Fiction as History: The Bananeras and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of

Solitude
Author(s): Eduardo Posada-Carbo
Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 395-414
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/158531
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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 30, 395-4I4. Printed in the United Kingdom ? I998 Cambridge University Press 395

COMMENTARY

Fiction as History: The banane

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One
Years of Solitude*

EDUARDO POSADA-CARBO

Abstract. This article, inspired by a TV interview with th

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, revises the ways that the fiction in
Solitude has been accepted as history. In particular, it raise
how literary critics and historians have accepted as histor
rendition of the events during the strike that took place i
examines the repressive nature of the Colombian regime and
also examines the idea that following the strike there was
of silence' to erase the truth from the nation's history.

The subject of this article was first suggested to m

Gabriel Garcia Mairquez, the Colombian Nobel La
Channel Four TV programme one evening in 1990. In
the late Colombian journalist Julio Roca goes in searc
depicted in One Hundred Years of Solitude. At some p
was asked about the 'masacre de las bananeras' - as
strike against the United Fruit Company in I928 is no
His answer came as a surprise. Garcia Marquez replied
of people - three or five - had died during the strike
figure of 3,000 given in his novel and commonly acc
today:

... The banana events - Garcia Marquez said - are perhaps my earliest memory.
They were so legendary that when I wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude I wanted
to know the real facts and the true number of deaths. There was a talk of a
massacre, an apocalyptic massacre. Nothing is sure, but there can't have been
many deaths. But even three or five deaths in those circumstances at that time...
* An original version of this article was first presented at the Anglo-Colombian Society
in Canning House in February 997, and at St Antony's College, Oxford, in May I997,
where I received very useful and encouraging comments. I wish to thank the three
anonymous JLAS referees for their constructive criticism and suggestions. Gilma
Rodriguez, at the Banco de la Republica in Bogota, Malcolm Deas, at Oxford, and
Ram6n Illan Bacca, at the Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, provided me with
helpful material. They of course do not bear any responsibility for the views expressed
in this article.

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396 Eduardo Posada-Carbd

would have been a great catastrophe. It was a problem for me ... when I discovered
it wasn't a spectacular slaughter. In a book where things are magnified, like One
Hundred Years of Solitude... I needed to fill a whole railway with corpses. I
couldn't stick to historical reality. I couldn't say they were three, or seven, or 17
deaths. They wouldn't even fill a tiny wagon. So I decided on 3,000 dead because
that filled the dimension of the book I was writing. The legend has now been
adopted as history...'
Indeed, the number of casualties are thus first recorded in one of the
new dialogues of his novel:
Jose Arcadio Segundo no habl6 mientras no termin6 de tomar el cafe.
- Debian ser como tres mil - murmur6
- ~Que?
- Los muertos - aclar6 l -. Debian ser todos los que estaban en la estaci6n.2

Perhaps more significant to the narrative is the skepticism with which

Jose Arcadio Segundo's relevation is received:
La mujer lo mir6 con una mirada de lastima. 'Aqui no ha habido muertos', dijo.
'Desde los tiempos de tu tio, el coronel, no ha pasado nada en Macondo'.
This was to become the 'official version':

... La versi6n oficial, mil veces repetida y machacada en todo el pais por cuan
medio de divulgaci6n encontr6 el gobierno a su alcance, termin6 por imponer
no hubo muertos.3

The tale of a hurricane in the shape of a U.S. banana company that

sweeps away Macondo is well known to the readers of One Hundred Years
of Solitude: Macondo was a prosperous place until it was exploited,
corrupted and destroyed by the fruit company; this wave of destruction
reached a peak during a general strike, when 3,000 workers were
slaughtered by the Colombian army; this episode was erased from the
collective memory - the recollection of the events by one of the survivors
was contradicted by the false version accepted by the historians, and
repeated in the school textbooks: 'aqui no ha habido muertos'.4 History
became legend. Garcia Marquez reveals to us now that the apocalyptic
massacre described in his book did not occur in such dramatic dimensions;
but now 'the legend has been adopted as history'.
Two contradictory legends and two contradictory versions of history
popularised by the work of a novelist; does it matter? For some literary
critics it matters a great deal, as their analysis of One Hundred Years
1 My Macondo, Dal Weldon, dir., (Channel Four, London, i990), in British Film Institute,
London.

2 Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cien anos de soledad (Barcelona, 1995), p. 375. '- Eran mas de
tres mil - fue todo cuanto dijo Jose Arcadio Segundo -. Ahora estoy seguro que eran
todos los que estaban en la estaci6n'; idem, p. 382. See also idem, pp. 408, 423, and 429.
3 Idem., p. 377. 4 Idem., pp. 423-4.

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 Fiction as history 397

'emphasize the condensed accuracy of its historical vision'.5 And of course

the question 'of how we are to take what is offered to us as "reality"' in
the novel is often at the centre of the literary debate. According to Michael
Wood, 'the texture of the novel is made up of legends treated as truths
- because they are truths to those who believe them - but also... of real
facts that no one believes in'.6 It is not my intention, however, to enquire
into the ways Garcia Marquez uses history for artful, literary purposes.
My concern runs in the opposite direction: to what extent has the fiction
in One Hundred Years of Solitude been accepted as history? From this
perspective, the subject matters for a variety of reasons.
For a start, Garcia Marquez himself has often encouraged the view that
his work is a faithful reflection of reality. 'Lo que pasa' - he said in a 1968
interview -'es que en America Latina, por decreto se olvida un
acontecimiento como tres mil muertos. Esto que parece fantastico, esti
extraido de la mas miserable realidad cotidiana'.7 However, regarding the
number of casualties, as Stephen Minta has observed, 'Garcia Mirquez
has insisted that accuracy in this instance was never his primary
consideration'.8 Nonetheless he has been consistent in his attacks against
a supposedly 'official history' and in his intentions to lead a new reading
of Colombian history.9
There is, as already noted, a school of thought that follows this line of
interpretation. According to Gene Bell-Villada, 'behind Garcia Marquez's
scrupulousness in rendering the history and folklore of his region is a
larger fidelity to reality itself'.1? For Gerald Martin, One Hundred Years of
5 As Michael Bell observes, there are two main lines of interpretation around One Hundred
Years of Solitude: one stresses the imaginary dimension, the other the historical vision
-the latter 'usually by regional specialists'. See Bell, Gabriel Garcia MdrqueZ
(Basingstoke and London, I993), p. 2.
6 Michael Wood, Garcia Mdrque. oo00 Years of Solitude (Cambridge, 1990), p. 58.
7 Quoted in Anna Marie Taylor, 'Cien afos de soledad: History and the Novel', Latin
American Perspectives, 6/3 (1975), p. io6. '...Lo que yo escribo en mis libros no es
literatura, sino la expresi6n de una verdad profunda, una realidad desesperada...', Jean
Pierre Richard, 'Garcia Marquez y la mujer', in Juan G. Cobo Borda (ed.), Repertorio
critico sobre Gabriel Garcia Mdrquet (Bogota, 1995), p. 47.
8 Stephen Minta, Garcia Mdrquet, Writer of Colombia (New York, I987), p. 170.
9 'Nos han escrito y oficializado una version complaciente de la historia'; Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, 'Por un pais al alcance de los nifios', in Presidencia de la Repdblica, Colombia:
Alfilo de la oportunidad (Bogoti, I994), p. 6. See also his interview with Maria Elvira
Samper in Semana, 14 March I989. For how Garcia Marquez has ignored recent
Colombian historiography in his campaign against the 'historia oficial', see Jacques
Gilard, 'Garcia Mirquez o la otra historia oficial', in Revista Universidad Nacional, 21
(I989), pp. 43-7, and Eduardo Posada Carb6, 'Usos y abusos de la historia.
Divergencias con anotaciones de Garcia Marquez', Lecturas Dominicales. El Tiempo, 5
January I995, reprinted in Cobo Borda, (ed.), Repertorio critico sobre Gabriel Garcia
Marque., pp. 8i-8.
10 Gene H. Bell-Villada, Garcia Marquez. The Man and His Work (Chapel Hill and
London, 1990), p. 107.

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398 Eduardo Posada-Carbd

Solitude is 'a socialist... reading of Latin American history'; the

apocalyptic events of the banana strike 'are patently historical ones'.11
Stephen Minta also considers that the account of the strike and the
massacre is 'in rough accord with the known facts', although there is 'a
conscious exaggeration of detail'.12 At least two other literary critics-
Gustavo Alfaro and Lucila Ines Mena - have also argued that Garcia
Marquez's description of the bananeras faithfully reflect the historical
facts.13 More recently, in his weekly column in Cambioi6, Dario Jaramillo
Agudelo echoed a view that has been increasingly gaining currency: that
the 'true' Latin American history has been rescued by fiction:

Ya desde la aparici6n de los caucheros en La vordgine, de las bananeras en Cien

anos, la verdad de la historia... ha tenido que ser rescatada por la ficci6n.14

Historians have been more cautious than literary critics when treating
One Hundred Years of Solitude as a historical source.15 Very few have
gone as far as Alvaro Tirado Mejia, whose Introduccion a la historia economica
de Colombia - in his section on the United Fruit Company - quotes at
length Garcia Marquez's description of some of the circumstances
surrounding the strike in Macondo. Yet this is a popular text, widely read
by Colombian students in secondary schools.16 Fiction here has become a
major source for a historian. The most comprehensive and detailed study
of the I928 strike, written by Roberto Herrera Soto and Rafael Romero
Castafieda, though still critical of the United Fruit Company, diverges
substantially from Garcia Mirquez's account of the massacre and its
aftermath.17 It is my impression, however, that the interpretation offered

1 Gerald Martin, Journeys Through the Labyrinth. Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth
Century (London and New York, 1989), pp. 227, 229.
12 Minta, Garcia MarqueZ, p. I69.
13 Gustavo Alfaro, Constante de la historia de Latinoamerica en Garcia Mdrquet (Cali, 1979);
and Lucila In6s Mena, 'La huelga de la compafifa bananera como expresi6n de lo 'real
maravilloso' en Ioo afnos de soledad', in Bulletin Hispanique, LXXIV (1972), pp.
379-405; and her La funcidn de la historia en Cien Anos de Soledad (Barcelona, 1979), pp.
63-99.
14 Dario Jaramillo Agudelo, 'Su mejor novela', Cambioi6, 13 January 1997.
15 See the observation by Catherine LeGrand in her article, 'El conflicto de las
bananeras', in A. Tirado Mejia, (ed.), Nueva Historia de Colombia, vol. 3 (Bogoti, I989),
p. 183.
16 The book was first published in 197I; by I978, it had reached its 9th edition. Alvaro
Tirado Mejia, Introduccidn a la historia econdmica de Colombia (Bogota, 1978), pp. 308-I2.
17 Roberto Herrera Soto and Rafael Romero Castafieda, La zona bananera del Magdalena.
Historiay Lexico (Bogota, 1979). See also C. D. Kepner and J. H. Soothill, The Banana
Empire: A Case Study of Economic Imperialism (New York, I935), C. Kepner, Social
Aspects of the Banana Industry (New York, 936); P. Gilhodes, 'La Colombia et l'United
Fruit Company', Revue Franfaise de Science Politique, I7, April 1967; Miguel Urrutia, The
Development of the Colombian Labor Movement (New Haven and London, I969); Judith
White, Historia de una ignominia (Bogota, 1978); Confederaci6n Sindical de Trabajadores

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 Fiction as history 399

by this book has not been given sufficient attention.18 The dominant view
among historians still resembles Garcia Marquez's picture of the banana
zone - although not necessarily quoting One Hundred Years as a source,
and acknowledging some degree of cautiousness in accounting for the
number of casualties. Even Judith White's monograph - one of the few
detailed modern studies of the strike -, closes quoting that passage of the
novel: 'debian ser como tres mil muertos'.19 Though Colombians are not
great readers, they are great readers of Garcia Marquez's works. It would
not be an exaggeration to say that One Hundred Years of Solitude contains
today's 'official version' of the developments in the banana zone in the
I920s. A recent biography of Garcia Marquez by Dalso Saldivar states
that since the publication of the novel in I967, 'la mayoria de los
colombianos empezaria a hablar de los tres mil muertos de las bananeras
del Magdalena'. Saldivar also stresses that this tragic event marked 'de
forma indeleble la conciencia hist6rica de todo el pais'.20 According to
German Arciniegas, a leading figure who many would identify with the
intellectual 'establishment' and the Academia de Historia de Colombia,
'Macondo es punto de referencia para la interpretacion de toda nuestra
historia'.21
The purpose of this article is therefore to raise some questions about
how literary critics and historians have accepted as history Garcia
Marquez's rendition of the events during the 1928 strike, and the impact
of the banana industry on the region, in general. As such, I should stress
that it does not intend to contest Garcia Mairquez's use of history in the
novel. It does aim, however, at challenging the use of One Hundred Years

de Colombia (CSTC), (eds.), Bananeras, I928-1978) (Bogoti, 1978); Catherine LeGrand,

'El conflicto de las bananeras', in A. Tirado Mejia, (ed.), Nueva Historia de Colombia, 3
(Bogota, 1989), and 'Campesinos y asalariados en la zona bananera de Santa Marta,
1900-I935', in G. Bell Lemus, (ed.), El Caribe colombiano (Barranquilla, 1988), pp.
183-197).
18 None of the recent literary critics whom I consulted, and who argue for the historical
faithfulness of One Hundred Years of Solitude, seem to have bothered with this book -
I refer to Martin, Journeys; Bell Villada, Garcia MdrqueZ; and Minta, Gabriel Garcia
Mdrquez. An exception is Maurice P. Brungardt who praised La Zona bananera del
Magdalena as 'el mejor trabajo sobre la huelga'. Brungardt was not commenting on
Garcia Marquez's work, but on Alvaro Cepeda Samudio's La casa grande. See
Brungardt, 'Mitos hist6ricos y literarios. La casa grande', in A. Pineda and R.
Williams, De ficcionesy realidades. Perspectivas sobre literatura e historia colombiana (Bogoti,
1989), p. 63.
19 White's Historia de una ignominia (Bogota, 1978) was originally written as a B.Phil.
Oxford thesis: 'The United Fruit Company in the Santa Marta Banana Zone,
Colombia: Conflicts of the zos' (1971).
20 Dasso Saldivar, Garcia Mcrqueg. El viaje a la semilla (Madrid, I997), pp. 6o-I.
21 G. Arciniegas, 'Macondo', El Tiempo, 27 February I997.

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400 Eduardo Posada-Carbd

of Solitude as a historical source. There are, in particular, three aspects of

the subject that merit serious reconsideration: the extent to which the
activities of the United Fruit Company merely brought misery and
destruction to the region; the repressive nature of the regime and of the
strike itself; and the idea that following the strike there was a sort of
'conspiracy of silence' to erase the truth from the nation's history. As I
have dealt with the first aspect elsewhere,22 this paper will concentrate on
the latter two points.

The 'matanna de las bananeras'

'It is probable that the last two years have been the least eventful in the
history of Colombian internal politics', the British Minister observed in
his 'Report for Year ending June I928'.23 Little could he foresee at the
time how significant the events of December I928 would become for the
history of the country. They helped to bring down the Conservative
Hegemony, a regime that dominated Colombian politics from i886 to
1930. They marked the rise of the career of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan - a
Liberal who became the outstanding Colombian populist, a leading
protagonist in the politics of the country until his death in 1948. They
provided the labour movement, and later the Communist Party, with
symbols and martyrs in their struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
They came to weigh heavily on the country's perception of the army and
of the role of foreign capital. And they inspired Garcia Marquez's
masterpiece.
The banana strike has been considered as 'the central shaping episode
of the entire novel'.24 How apocalyptic was this event in fact? To what

22 See the relevant sections in my The Colombian Caribbean: A Regional History, 1870-Ig9o
(Oxford, 1996). New historiographical trends have opened fresh perspectives on the
role of banana companies elsewhere in the continent. See Dario Euraque, 'El
imperialismo y Honduras como "Repdblica bananera": Hacia una nueva historio-
grafia', paper presented at the LASA Conference, Guadalajara, 17-19 April 1997. See
also his Reinterpreting the Banana Republic. Region and State in Honduras, i87o-I972 (Chapel
Hill, and London, 1996). Catherine LeGrand, from a different angle, also poses new
questions regarding the role of the United Fruit Company in the Colombian Caribbean.
23 'Colombia. Report for Year ending June I928', Public Records Office, London (PRO),
Fo37I/I3477.
24 Martin, Journeys through the Labyrinth, p. 229. See also Gene H. Bell-Villada, 'Banana
Strike and Military Massacre: One Hundred Years of Solitude and What Happened in
1928', in A. Gim6nez and G. Pistoriou, (eds.), From Dante to Garcia Mdrquet: Studies in
Romance Literatures and Linguistics Presented to Anson C. Piper (Williamston, i987), p.
391; and Alfaro, Constante de la historia, p. 89. For other Colombian novels based on the
bananeras, see David H. Bost, 'Una vista panoramica de las respuestas literarias a la
huelga de las bananeras', Revista de Estudios Colombianos, Io (I991), pp. I2-23. A short
story, not considered by Bost's review, also based on the bananeras is: Ram6n Illan
Bacca, 'Si no fuera por la zona caramba', in his Marihuana para Goering (Barranquilla,
n.d., possibly I978).

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 Fiction as history 401

extent was General Carlos Cortes Vargas - who ordered the shooting
against the strikers - the bloodthirsty officer now depicted in the dominant
literature? And how repressive was the Conservative regime?25 It is
possible to distinguish three moments in the development of the strike
and its subsequent quelling: the events leading to the adoption of the state
of siege on the evening of 5 December; the actual shooting the following
morning and its immediate aftermath; the final outcome after the
parliamentary debate six months later. A cursory examination of the first
and last moments, before looking at the 'masacre' itself, may help to
throw some light on the 'repressive' nature of the regime.
The banana strike broke out on 12 November 1928, after the United
Fruit Company refused to meet the demands from the Uni6n Sindical de
Trabajadores del Magdalena.26 Next day General Carlos Cortes Vargas,
the newly appointed military commander of the banana zone, arrived at
Santa Marta and then proceeded by train to Cienaga. He was soon joined
by a regiment of troops from Santa Marta, and an additional one from
Barranquilla. News of sabotage against the railway moved the army into
action: some 400 strikers were arrested. However, most of them were
soon freed by the civilian authorities, to the dismay of Cortes Vargas.27
According to Ignacio Torres Giraldo, a contemporary union leader and
co-founder of the Partido Socialista Revolucionario (PSR), that none of
the major leaders of the strike had been arrested by 4 December gave
labourers hopes for a settlement regarding their demands.28 The
government indeed took some action against the strikers, but there is little
evidence of strong repressive measures before 6 December. Moreover, the
authorities did not seem to be in a position to enforce the law. At the end
of November, for example, the Magdalena Governor issued a decree

25 The Conservative Hegemony, particularly the last two decades of its rule, remains one
of the relatively less studied periods in Colombia's political history. See my 'Limits of
Power: Elections under the Conservative Hegemony, I886-1930', Hispanic American
Historical Review, 77:2 (May 1997), pp. 245-79, where I review the nature of Colombian
politics during this period. For decades the standard essay for the Conservative
Hegemony has been Jorge Orlando Melo's 'La Republica Conservadora', originally
published in Ideologiay Sociedad, 2 ( 975 ), and recently reprinted in Melo, (ed.), Colombia
hoy. Perspectivas hacia el siglo XXI (Bogoti, I995), pp. 57-102. See also Malcolm Deas,
'Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, c. I88o-I93o', in L. Bethell, (ed.), The Cambridge
History of Latin America, vol. 5 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 641-82, and C. Abel, Politica,
iglesiay partidos en Colombia, z886-18H (Bogoti, I987).
26 For an account of the origins of the strike, and a discussion of these demands, see the
works by White, Historia de una ignominia; Herrera Soto and Romero Castafieda, La zona
bananera del Magdalena, and LeGrand, 'El conflicto de las bananeras'.
27 Carlos Cortes Vargas, Los sucesos de las bananeras (Bogota, 1979), pp. 30-I, 68, 79.
28 Ignacio Torres Giraldo, Los inconformes. Historia de las rebeldias de las masas en Colombia,
5 vols, (Bogoti, 1978), vol. 4, p. 948.

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402 Eduardo Posada-Carbd

forbidding meetings that could obstruct public roads. According to the

alcalde of Cienaga, this decree 'no pudo cumplirse debido a que el numero
de agentes de policia era insuficiente para impedir, aun por medio de la
fuerza, los centenares de obreros que obstruian las vias'.29 Similarly, an
arrest warrant against the leaders of the strike could not be enforced.
'Salvaguardiados por los obreros en numero considerable', while they
spoke to the crowd, the authorities could only watch them from a
distance.30 A police inspector in Sevilla did effectively impede members of
the union from organizing a meeting to publicise their cause, but he
allowed 'que la propaganda se hiciera por medio de carteles murales'.31
There was no shortage of propaganda during the strike. A recent
publication by the CSTC (Confederaci6n Sindical de Trabajadores de
Colombia) accuses Cortes Vargas of censuring the press. However, any
attempt that may have been made at silencing the press does not seem to
have been effective. The same CSTC publication acknowledges that active
propaganda against the army officers was carried out by the Diario de
Cordoba, and by 'hojas volantes, afiches, pancartas, murales'.32 Raul
Eduardo Mahecha - the predominant leader of the strike, and indeed an
active figure in the Colombian labour movement during the 920zs,
particularly in the oil industry - made good use of his own printing
machine.33 The Barranquillero newspapers, La Nacidn and La Prensa, which
supported the strike, circulated in the banana zone, and their reports were
echoed by the opposition press in Bogota. The impact of these
publications should not be underestimated. 'In centers such as the banana
zone, where but few possess the ability to read' - a document from the
State Department noted - 'these leaflets are read aloud to an admiring and
incredulous crowd of illiterates whose awe of the printed word leads them
to believe anything'.34

29 Victor Fuentes, Los sucesos de las bananeras (Santa Marta, 1929), p. 10.
30 Fuentes, Los sucesos, p. 1.
31 G. Castafieda Arag6n, Papeles de la huelga del Magdalena en 1928 (Barcelona, I93 I), p. I0.
32 CSTC, Bananeras, 1928-1978 (Bogoti, I928), p. 95. Cortes Vargas referred to the Diario
de Cdrdoba as 'el alma mater del movimiento, sus ediciones eran devoradas por el
pueblo', Los sucesos, p. 69. Historians, however, have not yet been able to locate any
surviving copies of this newspaper; I owe this reference to one of the anonymous
JLAS readers.
33 Jose Maria Valdeblanquez, Historia del departamento del Magdalena y del territorio de la
Guajira. Desde el eho de i89g hasta el de 1963 (Santa Marta, I964), p. 252. For a
biographical note on Mahecha, see Carlos Arango Z, Sobrevivientes de las bananeras
(Bogota, second edition, I985), pp. 127-58.
34 'Difficulties of the United Fruit Company in Colombia', 17 December 1930, National
Archives of the United States (USNA), Washington, RG59/8zi.6I 56. On newspapers
being read aloud in the plantations, particularly El Estado, see Herrera Soto and
Romero Castafieda, La zona bananera, p. 39.

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 Fiction as history 403

If, for a moment, we leave aside the episode of 6 December and its
immediate aftermath, the final outcome of the banana strike does not add
to a picture of a strong repressive, 'dictatorial' regime - as labelled in
some publications.35 Press censorship might have prevailed in the banana
zone from 6 December until the end of the state of siege on 14 March the
following year. But elsewhere newspapers attacked the government and
the army without any apparent constraint.36 Much has often been made of
some 600 detainees who faced criminal charges in military courts in
January 1929. Out of these, however, only 3 I strikers were condemned to
sentences of between two and twenty five years in prison.37 Furthermore,
all of these were freed nine months later as a result of the parliamentary
debate led by Jorge Eliecer Gaitan.38 One of those freed, Alberto
Castrillon, was launched as the presidential candidate of the Partido
Socialista Revolucionario on 6 December I929, an already symbolic
date.39 Meanwhile Cortes Vargas and his former superior, the Minister of
War, Ignacio Rengifo, suffered demotion. A British report did not think
much of a government that 'apparently lacks the courage to justify the
strong line reasonably taken on the ground of preserving the public peace
in the face of an organised and openly subversive outbreak'. The dismissal
of Cortes Vargas and Minister Rengifo was described by the British
Minister as 'a pitiable act of weakness... a telling sign of the internal decay
within the Conservative ranks... an abject submission to the will of self-
appointed and unauthorized body of citizens and students'.40
This apparent weakness has not been fully acknowledged by some
historians, who tend to interpret the nature of the regime through the
measures that the government, in a campaign led by the Minister of War,
took against the 'Red Menace'. Fearing a communist revolution, the
government issued in 1927 decree 707, known as the 'Ley Heroica',
conferring on the Police strong repressive powers against communist

35 See, for example, Bananeras, 1928-1978, p. 88.

36 On his arrival at Barranquilla in June I929, the Bolivian Ambassador and man of
letters, Alcides Arguedas, was impressed by the harsh language employed by
newspapers in their attacks against President Abadia. See his La danza de las sombras
(Bogota, I983), p. 25. '... freedom of the press and freedom of speech are the order of
the day', in 'Colombia. Report for year ending June I928'.
37 Torres Giraldo, Los inconformes, vol. 4, p. 959; Cortes Vargas, Los sucesos, pp. I67-68.
38 Fifty years later, Josefa Maria Blanco Perez gratefully recalled Gaitin's actions. See, C.
Arango, Los sobrevivientes de las bananeras (Bogota, first ed., 198 ), p. 99.
39 'Hoy a las cinco de la tarde sera proclamado candidato comunista', El Tiempo, 6
December 1929. That Castrill6n was candidate in the 1930 presidential election has
passed almost unnoticed among Colombian historians. See also Torres Giraldo, Los
inconformes vol. 4, p. 00oo5; Uribe, Los anos escondidos. Suenosj rebeldias en la decada del veinte
(Bogota, I994), p. 310; and M. Medina, Historia del Partido Comunista de Colombia
(Bogota, I980), vol. i, pp. I5o--.
40 'Colombia. Annual Report i929', PRO/Fo37I/I422I.

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404 Eduardo Posada-Carbd

suspects. In 1928, the government introduced various projects to

Congress, labelled as 'proyectos liberticidas' by the opposition. One of
them became law later that year. These measures, however, did little to
deter a growing opposition against the regime, not only from the Partido
Socialista Revolucionario but perhaps more significantly from Liberals
and even fellow Conservatives. As Malcolm Deas has observed, this
campaign against the Red menace was 'unsuccessful and much ridiculed .41
Moreover in the Atlantic Coast, as the union leader Torres Giraldo
acknowledged, 'las gentes no tenian en cuenta el Decreto Liberticida'.
Even the authorities, 'sobre todo en las ciudades le miraban sin darle
ninguna importancia'. Only in some villages of the banana zone - but
'claro que no en Santa Marta ni en Cienaga', the authorities occasionally
managed to limit the activities of the likes of Torres Giraldo.42 Historians
and literary critics looking for a repressive regime would be better advised
to cross the frontier to Juan Vicente Gomez's Venezuela: in Colombia
there was no La Rotunda - the infamous jail where G6mez imprisoned his
opponents with leg-irons.43
There is no doubt, however, that the army, led by General Cortes
Vargas, took repressive measures on the eve of 6 December, which ended
in bloodshed and persecution of the strikers and their leaders. The exact
number of casualties will probably never be known. Herrera Soto has put
together the various estimates given by contemporaries and historians,
ranging from 47 to 2,000.44 And, of course, there is the figure popularised
by Garcia Mairquez - 3,000. Cortes Vargas took responsibility for 47
casualties, in itself a significant number, an almost unprecedented
bloody affair of this nature in Colombian history. For Jorge Eliecer
Gaitan, then a young Congressman, the number of casualties was 'not as
important' as other charges against the army:45 that the action of the army
was cowardly and pre-planned; that the wounded were 'rematados con la
bayoneta'; that the dead bodies were thrown into the sea; that the officers,
including Cortes Vargas, were drunk; that women from Cienaga were
forced to attend orgies; that the army acted not to protect Colombian but
US interests.46

41 Deas, 'Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela', p. 66 . For a critical view of these measures,
see Gerardo Molina, Las ideas liberales en Colombia, r91z-s934 (Bogota, 1974), pp.
176-87. On the civilian successful opposition to the Minister of War's campaign, see
Abel, Politica, iglesia y partidos en Colombia, pp. 229-3 I.
42 Torres Giraldo, Los inconformes, vol. 4, p. 898.
43 See Manuel Caballero, Gdmeq, el tirano liberal (Caracas, I994); and Deas, 'Colombia,
Ecuador and Venezuela', pp. 678-80.
44 Herrera Soto and Romero Castafieda, La zona bananera, p. 79.
45 Quoted in Torres Giraldo, Los inconformes, vol. 4, p. 966.
46 1928. La masacre de las bananeras, pp. I 6-18, I23.

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 Fiction as history 405

Gaitan's serious allegations were widely publicised by the contemporary

press.47 His account seems to have been a major source for Garcia
Marquez's story. How reliable was Gaitan? The question has hardly been
raised. On the contrary, some literary critics such as Lucila Ines Mena -
who argue that One Hundred Years of Solitude keeps faithfully to reality -
based their argument on Gaitan's account, 'la fuente de informacion mas
veraz...acerca de la matanza'.48 Nevertheless, the union leader Ignacio
Tores Giraldo recalled in his memoirs, on a sarcastic note, how Gaitan
claimed to have 'almost concluded the investigation' the very first day of
his arrival in Cienaga.49 Gaitan, after all, was politically motivated, and as
such he had good reasons to exaggerate; his diatribes recall the earlier
insulting rhetoric of the Liberal pamphleteer Jose Maria Vargas Vila.50
In contrast to Gaitan's, General Cortes Vargas's account of the events
has been given very little credibility or even attention.51 Garcia Marquez
seems to have used it when describing some details of the massacre: the
short warning to leave the plaza as the army prepared to shoot, the
responses from the crowd, and the final order of fire. There is indeed some
naivete in the way Cortes Vargas described his decision in taking such a
ruthless step. He did not question his course of action: he received news

47 Gaitan's speeches were published in full by the major national newspapers. See
'Comenz6 ayer en la Cimara el sensacional debate sobre las bananeras', 'El regimen
militar cometi6 abusos fiscales en la zona', 'El R. Jorge Eliecer Gaitin hizo ayer
terribles revelaciones sobre las bananeras', 'El R. Gaitin termin6 ayer sus gravisimos
denuncios sobre los crimenes de las bananeras', in El Tiempo, 4, 5, 6 and 8 September
1929. These speeches were later compiled as I928. La masacre de las bananeras (Bogota,
Ediciones Los comuneros, n.d.), a little book that ran into various editions, readily
available today in Colombian book stores. See also 'La responsabilidad constitucional
del Presidente Abadia en la matanza de las bananeras', El Tiempo, 4 December 1929.
48 Mena, 'La huelga de la compafia bananera', p. 73. Saldivar's biography of Garcia
Mirquez is the most recent example of how Gaitan's account is accepted as an
unchallengeable truth; Garcia Mdrquee. El viaje a la semilla, p. 71.
49 Torres Giraldo, Los inconformes, vol. 4, p. 966.
50 On the possible influences of Vargas Vila on Gaitan, see Malcolm Deas, 'Jose Maria
Vargas Vila', in Delpodery la gramdtica (Bogoti, I993), pp. 296-99. In the prologue to
the second edition of his Sobrevivientes de las bananeras, Carlos Arango Z. quotes Vargas
Vila: '...el odio al yanqui debe ser nuestra divisa; pues ese odio es nuestro deber;
renunciar a el es renunciar a la vida', pp. I4-15. An exceptional note of cautiousness
on the fidelity of Gaitan's account is found in Urrutia, The Colombian Labor Movement,
p. io8.
51 White, for example, hardly cites Cortes Vargas's Los sucesos de las bananeras. Mena does
quote this source in a couple of occasions, while Saldivar does not seem to have
bothered to consult the book. Before being commissioned to the Coast, Cortes Vargas
was head of the History Department at the Army's Estado AIayor General, from I920 to
I926. During this period, in 1924, he published a three volume history book,
Participacidn de Colombia en la Libertad del Peru. For a sympathetic biographical note on
Cort6s Vargas, see Roberto Herrera Soto's prologue to Los sucesos de las bananeras, pp.
1I-17.

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406 Eduardo Posada-Carbo

of the decree conferring on him state of siege powers on the night of 5

December; he prepared the troops to face the crowd; at I:30 in the
morning, after some drum beatings, one of his officers gave the crowd five
minutes to leave the plaza; then he ordered 'Fuego!'.52 Why did Cortes
Vargas decide to open fire? Any enquiry into the means used by Cortes
Vargas in repressing the strike and his motives for choosing them would
have to examine in detail at least two further questions: what were the
circumstances surrounding the strike?, and under what conditions did the
army face the strikers?
Estimates, varying a great deal, put the figures of strikers throughout
the banana zone at between ,000o and 30,000 people. These were not
only banana workers. What might have started as a sectorial labour
dispute evolved into a general strike, which counted on the support of the
local population. As Charles Kepner described it, the strike 'was a far-
reaching mass movement, covering the entire banana district, and aided
by planters, merchants and others who were not workers'.5 In addition,
the involvement of the Partido Socialista Revolucionario (PSR) - which
had taken over the leadership of the strike54- gave a revolutionary
undertone to the events. Rauil Eduardo Mahecha - a co-founder and

leading member of this party, signed the 'pliego de peticiones', as th

'Secretario de debates' of all the unions which called for the strike in

I928.55 Alberto Castrillon, a PSR activist recently returned from Mosco

joined the movement together with some other PSR members sent by
party from Bogota and Girardot.56 Mahecha would later reveal t
existence of divisions between him and the central leadership in Bogo
where news of the outbreak of the strike was received with some surpr
as it was thought premature. But a national assembly of the PSR had m
in July 1928, which approved the launching of a general insurrection
coincide with a labour strike in the banana zone - originally planned t
take place in 1929. The PSR leadership later met in Choconta with veter
Liberal revolutionaries - who had fought in the Guerra de los Mil Dias
(I899-1902), including General Leandro Cuberos Nifio, and Venezue

52 Cortes Vargas, Los sucesos, pp. 87-90.

53 Kepner, Social Aspects of the Banana Industry, pp. 193-4.
54 Medina, Historia delpartido comunista, p. 13I. Founded in I926, the PSR became
Communist Party in I930. On its foundation, see Torres Giraldo, Los Inconformes, v
4, pp. 837-48.
55 Herrera Soto and Romero Castafieda, La Zona bananera, pp. 28-30. On Mahecha,
Arango, Sobrevivientes de las bananeras (Bogota, 2nd. edition, i985), chapter 6; Medin
Historia del Partido Comunista de Colombia, vol. I, pp. 3I1-3.
56 See Uribe, Los anos escondidos, p. 26I. Other members of the PRS involved in t
leadership of the strike included Russo, Erasmo Coronel and Sixto Ospino; Medin
Historia del Partido Comunista, p. 1 32. For PSR's involvement, see also CSTC, Bananer
p. 104.

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 Fiction as history 407

anti-Gome~ forces to coordinate an insurrection in both countries.57 News

in November 1928 that the PSR had been accepted as a branch of the
Communist International added to the governmental fears of an 'amenaza
bolchevique'.58 On i8 November, the PSR had warned Mahecha 'no
confundir la huelga con la insurrecci6n', but as the events unfolded it
instructed its members to 'lanzarse a la acci6n directa'.59
With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to argue that the government
over-reacted to the 'insurrectionary threats'. Indeed contemporary
publications of the opposition against the Conservative regime, such as El
Espectador, accused the government of creating an 'imagined revolution'.
Medofilo Medina also refers to the 'novelon del gobierno', 'una farsa
montada'.60 But the evidence above, mostly from sources close to the
PSR, suggests that the 1928 strike was no simple industrial dispute. The
authorities not only feared social unrest as a result of a 'communist
insurrection' - real or imagined; they probably feared even more a
Liberal rebellion.61 For those facing the strike, the concern for the
consequences of a continuing general breakdown of law and order
therefore was probably genuine, particularly bearing in mind the weak
position of the state forces.
With barely I5 men policing Cienaga, the Police was palpably weak.62
Thus the government had to rely on the Army. Cortes Vargas initially
counted on the support of 200 trained soldiers, plus an equal number of
young conscripts without much experience. They were later joined by a
regiment of 300 Antioquehos.63 This small number of troops - referred to
as a 'gran contingente del ejercito' by some historians64 - was spread
throughout the banana zone, though Cortes Vargas was reluctant to
divide them. In Cienaga, where from ,50oo to 4,000 strikers took over the
57 Representing the Venezuelans were Arevalo Cedenio, General Carabafio, and Pedro
Elias Aristigueta. See Uribe, Los anos escondidos, pp. 242-52. The anti-Gomez forces
launched a frustrated revolution in I929. See Caballero, Gdmez. El tirano liberal, pp.
289-326.
58 Torres Giraldo, Los inconformes, vol. 4, p. 939; CSTC, Bananeras, p. 104.
59 Quoted in Arango, Los sobrevivientes, (2nd edition), pp. 146, I65-6.
60 Medina, Historia del partido, p. 35.
61 LeGrand, 'El conflicto de las bananeras', p. 206. On the threats of Liberal rebellions
elsewhere in Colombia during the late I92os, see M. Jimenez, 'At the Banquet of
Civilization: The Limits of Planter Hegemony in Early Twentieth-Century Colombia',
in W. Roseberry et al., (eds.), Coffee, Society and Power in Latin America (Baltimore and
London, I995), pp. 262-94. 'Si nosotros no hacemos la revoluci6n' - Mahecha pleaded
to his camarades in a Congreso Sindical Latinoamericano gathered in Montevideo
months after the strike - 'es seguro, pero absolutamente seguro, que la haran los
liberales'; Arango, Sobrevivientes (second edition), p. I43.
62 Victor Fuentes, Los sucesos de las bananeras (Santa Marta, I929), p. I0.
63 Natives from the interior department of Antioquia.
64 Mauricio Archila, 'La clase obrera colombiana, i886-I930', A. Tirado, ed., Nueva
Historia de Colombia, vol. 3, p. 236.

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408 Eduardo Posada-Carbo

plaza on 5 December, Cortes Vargas was backed by 300 soldiers. These

troops probably shared the general conditions of the Colombian army
described in a I928 British report as 'a half-trained, half-organised and ill-
equipped handful'. Their level of armaments was considered 'inadequate',
the training 'elementary in the extreme'. In addition, there were rumours
of disaffection within the ranks in Barranquilla - a Liberal stronghold.65
Thus Cortes Vargas counted on only a small force - ill trained and ill
equipped - to counter what was perceived as a general insurrection. He
had motives to doubt the loyalty of his troops. On z December, a leaflet
signed by the PSR leader Tomas Uribe Mairquez, incited the strikers to
'organizar un movimiento de simpatia hacia los soldados'. The following
day El Estado, an influential newspaper from Santa Marta, published an
interview with the Secretario de Gobierno of Magdalena Department,
who said that the contingent of Antioquenos had been brought into the
zone because the army commander could not trust the local soldiers.66
Public order deteriorated, forcing Cortes Vargas to divide his forces to
patrol the zone. Uribe Marquez's leaflet called the strikers to 'organizar la
acci6n directa sorpresiva mediante el sabotaje de las comunicaciones..., la
intervenci6n forzada al trabajo rompehuelgas, la destrucci6n de zonas
bananeras', although he stated that these were defensive actions and that
they should not become 'conducta abierta de rebeldia en guerra'. He also
suggested that the strike should be turned into an anti-imperialist
movement.67
Incidents of direct confrontation between the strikers and the army
were limited. There were, however, some violent encounters. Strikers
blocked communications and transport. Confrontations between strikers
and strike-breakers, as would be expected, were particularly bitter. On 4
December there was damage to property, as the Fruit Company attempted
to resume work. A group of strikers surrounded and disarmed 30 soldiers
on a banana plantation; the news was reported the following day in El
Estado as 'una asonada bolchevique, que pide a grito herido la intervencion
pronta y eficaz del gobierno nacional'.68 Reports like this encouraged a
perception of general disaster among the authorities; and perceptions
were probably more crucial than reality in determining the sequence of
65 The army was also described as 'distinctly inferior to that of Peru and Venezuela, and
barely equal to that of Ecuador'; see 'Colombia. Report for the Year ending I928'.
66 Cortes Vargas, Los sucesos, pp. 62, 66.
67 Cortes Vargas, Los sucesos, pp. 66, 67. LeGrand raised doubts about the authenticity of
this letter, suggesting that it might have been fabricated by Cortes Vargas. LeGrand,
'Las bananeras', p. 2I0. Maria Tila Uribe, Uribe Marquez's daughter, however,
reproduces the text of this letter in her memoirs. She also claims that this and other
letters by Uribe Marquez were widely read by the strikers; Los anos escondidos, pp. 262-3.
68 El Estado, 5 December I928, quoted in Valdeblanquez, Historia del departamento del
Magdalena. See also Herrera Soto and Romero Castafieda, La zona bananera, pp. 47, 5 .

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 Fiction as history 409

events. Both Cortes Vargas and the Minister of War continually received
alarming news. So did other local authorities. On 4 December the
Inspector of Sevilla reported that '[el] pueblo ha salido armado [para]
impedir embarque'. The following day, a dispatch from the alcalde in
Cienaga read: 'Inspector Corregimiento Riofrio ha tenido necesidad de
abandonar poblacion en vista obreros discurren calles, amenazantes,
armados machetes'.69 Also on 5 December, a railway employee reported
that 5,000 men armed with machetes had left Santa Marta. During the
previous two days, the Governor had cabled Minister Rengifo with news
of 'graves des6rdenes', again referring to men armed with machetes. Cortes
Vargas might have exaggerated when he described 'el movimiento de
amotinados, armados de machetes, revolveres y escopetas'.70 And machetes
were probably carried by banana workers in the normal course of their
work. Machetes were, none the less, visible. Salvador Bornacelli - the
general secretary of the union in Aracataca - recalled years later how on
5 December, as they travelled by train from Santa Marta, 'donde quiera
que pasaibamos se veia gente con machete', although according to
Santander Aleman, a worker on the railway, some 7,800 machetes were
collected by the leadership of the movement and locked away that day.71
The task of guaranteeing public order was not eased by the
discrepancies between the military commander and the civilian authorities,
particularly the Magdalena Governor, who was the highest authority in
the region until the state of siege was adopted on the eve of 6 December.
The miliary commander was originally of the view that, with the support
of civilian authorities, he was capable of controlling the strike.72 Yet as
early as 14 November there were clear disagreements between Cortes
Vargas and the Governor on how to handle problems of public order.
Cortes Vargas complained that his initial policy of a firm hand with the
leaders of the strike was frustrated by the Governor's orders; that the
actions of the Governor had been counter-productive. Judges freed those
imprisoned by the army. So did the Governor. The Alcalde in Cienaga,
according to Cortes Vargas, supported the strikers - an accusation that
the alcalde later rejected.73 National authorities in the distant capital were
not that helpful. The Governor himself, who opposed the firm hand policy
6Fuentes, Los sucesos de las bananeras, pp. 12-13.
70 Cort6s Vargas, Los sucesos de las bananeras, p. 80.
7 See their recollections in Arango, Sobrevivientes de las bananeras, pp. 68 and 74. Later, in
June I929, Mahecha acknowledged that during the confrontations that followed the
shooting at the plaza on the eve of 6 December, strikers counted on 'ciento siete rifles
Gras y unas cien escopetas p6simamente municionadas, y algunos centenares de
machetes'; Arango, Sobrevivientes (second ed.), p. I41.
72 Cortes Vargas, Los sucesos de las bananeras, p. 31.
73 See Fuentes, Los sucesos de las bananeras, and Cort6s Vargas, Los sucesos de las bananeras.
The complaints against civilian authorities in the latter figure prominently.

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4I0 Eduardo Posada-Carbo

pursued by Cort6s Vargas, had earlier complained that the national

government 'no se ha penetrado [del] grave peligro [de la] zona bananera,
donde han encontrado campo propicio agitadores comunismo'.74 The
President, according to one contemporary observer, seemed unaware of
how serious the problems were, 'perdido quizai en sus suenos...'.75 Cortes
Vargas would later complain about the ambiguous position taken by the
civilian authorities. He saw his major responsibility as that of restoring
order for both internal and external reasons: a further deterioration of law

and order could have caused 'mayores males', including a US intervention

on Colombian soil.

Whether or not Cortes Vargas had to order to fire the way he did at
dawn on 6 December is indeed questionable. But the charges, raise
among others by a CSTC publication, that Cortes Vargas consciously let
the situation deteriorate so he could 'resolver a su antojo la situacion', a
a preconceived act - 'un asesinato planeado conjuntamente por el y l
altos directivos de la United Fruit Company' - seem unsubstantiated.76

A conspiracy of silence?
A careful revision of the 'masacre de las bananeras' along the line
suggested above may still come to the conclusions that the casualties we
too high; that Cort6s Vargas and the army behaved ruthlessly; that ha
labour demands been met, the strike would have ended peacefully; that
the final analysis the arrogance of the United Fruit Company and i
reluctance to come to terms with labour demands were ultimatel
responsible for the tragic outcome. There will always remain contested
views and interpretations. However, the thesis that there was 'a conspira
of silence' among the Colombian elite to suppress the truth from t
collective memory - supported mainly by those who attempt a historica
reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude - does not stand up to even
cursory examination of events.7
Certainly those who were directly involved as major protagonists did
not remain silent. On 20 July 1929, Alberto Castrillon, one of the leader
of the strike, sent from prison a full report giving his version of the strike
to Congress, soon published in book form that year - 120 dias bajo el terr
militar.78 General Carlos Cort6s Vargas, in turn, edited a set of documen

74 Castrill6n, 120 dias bajo el terror militar, p. 38. 75 Castafieda, p. 19.

76 CSTC, Bananeras, p. o0o.
77 See Bell-Villada, Garcia MdrqueZ, p. o05; and Martin, Journeys through the labyrinth, pp
230 and 385.
78 A. Castrill6n 120 dias bajo el terror militar o la huelga de las bananeras (Bogota, first ed.
I929; reprinted in I974). In this text Castrillon appealed to the legislators to do justice
as representatives of the republic in a democratic country. His line was condemned by
the Communist International: '... ha dirigido al parlamento colombiano una suplica en

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 Fiction as historj 411

with his own explanation and defense - Los sucesos de las bananeras - also in
I929. Following Gaitan's accusations in Congress, Cortes Vargas again
replied in the columns of El Nuevo Tiempo, and his refutation was
reprinted as a pamphlet - El General Cortes Vargas Contesta al representante
Gaitdn.79 The Alcalde of Cienaga, Victor Fuentes, who had been accused
by Cortes Vargas of supporting the strike, also published his own version
in July 1929; so did the Magdalena Governor, Jose Maria Nufiez Roca.
In 1931, Gregorio Castaneda Arag6n, a Magdalenense poet who held an
official position during the strike, published his Papeles de la huelga del
Magdalena en I928, also containing accusations against Cortes Vargas.
Jorge Eliecer Gaitin has of course received all the credit for exposing
the massacre. This was not a minor, private venture. He arrived in the
banana zone on 18 July 929, and stayed there the following ten days. He
held mass interrogations and gave 'speeches before the crowds'. On his
return journey to Bogota, he stopped 'whenever he could to tell the
growing crowd about the massacre'.80 On 3 September, after a motion
presented by the Liberal representative Gabriel Turbay, Gaitan started a
debate in the Lower House which lasted for I5 consecutive days. 'The
galleries', as described by Sharpless, 'were filled with spectators; crowds
waited outside in the Plaza de Bolivar to accompany Gaitan home after
each session; newspapers carried full accounts of the speeches'.81 Any
'conspiracy' to silence the dead was frustrated by Gaitin's successful
campaign. As Herbert Braun noted, Gaitin 'made sure that that would
not happen'.82
Gaitan acquired fame on this occasion, but he was not the only one to
accuse the army and the government of slaughtering the strikers. Nor did
he start the accusations. According to Torres Giraldo, three lawyers from
Magdalena - Manuel Robles, Rafael Campo and Lanao Loayza - 'em-
pezaron a hacer luz sobre el horrendo crimen'.83 Some of their articles,
published by the Conservative press in Barranquilla, were echoed

la cual no habla con la altivez de un militante revolucionario de la clase obrera... sino

en la forma de un vil cortesano que implora la gracia de la burguesia'; Communis
International Bureau to the PSR, Moscui, February 1930, in Arango, Los sobrevivient
de las bananeras (2nd. ed), pp. 178-9.
79 These two works were reprinted in one volume in 1979 as Los sucesos de las bananer
80 H. Braun, The assassination of Gaitan: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia (Madiso
1985), p. 58. 'He stopped at every major populated area along the way, attacked t
government for its illegal action and corruption, and urged the people to give hi
support in the coming congressional debate', Sharpless, Gaitdn of Colombia: A Politic
Biography (Pittsburgh, 1970), p. 58. 81 Sharpless, Gaitdn of Colombia, p. 58.
82 See Braun's observation on Garcia Mirquez's novel and Gaitan's actions, regarding
tale that silence surrounded the dead of the massacre, in Braun, The assassination
Gaitdn, p. 211, fn. 23. 83 Torres Giraldo, Los inconformes, vol. 4, p. 963.

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41 2 Eduardo Posada-Carbd

elsewhere in the country, particularly by the Bogotano Liberal newspapers.

'Ni siquiera se sabe a cuantos centenares ascendieron los muertos en esa
carniceria unilateral', El Tiempo commented in July i929.84 On 4
September that year, after one of the congressional debates, the Bolivian
Ambassador visited El Tiempo, the headquarters of the political
opposition. There Arguedas greeted Gaitin, 'el orador de la tarde', who
was next to Eduardo Santos, the newspaper's Director and an already
influential figure in the Liberal party. Arguedas could also hear the
Congressman Camacho Carrenio reconstructing in dictation his speech in
the Chamber on the bananeras, to be published by El Tiempo, together
with that of Gaitin, the following day.85 The work of cartoonists, such as
that of Ricardo Rendn86 - like that of writers and politicians - is also
evidence of the lack of 'silence' surrounding the event.
Quite the contrary. What happened in Cienaga on 6 December 1928
was almost immediately the focus of public controversy. Soon afterwards
the 'masacre' became a political symbol, skilfully exploited by the
opposition, Liberal and Revolutionary Socialist alike, against the
Conservative regime. Even disaffected Conservatives used it to attack the
government: on 19 May 1929, El Espectador published an interview with
the Conservative cacique Pompilio Gutierrez, who referred to Cortes
Vargas as a 'fiera', responsible for the killing of i,ooo people. 'Abajo el
asesino de las bananeras' read the placards carried by mass demonstrators
in Bogota the following June. According to Maria Tila Uribe, the
bananeras coloured all political events in Colombia during 1929 and 1930.87
Certainly the first anniversary of the 'masacre' did not pass unnoticed.
On 4 December, El Tiempo published in full Gaitan's report accusing
President Abadfa of constitutional responsibility for the 'matanza de las
bananeras'.88 On 6 December, the same newspaper reported that the
Uni6n Obrera de Colombia, among other labour organisations, had
invited workers to join in the 'primer aniversario del salvaje asesinato
perpetrado en millares de vidas de nuestros hermanos de la Zona
Bananera'.89 On the evening of that day, at 5:oo p.m., 'una gran masa de
obreros y de elementos izquierdistas' gathered in the Parque Santander,
from where they marched along the Calle Real to reach the Capitolio - the
Congress building. Here they were delivered a speech by Felipe Lleras

84 Quoted in G. Colmenares, Ricardo Renddn. Una fuente para la historia de la opinidn ptubica
(Bogota, I984), p. 26i. 85 Arguedas, La dan~a de las sombras, pp. 78-80.
86 See Colmenares, Ricardo Renddn. Una fuente para la historia de la opinion puiblica.
87 Uribe, Los anos escondidos, p. 293.
88 'La responsabilidad constitucional del Presidente Abadfa en la matanza de las
bananeras', El Tiempo, 4 December 1929.
89 'Hoy a las cinco de la tarde sera proclamado candidato comunista', El Tiempo, 6
December 1929.

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 Fiction as history 4 3

Camargo, a member of the Liberal Bogotano elite but himself a socialist

sympathiser. The demonstration then found its way to the Teatro
Municipal, where Alberto Castrillon, one of the leaders of the banana
strike, was launched as a presidential candidate for the 1930 contest.90
Rather than a 'conspiracy of silence', the masacre de las bananeras was
followed by press accusations, congressional debates, and street demon-
strations. The activities of the opposition were not fruitless. Both the
Minister of War, Ignacio Rengifo, and General Carlos Cortes Vargas were
removed from their official posts -although this did not happen
immediately. The political rewards for the opposition went to the Liberal
party not to the PSR. As noted, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan's career was largely
built on the reputation he gained for his intervention in the 'matanza de
las bananeras' debate. Perhaps more significantly, the regime did not
remain politically immune. On 9 February 1930, a Liberal, Enrique Olaya
Herrera, defeated a divided and demoralised Conservative Party, bringing
an end to half a century of Conservative hegemony.

Conclusions

In I989, when his novel on Simon Bolivar - Elgeneral en su laberinto - was

published, Gabriel Garcia Marquez acknowledged that he had never
before worked with historical data. 'Lo habia trabajado periodisticamente'
- he added. 'Pero eso de rastrear hasta el fondo no lo habia hecho'.91 Yet
some literary critics, such as Gene Bell-Villada, still want us to believe that
One Hundred Years of Solitude is 'quintessential Latin America history'. The
idea that novels are truer to history than history itself has a long tradition
in the region. 'La novela latinoamericana', wrote German Arciniegas in
1952, 'es en lo general un documento mas exacto que la historia'.92
There are historiographical and literary trends sustaining that there
should be no distinction between history and literature, for which all
readings of the past are equally fictitious.93 However, as Alan Knight has
observed, 'historical narratives are not the equivalent of fictional texts;
they are a different genre': 'magical realism may work for literature, but
it is the kiss of death for history and the social sciences...'.94 The
historian's approach towards the past has to be different. 'The poetry of
90 'El candidato comunista fue proclamado en el Municipal', El Tiempo, 7 December
1929. Castrill6n's speech was published here in full.
91 Interview with Maria Elvira Samper, Semana, 14 March I989.
92 Germin Arciniegas, Entre la libertady el miedo (Bogoti, I996 - published first as The
State in Latin America in 195 2), p. 39.
93 See, for example, Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism
(Baltimore and London, 1978). For a critical account of the distinction between history
and fiction, see Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (London, I997).
94 Alan Knight, Latin America. What Price the Past? An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the
University of Oxford on 18 November 1993 (Oxford, I994), p. 32.

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414 Eduardo Posada-Carbo

history', G. M. Trevelyan pointed out, 'does not consist of imagination

roaming at large, but of imagination pursuing the fact and fastening upon
it'.95 The poetry of One Hundred Years of Solitude, in contrast, rests on
imagination exaggerating the facts. As Garcia Marquez himself admitted
in the Channel Four interview that inspired this article, he could not 'stick
to historical reality' regarding the outcome of the I928 strike.96
This does not mean that literature and history should be fully
disassociated. Nor does it imply that One Hundred Years of Solitude cannot
convey a sense of the Colombian past. However, as this article has shown,
it does raise serious questions about the extent to which the novel can be
used as a piece of historical evidence - as a source, in particular, to
interpret the complex events of the 1928 strike and its aftermath. 'Nos
complacemos en el ensuefio de que la historia no se parezca a la Colombia
en que vivimos, sino que Colombia termine por parecerse a su historia
escrita', Garcia Marquez observed in one of his recurrent indictments
against a supposedly 'official history' of the country.97 The paradox here
is that, since the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude in I967,
Colombians' perceptions of the bananeras started to resemble not the
'Colombia en que vivimos' but the 'historia escrita' by the novelist.
'It is never safe to forget the truth which really underlies historical
research', Herbert Butterfield concluded in a classical essay: 'the truth
that all history perpetually requires to be corrected by more history'.98
Seven decades after the events of the bananeras took place, it may be time
to put passion aside and attempt to rewrite the whole episode. The result
of the enquiry may be equally tragic, but we may get a more balanced view
of the nation's history, less apocalyptic, without heroes and villains, and
a better understanding of the conflicts faced by Colombians in their past.
95 Quoted in Evans, In Defence of History, p. 250. See also Trevelyan's 'History and
Literature', History, vol. IX, No. 34 (1924), pp. 8I-91.
96 My Macondo, Dan Weldon, dir., (Channel Four, London, 1990), in British Film
Institute, London.
97 Garcia Mirquez, 'Por un pais al alcance de los niios', p. 6.
98 H. Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (New York and London, I 965), p. 3 I.
'The knowledge of the past is something progressive which is constantly transforming
and perfecting itself', M. Bloch, The Historian's Craft (Manchester, 1992), p. 48.

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