A (very small and improvised) love letter/thesis on Magical Realism as part of Latinx Futurisms

Luisa Rivera, illustration of the Buendías' family tree in Cien años de soledad (50 Aniversario) (2017), Gabriel García Márquez, 2017, Illustrated Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, Penguin Random House.

Gabo's 100 Years of Solitude is one of my favourite, if not my favourite, book ever.

I could talk about it forever (and indeed I have in many papers in high school and university, and almost anything I use inspiration from, could be traced back to this book), but I've been drawing inspiration from this book and, mostly, what it represents for Latin American identity formation and conception. 

And, I come up with an interesting thesis:

I argue that the magical realism genre, especially reflected in the 100YOS book, is a tool to create Latinx Futurist narratives. The impact the story of this book has had for generations, giving rise to the Latin American literature boom, is beyond what people understand, and underestimated, as it created a reflection, in just some pages, of our sociopolitical identity as Latin Americans. This accomplishment is beyond me, really, as Latin America is one of the most diverse, full of multiplicity, contradictions and identity clashes, regions of the world, as a result of colonial and power dynamics inflicted into our whole heritage and culture, where existing as we are, amidst our contradictions and ambiguity of our origins, is resistance to the violence still persistent and running through the open veins of our region and communities.

The power of magic realism exemplified in this novel, for me, its the epic tone and illusion of magic in a narrative that tells of a very real and vivid context, deceiving the audience into believing its fiction. It gives reality a fantastical character, which allows to tell a story, setting the rawness and violence of reality aside for a moment, allowing viewers to immerse more enthusiastically, without fear. It's a blessing in disguise. 

This narration of impossibility fits perfectly with the ability of Latinx Futurist works to create a space for the impossible to realize itself, especially within the Latin American context and our experiences. It grants us a chance for redemption, allowing us to embrace our land, our family members and community, fight the colonial and imperial powers and systems, while including real, historical accounts of people who did these very things, but it has been forgotten or overlooked by society for generations. This novel is a testimony to the fight and struggle of our communities, territories and ancestors since time immemorial, and a vivid reminder to not forget our story and those who allowed us to exist. It's the Bible of Latin American literature; explaining all you need to know about Latin American culture (specifically Colombian culture), sociopolitical and historical events and influences, in the most epic tone and literary detail, through characters that serve as religious and cultural archetypes of the genetic makeup of our communities. 

The way of constructing the narrative follows oral history methods that are still prevalent in our culture and family contexts. The way our grandparents tell us stories about their experiences and important historical events they or their ancestors lived, include a lot of exaggerations, magical elements, mythical qualities and are infused in religious and cultural beliefs. It almost seems like a fantastical story, and that's the oral tradition that has been used to maintain knowledge and history alive for us to understand, since we are children. And we continue telling them that way as adults, and until we have our own grandchildren. 

FAMILY TIES (ÁRBOL GENEALÓGICO)

A reference to this book is so special, I want to add it to the constructed space installation I will created as my thesis project. A Latin American domestic space cannot be, without the acknowledgement and inclusion of those who have come before me, and are still here to guide me, inform me and live as authors and witnesses of the transmitted knowledge I pour into my works and the material culture I'm nurturing and feeding in the West and for my communities in the Diaspora.

Material Idea:

Circular photo frames of all the family members I have (refer to online family tree research I have with my dad), black and white printing, weave red thread or wool across all of their hearts, connecting them together, "bloodline"

Flavio Pereira, Aparecida - Sala Dos Milagres (2007), Photograph, Flickr, January 23, 2009.

The magical realism is manifested in the construction of memory, place-making, filling undescribed/unrememberable spaces with re-constructed memories, and this is what I would like to evoke in the more spatial, installation aspects of my thesis work. This very same idea was re-visited when I accidentally encountered a text about understanding fictional spaces through cultural schemas and spatial memory, concepts I'm familiar with thanks to my psychology major. In Pérez-Kriz and Vivancos-Pérez's empirical study (2016), they are studying how people fill details of unspecified spaces of fictional spaces, using García Márquez' book. They found people often recurring to cultural schemas, meaning they fill the spaces with culturally-specific understanding of similar real-world spaces. Although this article was intended for pedagogical methods, this study was very insightful, both for my practice in my thesis project as well as my cultural psychology university career, to understand the significance of memory and cultural-specific knowledge and perspectives in my own (re) creation of my conception of Latinx domestic spaces, informed by my own experience, and literary and artistic influences, reproducing in the making processes the actual human and memory behaviours we exercise when imagining and creating worlds for our own re-appropriation and creation of our Latinx identities.

Bibliography

Essen, Leah Rachel von. “Appropriating Latinx Magical Realism: A Twitter Thread” While Reading and Walking, March 22, 2017. https://whilereadingandwalking.com/post/158710817981/appropriating-latinx-magical-realism-a-twitter

García Márquez, Gabriel. Cien Años de Soledad (50 aniversario): Illustrated fiftieth anniversary edition of one hundred years of solitude. Vintage Español, 2017.

Hayden, Taylor. “The Power of Impossibility: Magical Realism as a Reflection of Latin American Sociopolitical Identity. ” Texas ScholarWorks, May 10, 2021. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/01283f2d-2eac-46e7-aad0-fb6c14a5665e/content

Making of 100 Años de Soledad: Luisa Rivera's Creative Process https://www.luisarivera.cl/making-of-cien-anos-de-soledad/

Pereira, Flavio. Aparecida - Sala Dos Milagres. 2007. Photograph. Flickr, January 23, 2009. https://www.flickr.com/photos/28062899@N06/3220747014

Pérez-Kriz, Sarah, Ricardo F Vivancos-Pérez, Yuri Uesaka, Mateja Jamnik, Stephanie Elzer Schwartz, Yuri Uesaka, Mateja Jamnik, and Stephanie Elzer Schwartz. “Using Diagrammatic Drawings to Understand Fictional Spaces: Exploring the Buendía House in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.” In Diagrammatic Representation and Inference, 9781:187–93. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42333-3_14.