Cuba and Macondo's Failures

In Gabriel Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, he uses major events that occurred in Latin America countries to invent the fantasy village of Macondo. One of the Latin America countries that influenced Gabriel Marquez is Cuba, the largest country in the Caribbean islands. The major events that occurred in Cuba are similar to those that occurred in the city of Macondo. These conflicted events in Cuba and Macondo caused the country and city failure in becoming First World Power (Cuba) and expanding into the outside world (Macondo). Macondo and Cuba suffered from many similar external and internal problems that lead to their downfall. The internal conflicts include the rule of dictators and the misuse of technology. On the other hand, the external conflicts that caused their ruination are the invasion of the Americans and the massacre that killed many people. These conflicts not only ruined their chance in becoming successful, but completely changed the city of Macondo and the Latin America country, Cuba.

To begin with, one of the first internal dysfunctions is the rule of bad dictators, which prevent any chance of success for both Cuba and the city of Macondo. Cuban leader, Fidel Castro (1959) established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. In 1950, Castro graduated from the University of Havana and opened a law office. Two years later, he ran for election to the Cuban House of Representatives, but a coup led by the country's former president, General Fulgencio Batista, overthrew the existing government and cancelled the election. In July 1953, Castro led about 120 men in an attack on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The assault failed, Castro was captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison, and many of his men were killed. (“Fidel Castro” par. 1-3) After being released from jail, Castro traveled to Mexico, where he met Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Guevara, a guerrilla leader and revolutionary “became an important confidante and advisor to Castro, and the pair conspired to overthrow the Batista regime by means of guerrilla warfare.” A guerrilla war starts and on December 2, 1956, Castro and 81 of his men returned to Cuba, near the eastern city of Manzanillo, to begin their guerrilla campaign. Castro leads a 9,000-strong guerrilla army into Havana. By January 1959, he had forced the Batista government to collapse and forced Batista, himself to flee. (“Fidel Castro” par. 6-7). Nearly all of the rebels died and as a result, Castro, his brother, and Che Guevara escaped into the mountains. Fidel Castro’s revolution is similar to One Hundred Years of Solitude’s Arcadio’s dictatorship in Macondo. He is the son of Jose Arcadio and Pilar Ternera who becomes a vicious ruler in Macondo. At first Arcadio seems like a gentle man and an outcast of the Buendia family, but he later is given the job as a