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Chapter 3 - Obliteration

Gabriel García Márquez and His Angolan Chronicles of a “Latin-African” Death Foretold

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2022

Sarah M. Quesada
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
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Summary

Chapter three examines the Black internationalism of Gabriel García Márquez in his Angolan writings, beginning with Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981). An analysis of this novel’s sunken slave ship carrying Senegalese bodies serves as an access point to García Márquez’s travels in and journalism about Africa that precede the novel: A Latin-Africa of a Cold War era about Portuguese colonialism and US imperialism. Arguing that the Cuban exodus he witnessed in the US sharpened his deeply-rooted criticism of US neocolonialism, his subsequent alignment with Fidel Castro culminated in his chronicle “Operación Carlota” on the Cuban decolonization of Angola. A chronicle named after a woman slave rebellion leader in Cuba it was also used for the Cuban-Angolan victory that led Castro to proclaim Cuba “Latin-African.” Outlining Castro’s signifier for a Global South solidarity through his allegories of slavery, I trace this African axis embedded in both García Márquez’s journalism and fiction. Returning to the lost Senegalese bodies in Crónica de una muerte anunciada, I connect it to the Senegalese slavery memorial par excellence: Gorée’s Maison des esclaves to reflect on the mutually constituting ways in which textual and physical memorials in García Márquez’s foretold death of a Latin-African history.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Obliteration
  • Sarah M. Quesada, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Book: The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature
  • Online publication: 14 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009086806.004
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  • Obliteration
  • Sarah M. Quesada, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Book: The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature
  • Online publication: 14 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009086806.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Obliteration
  • Sarah M. Quesada, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Book: The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature
  • Online publication: 14 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009086806.004
Available formats
×