

4) the beginningof the whole story,which is found, as in mythin

a tale of violence and incest. All four, of course, commingle,and
because Cien anos de soledadtells a storyof foundationsor origins,
the whole novel has a mythicair about it. No single mythor mythologyprevails. Instead the various ways in which mythappears
givethe whole novel a mythicalcharacterwithoutitbeing a distinct
versionof one given myth.
At the same time,thereis lurkingin the backgroundof the story
the overall pattern of Latin American history,both as a general
design made up of various keyeventsand eras, and in the presence
of specificcharactersand incidentsthatseem to referto real people
and happenings. Thus we have a period of discoveryand conquest,
when Jose Arcadio Buendia and the original familiessettle Macondo. There is in this part of the book littlesense that Macondo
belongs to a larger political unit, but such isolation was in fact
typicalof Latin America's towns in the colonial period. Even the
viceroyaltieslived in virtualisolation from the metropolitangovernment.14The appearance of Apolinar Moscoso and his barefoot
soldiers is the beginning of the republican era, which is immediately followed by the outbreak of the civil wars in which Colonel
Aureliano Buendia distinguisheshimself.Though Colombia is the
most obvious model for this period, nearly the entire continent
sufferedfromcivilstrifeduring the nineteenthcentury,a process
thatled to the emergence of dictatorsand caudillos.This period is
followedby the era of neocolonial dominationby the United States
and the struggles against it in most Latin American countries.
These culminatein the novel withthe general strikeand the massacre of the workers.There are, unfortunately,countless models
for this last, clearly defined period in the novel. Afterthe flood,
thereis a time of decay before the apocalypticwind thatrazes the
town at the end. The liberal priestand the various militarytypes
who surround Colonel Aureliano Buendia, are among the characterswithcounterpartsin Latin American history.Lucila I. Mena
has already demonstratedthat some of the historicalincidentsin
the novel can be documented, and a sedulous criticwithtime and

14 C. H.
Haring, The SpanishEmpirein America(New York: Harcourt, Brace and
World, Inc., 1963 [1947]). Such isolationdid not mean thatthe colonial townswere
independent, nor that they could develop according to the whimsof theirinhabitants.

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ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

the proper librarycan probably document many others.15But to

carrythis sort of research much furtherthan Mena has would be
a rathergratuitouscriticalexercise.Set againstthe global,totalizing
thrustof the novel are these historicaldetails which,withoutbeing
specific,are nonethelesstrue in a general sense. Each of the above
mentioned epochs is evoked not only through major historical
events,but also through allusion to specificminor incidentsand
characters. For instance, early Macondo is inhabited by a dejure
aristocracymade up of the founding families,which is analogous
to that of colonial Latin America, where conquistadoresand their
descendants enjoyed certain privilegesand exemptions.16
The blend of mythicelements and Latin American historyin
Cien anos de soledadreveals a desire to found an American myth.
Latin American historyis set on the same level as mythicstories,
thereforeit too becomes a sort of myth.The lack of specificityof
the various incidents,whichappear to representseveral related or
similarevents,points in this direction.The Latin American myth
is thisstoryof foundation,articulatedthroughindependence, civil
war,struggleagainst U.S. colonialism,all cast withina genealogical
line thatweaves in and out, repeatingnames and characters.There
is a Whitmanianthrustto the brash declarationof the existenceof
a literarylanguage that underlies this mixture of historicalfact
withmythicstoryin Cien anos de soledad.The novel is in factintimately related to similar effortsin poetry,such as the ones by
Neruda in his Canto Generaland Octavio Paz in his Piedra de Sol.
CantoGeneralin particularis one of the most importantsources of
Garcia Marquez's novel. Framed by Genesis and Apocalypse,
fraughtwith incest and violence, the storyof the Buendia family
thusstands as Latin Americanhistorycast in the language of myth,
an unresolvedmixturethatboth beckonsand bewildersthe reader.
This dualityis presentthroughoutCienanosdesoledadseparating
the world of writingfrom the atemporal world of myth.But the
play of contradictionsissuing fromthisdualityreaches a synthesis
that is perhaps the most importantfeature of the novel. As we
have seen, mythrepresentsthe origin. Latin America's historyis
narrated in the language of mythbecause it is the other, represented by incest,taboo, and the primitiveact of naming. The nov15 Lucila I. Mena, "La
huelga bananera como expressi6n de lo 'real maravilloso'
americano en Cien anos de soledad,"BulletinHispanique,74 (1972), 379-405.
16 For details on this see
Haring and Varner, op. cit. Much of the legal jousting
mentionedbefore had to do withthe claims of this spurious aristocracy.

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371

el's persistentpreoccupationwithgenealogyand withsupernatural

acts performedby various charactersbelongs to thisrealm.17History,on the other hand, is critical,temporal,and dwellsin a special
place: Melquiades' room in the Buendia house, which I have
chosen to call the Archive. The room is full of books and manuscripts,and has a time of its own. It is here that a succession of
charactersattemptto decipher Melquiades' parchments,and the
last Aureliano, in an epiphanic inspiration,orally translatesthe
whole (or nearly the whole) manuscript and dies. What occurs
here, the textof the novel suggests,is unrepeatable. In the fiction
of the novel,on the otherhand, thereare manyrepetitions.Ursula,
for instance, twice feels that time is going around in circles and
thatmembersof the familyfollowone or two patternsof behavior
indicatedby theirnames. Time is circularin the fiction,but not in
Melquiades' room. The Archiveappears to be linear and teleological, while the plot of the novel itselfis repetitiveand mythical.
Cien anos de soledadis made up of two main stories:one has to do
with the familyand culminates in the birthof the child with the
pig's tail, while the other is concerned with the interpretationof
Melquiades' manuscript,a linear suspense storythatculminatesin
Aureliano's final discovery of the key to the translation of the
parchments.
That there should be a special abode for documents and books
in Cien anos de soledad should come as no suprise to readers of
modern Latin American fiction.In spite of its apparent novelty,
thereare such enclosures in Aura,Yo el Supremo,
El arpay la sombra,
Cr6nicade una muerteanunciada and OppianoLicario,to mentiona
few of the novels where it plays a prominentrole. What is characteristicof the Archiveis: 1) the presence not only of history,but
of previous mediatingelementsthroughwhichit was narrated,be
it the legal documents of colonial times or the scientificones of
the nineteenthcentury;2) the existenceof an inner historianwho
reads the texts,interpretsand writesthem; 3) and finallythe presence of an unfinishedmanuscriptthatthe inner historianis trying
to complete. In Cien anos de soledadthe most tenuous presence is
17Patricia Tobin has writtenan
illuminatingchapter on genealogy in Cien anos
de soledadin her Timeand theNovel.The GenealogicalImperative
(Princeton:Princeton
University Press, 1978). Another excellent study, carried out incidentally by
someone trained in anthropology,is Mercedes L6pez-Baralt's "Cien anos de soledad:
cultura e historialatinoamericanasreplanteadas en el idioma del parentesco,"Revistade EstudiosHispdnicos(San Juan de Puerto Rico), afo 6 (1979), pp. 153-75.

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ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

the legal texts,but one can inferit fromthe allusions to the chronicles that were in fact relaciones,and particularlyin the founding
of Macondo, for the foundingof cities,primordialactivityof conquistadores, was closely connected to the writingof history.The
vagueness of this presence is only so in relationto the others,for
at least two criticshave convincinglyargued in favor of the overwhelminginfluenceof the chroniclesin Cien anos de soledad.18The
18Iris M. Zavala, "Cien anos de soledad,cr6nica de Indias,"Insula, no. 286 (1970),
pp. 3, 11; Selma Calasans Rodrigues, "Cien anos de soledad y las cr6nicas de la
conquista,"Revistade la Universidadde Mexico,38, no. 23 (1983), pp. 13-16. Garcia
Marquez's interestin the cr6nicasde Indias, established beyond doubt in Zavala's
article,was made evident again in his speech acceptingthe Nobel Prize: "Los cronistas de Indias nos legaron otros incontables [testimoniesof astonishingevents
and thingsin the New World]. El Dorado, nuestropais ilusoriotan codiciado, figur6
en mapas numerosos durante largos anos, cambiando de lugar y de forma segun
la fantasiade los cart6grafos.En busca de la fuentede la eternajuventud,el mitico
Alvar Nfiez Cabeza de Vaca explor6 durante ocho afos el norte de Mexico [sic],
en una expedici6n venatica cuyos miembros se comieron unos a otros, y s6lo llegaron cinco de los 600 que la emprendieron.Uno de los tantosmisteriosque nunca
fueron descifrados,es el de las once mil mulas cargadas con cien librasde oro cada
una, que un dia salieron del Cuzco para pagar el rescate de Atahualpa y nunca
llegaron a su destino. Mas tarde, durante la colonia, se vendian en Cartagena de
Indias unas gallinas criadas en tierrasde Aluvi6n,en cuyas mollejas se encontraban
piedrecitas de oro." El Mundo (San Juan de Puerto Rico), Sunday, December 12,
1982, p. 21-C. In a long interviewpublished as a book in that same year, he said:
"Yo habia leido con mucho interesa Crist6bal Col6n, a Pigafettay a los cronistas
de Indias, que tenian una visi6n original [del Caribe], y habia leido a Salgari y a
conPlinioApuleyoMendoza(Bogota:
Conrad.. ." El olorde la guayaba.Conversaciones
Editorial La Oveja Negra, 1982), p. 32. The earlyhistoryof Macondo furnishedin
"Los funeralesde la Mama Grande" linksthe originsof the town to colonial Latin
America through legal documents settingdown the proprietaryrightsof the Matriarch: "Reducido a sus proporciones reales, el patrimonio fisico [de la Mama
Grande] se reducia a tres encomiendas adjudicadas por Cedula Real durante la
Colonia, y que con el transcursodel tiempo,en virtudde intrincadosmatrimonios
de conveniencia,se habian acumulado bajo el dominio de la Mama Grande. En ese
territorioocioso, sin limitesdefinidos,que abarcaba cinco municipiosy en el cual
no se sembr6 nunca un solo grano por cuenta de los propietarios,vivian a titulo
de arrendatarias 352 familias." Los funeralesde la Mamd Grande (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Sudamericana, 1967), pp. 134-35. In Cr6nicade una muerte
anunciada,the
Archive is full of colonial documents: "Todo lo que sabemos de su caracter [the
lawyerwhose versionof the crime would have been the firstof the storybeing told]
es aprendido en el sumario, que numerosas personas me ayudaron a buscar veinte
afos despues del crimen en el Palacio de Justiciade Riohacha. No existia clasificaci6n alguna en los archivos,y mas de un siglo de expedientes estaban amontonados en el suelo del decrepito edificio colonial que fuera por dos dias el cuartel
general de Francis Drake. La planta baja se inundaba con el mar de leva, y los
volimenes descosidos flotabanen las oficinasdesiertas.Yo mismo explore muchas
veces con las aguas hasta los tobillosaquel estanque de causas perdidas, y s6lo una
casualidad me permiti6recataral cabo de cinco afos de bisqueda unos 322 pliegos
salteados de los mas de 500 que debi6 tener el sumario." Cr6nicade una muerte
anunciada (Bogota: Editorial La Oveja Negra, 1981), pp. 128-29. The interplayof
thisfloatinghistoryin legal cases, the absent firstauthor (a lawyer)and the "pliegos
salteados" as a version of the origin of the fictionbeing narrated deserves a commentaryfor which I have no space here.

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373

travel-booksare evident in the descriptionsof

nineteenth-century
the jungle and at a crucial moment when Jose Arcadio Segundo
hears Melquiades mumble something in his room. Jose Arcadio
leans over and hears the gypsymention the name of none other
than Alexander von Humboldt and the word equinoccio,which
comes fromthe titleof the latter'sbook, which in Spanish is Viaje
a las regionesequinocciales
del Nuevo Mundo. In Macondo's Archive,
there are in addition two key words: the so-called EnglishEncyclopedia and The Thousandand One Nights.These two books play an
importantrole in Melquiades' writing,and the Encyclopediais instrumentalin the decoding of his manuscripts.The existence in
Melquiades' fictionof preciselythese two books adds a peculiar
twistto the Archive,one that points to its own literaryfiliation.
I do not think that it would be too farfetchedto say that The
Thousandand One Nightsand the so-called English Encyclopedia
toare
allusions
to
that
master
of
fictions
called
In
fact,
gether
Borges.
Melquiades is a figure of the Argentinewriter.Old beyond age,
enigmatic,blind, entirelydevoted to fiction,Melquiades stands for
Borges, the librarian and keeper of the Archive. There is somethingwhimsicalin Garcia Marquez's inclusion of such a figurein
the novel, but there is a good deal more. It is not too difficultto
fathomwhat this Borgesian figure means. Planted in the middle
of the special abode of books and manuscripts,a reader of one of
the oldest and most influencialcollectionsof storiesin the history
of literature,Melquiades and his Archivestand forliterature;more
specifically,for Borges' kind of literature: ironic, critical,a demolisherof all delusions, the sortof thingwe encounterat the end
of the novel, when Aureliano finishes translating Melquiades'
manuscript.There are in that ending furtherallusions to several
stories by Borges: to "Tlon, Ucqbar, Orbis Tertius," in that Macondo is a verbal construct;to "The Secret Miracle," in that Aureliano,like the condemned poet, perishesthe momenthe finishes
his work; to "The Aleph," in thatAureliano Babilonia's glimpseof
the historyof Macondo is instantaneousand all-encompassing;and
particularlyto "Death and the Compass," for the moment of anagnorisisis linked to death. Like Lonnrot, Aureliano only understands the workingsof his fate at the momentof his death.
The Archive, then, is Borges' study. It stands for writing,for
literature,for an accumulation of textsthat is no mere heap, but
an arche,a relentlessmemorythatdisassemblesthe fictionsof myth,
literatureand even history.The masterbooksin the Archive are,
as we have seen, the Encyclopedia
and The Thousandand One Nights.
The Encyclopedia,
which Aureliano has read according to the nar-

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ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

rator from A to Z as if it were a novel, is in itselfa figureof the

totalityof knowledgeas conceived by the West. But how is itknowledge, and how has Aureliano read it? The moment we consider
the order of knowledge in the Encyclopediaand the way in which
Aureliano reads it, we realize the paradoxes inherentin the Archive as repositoryof history.The Encyclopediais organized, of
course, in alphabeticalorder,withoutthe order of the entriesbeing
affectedby any sort of chronological or evaluative consideration:
Napoleon appears before Zeus and Charles V before God. The
beginningis provided arbitrarilyby the alphabet as well as by the
sequence: apocalypse must appear in the firstvolume. The Thousand and One Nights,on the other hand, stands for a beginningin
fiction,or beginningas fiction,as well as fora series of individual,
disconnected stories,linked only by the narrator'sfear of death.
Aureliano is like Scheherazade, who tells her storieson the verge
of death. Neitherbook seems to have priorityover the other.Both
have a prominentplace withinthe Archive,providingtheir own
forms of pastness, of documentary,textual material. The order
that prevails in the Archive,then, is not thatof mere chronology,
but thatof writing;the rigorousprocess of inscribingand decoding
to which Melquiades and the last Aureliano give themselvesover,
a linear process of cancellationsand substitutions,of gaps.
Writingand reading have an order of their own which is preserved within the Archive. It might be remembered that in
Melquiades' room, it is always Monday and March for some characters,while for others his studyis the room of the chamberpots,
where decay and temporalityhave theirown end embodied in the
veryessence of eschatology.The combinationof feces and writing
in the Archiveis significantenough. Writingappears as an eschatological activityin that it deals with the end. Yet writingis also
the beginning,insofar as nothingis in the text until it is written.
Hence the prevalence of Monday and March in the secret abode
of Melquiades, the beginning of the week and of spring respectively(March, not April, is the "cruellestmonth" in Garcia Marquez). Melquiades is both young and old, depending, of course,
on whether or not he wears his dentures; he presides over the
beginning and the end. The Archive, then, is not so much an
accumulation of textsas the process wherebytextsare written;a
process of repeated combinations,of shufflingsand re-shufflings
ruled by heterogeneityand difference.It is not strictlylinear as
both continuityand discontinuity,held together in uneasy alle-

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375

giance. This is the reason why the previous mediations through

whichLatin America was narrated are contained in the Archiveas
voided presences; theyare both erased and a memoryof theirown
demise, keysto filingsystemsnow abandoned, but theyretaintheir
archival quality, their power to differentiate,to space. They are
not archetypes,but an archeof types.
This process is evident in the way in which Melquiades' manuscriptis writtenand translated.Throughout the novel we are told
thatMelquiades writesundecipherable manuscripts,thathis handwritingproduces somethingthat looks more like musical notation
than script,that his writingresemblesclotheson a line. Eventually
Jose Arcadio Segundo discovers,with the aid of the Encyclopedia,
thatthe writingis in Sanskrit.When Aureliano begins to translate
fromthe Sanskrit,he comes up withcoded Spanish verses. These
verses have differentcodes, depending on whethertheyare even
or odd numbered. Aureliano is finallyilluminatedwhen he sees
the dead newborn being carried away by the ants and remembers
the epigraph of the manuscript,which is supposed to read: "The
firstofthelineis tiedto a treeand thelastis beingeatenbytheants"(p.
420, emphasis in the original). He realizes thenthatthe manuscript
contains the storyof his family,and hurries on to translateit to
discoverhis own fate and the date and circumstancesof his death.
We shall returnto the significanceof all this,but firstlet us complete our descriptionof the manuscriptand its translation,for it
is veryeasy to leap to conclusionsconcerningMelquiades' writing.
Aureliano begins to translate the text out loud, jumping ahead
twiceto get to the present faster.Once he reaches the presenthe
has a second illumination:that he would die in the room where
the manuscriptis kept once he finishedtranslatingthe last line of
poetry("el iltimo verso"). Criticshave been quick to say thatwhat
we have read is Melquiades's version of the historyof Macondo,
that is to say, Cien anos de soledad.Even if in fact it is Aureliano's
translationthat we read, then some changes have been made. To
begin with, the epigraph has been omitted,as we have seen. In
addition, Aureliano's leaps to get to the present have either not
been accounted forin thisversion,or the holes theylefthave been
restored.But by whom? The only solution to thisenigma is to say
that our reading-that each reading-of the textis the text,that
is to say, yet another version added or appended to the Archive.
Each of these readings correctsthe othersand each is unrepeatable
insofaras it is a distinctact caught in the reader's own temporality.

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ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

In thissense, we, like Aureliano, read the instantwe live,cognizant

that it may very well be our last. This is the eschatologicalsense
announced in various ways by the Archive.
to which the Archivecondemns us belies
The radical historicity
its apparent atemporalityand the bizarre order that the masterbooks withinit have. It is a historicitythat is very much like the
of Los pasosperdidosis conone to which the narrator-protagonist
demned at the end of that novel. In fact,Aureliano's reading of
the manuscriptin search of his origins and of an understanding
of his being in the present is analogous to the reading performed
by Carpentier'scharacterin search of the originsof historyand of
in the face of
his own beginnings.Such dearly achieved historicity
the circularityand repetitionof the family'shistoryis somewhat
ironic,given the sense of ahistoricalnesswithwhichmanyreaders,
intoxicatedby the similarityof names and by Ursula's notion that
time is going round and round, leave the novel. Such historicity,
however, is needed to represent,withinthe anthropologicalmediation posited, the lucid consciousness of the West, able to understand itselfby posturingas the other, but unable to abandon
the sense of historyto whichwritingsentencesit.This is a sentence
fromwhich we can gain acquittal by means of a wilfullact of delusion,but one thatCien anos de soledad,forall itsfictiveforcedoes
not allow the reader.
There is a curious fact that few readers of Cien afos de soledad
remark upon: even though the novel begins with Colonel Aureliano Buendia facingthe firingsquad, the one who dies at the end
is not Aureliano the soldier,but Aureliano the reader. It seems to
me that this displacement,plus the factthatAureliano's moments
of vision are flashes of insightparallel to those of the rebel, seem
to suggest a most significantconnection between the realms of
historyand myth,one that constitutesa common denominator
betweenthe repetitionsof the familyhistoryand the disassembling
mechanisms of the Archive. In the Archive, the presence of
Melquiades and Aureliano (and in Aura, Felipe Montero, in Yo el
Supremo,Patifio,etc.) is an insurance thatthe individualconsciouswillfilterthe ahistoricalpretenseof myth
ness of a historian/writer
events
to
the
temporalityof writing.But in Cien anos
by subjecting
de soledadthe death of these figuresis indicativeof a mythicpower
that lurks withinthe realm of writing,a storythat makes possible
the Archive. In Yo el Supremothis is clearly indicated by Patifo's
being a "swollen foot,"that is, an Oedipus who pays a high price

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377

for,his knowledge. In Cien anos de soledadAureliano suffersa similar fate. He commitsincest with his aunt, engenders a monster
with her and dies the moment he has a glimpse of his fate. Aureliano is the necessaryvictimfor us to be able to read the text,
for us to acquire the knowledge we need to decode it. He (we) is
no Oedipus, but more likelya Minotaur, which would bring us
back to Borges (and also Cortazar). The ritualisticdeath-which
prefiguresthat of Cr6nicade una muerteanunciada-is necessary
because of the incest committedboth at the genealogical and the
textual level. In both cases, what has been gained is a forbidden
knowledge of the other as oneself,or vice-versa.
As we have seen, the most salient characteristicof the text we
read is its heterogeneity.Howeve:, this heterogeneityis made up
of differenceswithinsimilarity.The various versionsof the story
are all related,yetdifferin each instance.Their differenceas well
as theirrelation is akin-valga la palabra- to the relationshipbetween the incestuous charactersand to the broader confrontation
betweenwriterand a primitiveother who produces myth.Put difof the novel is implicitlycompared
ferently,the self-reflexiveness
to incest,a self-knowledgethat somehow lies beyond knowledge.
A plausible argumentcan be made thatthe end resultsof both are
similar,in the most tangible sense, or at least related. When the
ants carryaway the carcass of the monstrouschild engendered by
Amaranta Ursula and Aureliano, itsskin is described in termsthat
are very reminiscent of Melquiades' parchments. The English
translationblurs that similarity.It reads: "And then he saw the
child. It was a dry and bloated bag of skin that all the ants in the
world were dragging..." (p. 420). The Spanish reads: "Era un
pellejo [itwas a skin]hinchado y reseco, que todas las hormigasdel
mundo iban arrastrando.. ." (p. 349). I need not go into the etymological and historicalkinship uniting skin and parchmentbecause the novel itselfprovides thatlink. The parchmentsare once
described as "parecian fabricadosen una materiaarida que se resquebrajaba como hojaldres" (p. 68), and the books in the Archive
are bound "en una materia acartonada y palida como la piel humana curtida" (p. 160). The English reads, "the parchmentsthat
he had broughtwithhim and thatseemed to have been made out
of some dry material that crumpled like puff paste" (p. 73), and
"the books were bound in a cardboard-like material, pale, like
tanned human skin" (p. 188).
The monsterand the manuscript,the monsterand the text,are

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378

ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

the product of the turningonto onself implicitin incestand selfreflexivity.Both are heterogeneous withina given set of characteristics,the most conspicuous of which is their supplementarity:
the pig's tail, which exceeds the normal contours of the human
body, and the text,whose mode of being is each added reading.
The novel is a monster,engendered by a self-knowledgeof which
we too are guilty,to which we add our own pig's tail of reading
and interpretation.The plot line that narratesthe decipherment
of the manuscriptsunderscoresour own fallinginto thistrap. Like
Aureliano, we followalong in search of the meaning of the manuscripts, constantly teased by scenes where Melquiades appears
scratchinghis incomprehensiblehandwritingonto rough parchment,by scenes where Jose Arcadio Segundo or Aureliano make
preliminarydiscoveries that eventuallylead them to unravel the
mystery.But like L6nnrot in "Death and the Compass," and like
Aureliano himself,we do not discover, until the very end, what
the manuscriptscontain. Our own anagnorisisas readers is saved
for the last page, when the novel concludes and we close the book
to cease being as readers, to be, as it were, slain in that role. We
are placed back at the beginning,a beginningthat is also already
the end, a discontinuous,independent instantwhere everything
commingleswithoutany possibilityfor extending the insight,an
intimationof death. This independent instantis not the novel; it
is the point to which the novel has led us. By means of an unreading, the texthas reduced us, like Aureliano, to a ground zero,
where death and birthare joined togehteras correlativemoments
of incommunicableplenitude. The text is that which is added to
this moment. Archive and mythare conjoined as instancesof discontinuityratherthan continuity;knowledge and death are given
equivalent value.
It is a commonplace, almost an uncriticalfetish,to say that the
novel alwaysincludes the storyof how it is written,thatit is a selfreflexivegenre. The question is why and how it is so at specific
moments. Clearly, Cien anos de soledadis self-reflexivenot merely
to provoke laughter,or to declare itselfliteraryand thus disconnected from realityor from history.In Garcia Marquez, and I
is a
daresay in all major Latin American novelists,self-reflexivity
way of disassemblingthe mediation throughwhich Latin America
is narrated,a mediation that constitutesthe pre-textof the novel
itself.It is also a way of showing that the act of writingis caught
up in a deeply rooted, mythicstrugglethatconstantlydenies it the

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M L N

379

authority to generate and contain knowledge about the other

withoutat the same time generatinga perilous sort of knowledge
about one's mortalityand capacityto know oneself.
What do we learn about Latin American historyin Cien anos de
soledad?We learn that while its writingmay be mired in myth,it
cannot be turned to myth,that its newness makes it imperviousto
timelessness,circularity,or any such delusion. New and therefore
historical, what occurs in America is marked by change, it is
change. Garcia Marquez has expressed this by tantalizing the
reader with various forms of myth,while at the same time subjecting him to the rigorsof historyas writing,of historyas Archive.
He has also achieved it by making Borges the keeper of the Archive, for the figure of the Argentine ensures that no delusions
about literaturebe entertained.In a sense, what Garcia Marquez
has done is to punch through the anthropologicalmediation and
substitutethe anthropologist for an historian,and to turn the
object of attentionaway from mythas an expression of so-called
primitive societies to the myths of modern society: the book,
writing,reading, instrumentsof a quest forself-knowledgethatlie
beyond the solace mythicinterpretationsof the world usually afford.We can always use Cien anos de soledadto escape temporality,
but only if we wilfullymisread it to blind ourselvesof its warnings
against it. American historycan only become mythenmeshed in
this very modern problematicthat so enriches its most enduring
fictions.
For it is not toward a high-pitchedrationalitythat Cien anos de
soledadmoves, but toward a vision of its own creation dominated
by the forces that generate myth.This is perhaps most evident if
we consider that the Archive may verywell be the most powerful
of cultural retentions.The Archive is, firstof all, a repositoryfor
the legal documentswhereinthe originsof Latin Americanhistory
are contained, as well as a specificallyHispanic institutioncreated
at the same timeas the New World was being settled.As is known,
the great Archive at Simancas, begun by Charles V, but finished
by the King Bureaucrat Philip II, is the firstand possibly most
voluminous such storehouse in Europe. The same Herrera who
designed the Escorial had a hand in planning the Archive,that is
to say, in turning a castle that was originallya prison into the
Archive.America was discovered by Columbus, but reallybecame
a historicalentityas a result of the development of the printing
press. Latin America was created in the Archive. It may verywell

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ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

have been Carlos Fuentes in his TerraNostrawho most clearlysaw

the connection,makingCervantesthe innerhistorianin thatnovel.
In termsof the novel's abilityto retainand pass on culturalvalues,
the message contained in books such as Fuentes' and Cien anos de
soledadis indeed disturbing,for theytell us that it is impossibleto
create new myths,yetbringus back once and again to thatmoment
where our desire for meaning can only be satisfiedby myth.
Yale University

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