Will Stevens 5th 5/8/12 Latin American Industrialization

Many major events shape civilizations, countries, even whole regions. Some obvious events would be colonization or maybe horrific natural disasters, but what about the simple, discreet act of industrialization. Gabriel Garcia Marquez effectively uses symbolism to convey colonization and industrialization in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. These allusions add an extra, more significant meaning to the book. There were a few symbols in the novel that especially seemed to allude to the idea of industrialization in Latin America. One of them was the railroad. Macondo (a small, obscure town) was booming and in its prime until the railroad was built right through the middle of the town. All of a sudden, the flourishing Macondo (pre-colonial Central/South America) began to deteriorate with the arrival of greedy foreigners. This represents how Central and South America were thriving until the arrival of the power hungry Spaniards, when they began to die off and their civilizations fell into disarray and oblivion. However, this wasnt the only symbol in the book that lead represented a deeper meaning. Another symbolic figure found in the book is the banana plantation. In the novel, soon after the arrival of the railroad, a banana plantation is established in Macondo. This temporarily becomes a source of revenue for the town as a whole, since about three thousand citizens are

working there. One day, however, a war breaks out in another part of the country and the owner of the plantation and all of the workers are on opposing sides. Some soldiers round up the workers in the town square for a meeting and proceed to mow them down with machine guns. There are women and children mixed in the group of three thousand workers that get slaughtered, and then loaded onto the train that carries them all to the ocean to be disposed of. One worker survives though and makes his way back to Macondo. He is awestruck when not a single person recalls the event, and doesnt believe it ever took place. The banana plantation represents the colonizers greed for resources and money. Not even asking permission, but still proceeding to use the native resources to whatever means they please. This represents the Spaniards coming to the New World and simply taking without asking, just seizing gold without permission. The slaughter at the plantation obviously characterizes the mass genocides that colonial powers would implement on indigenous populations that didnt meet their every demand. The casually loading up onto the train and shipping off to some far off place symbolizes the little recognition and push-back that invading armies got when they would slaughter interfering civilizations. Finally, the return of some indigenous to their civilizations, just to find that no one remembers anything about the past ways of life show the ties that were severed when conquerors would sweep through Central and South American civilizations, clearing out everything in their way and erasing massive amount of heritage and history from indigenous tribes. Not only do these symbols represent common occurrences in Central/ South America, they can be found to be true to civilizations around the world. Almost any indigenous group that has been conquered by an outside army can relate to these symbols. The point of

colonizing is to expand, both in land mass and wealth, not in friendly relations, though. This is why it is not uncommon to see massive chunks of history missing from certain colonized groups. Overall, Marquez successfully employs symbolism of colonization and industrialization into his novel. He incorporates the representations into the story flawlessly, while still making his point and opinion on colonization clear. He does a terrific job writing an award winning book while still voicing his beliefs loud and clear!