ECHOES OF SILENCE: THE BANANA MASSACRE AS HISTORICAL AMNESIA IN GARCIA MARQUEZ' ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 229 ECHOES OF SILENCE: THE BANANA MASSACRE AS HISTORICAL AMNESIA IN GARCIA MARQUEZ’ ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE Dr. A. Revathi Assistant Professor of English Sri Sarada College for Women (Autonomous), Salem [email protected] https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17283506 Abstract The main focus of the article is to portray the ruthless and true color of the United Fruit Company, which has taken away the lives of Colombians in reference with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude. The tragic end of the strikers is described in detail by Marquez. The purpose of the article is to pinpoint that the novel acts as a medium to portray the historical incident which is hidden in the history books. It also portrays how Marquez challenges institutionalized amnesia and reclaims concealed histories through literary fiction as a method of resistance. Marquez confronts the capitalist and imperialist systems that planned the violence and offers voice to the oppressed by fictionalizing the massacre. Keywords: Banana Massacre, United Fruit Company, Political violence, Capitalist exploitation. When the trumpet sounded, it was all prepared on the earth, .............................................. Among the blood-thirsty flies the Fruit Company lands its ships, taking off the coffee and the fruit; the treasure of our submerged territories flow as though on plates into the ships. ........................................ ........................... wrapped for burials in the mist of the dawn: a body rolls (137) - Pablo Neruda (The United Fruit Co.) The above quoted lines are from Pablo Neruda’s famous poem The United Fruit Co., in this poem Neruda talks about the arrival of the company and how it gradually occupies the lands of the natives and also showcases how it has taken off the lives of people. This company occupied the lands which is fertile for the growth of bananas. In order to increase their product, the company persuaded people to consume more bananas. On 30th March, 1899, Preston, Baker and Keith established the United Fruit Company and they won nearly 75% of the banana market in the U.S. In April, seven independent companies added to this company which were active in Honduras. In 1901, the Government of Guatemala hired the United Fruit Company in order to deal with the Country’s national post service. In 1927, the United Fruit Company purchased the CaliforniaGuatemala Fruit Corporation, which exported bananas from Guatemalan Pacific Coast to western USA. In December 1928, the Colombian workers launched a strike against the company. The demand of the workers was to furnish a written contract to highlights the working time, eighthours per day and six-days in week. This shows the harsh working condition of the ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 230 company. It also adds about the elimination of food coupons provided by the company. Later, this strike attracted the attention of the country, in which the Liberal Party, members of the Socialist and Communist Parties took part to rebel against the company. The National labor Union travelled to the banana zone and launched the strike, where Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born. Marquez was born in Aracataca, a town in the banana zone of Maddalena, Colombia. During1929, the Conservative party controlled the government and sent army to the banana zone. The strikers were asked to gather in the main plaza of the city of Cienaga. The army was controlled by Carlos Cortes Vargas, passed a command to open fire and it resulted in the death of the workers and the government announced that the strike came to an end. Jorge Eliecer Gaitan criticized the action of the government on the radio and also in public speeches. This resulted in the fall of the Conservative party in the following election. The fruit company suppressed the workers brutally and violently and it is also responsible for the death of the strikers and their family members. This incident in history is named as Banana Massacre or Matanza de las Bananeras. This incident was incorporated by Marquez in one of his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. This novel unveils one of the most notorious strikes which broke out on 12th November, 1928 in the Caribbean Coast of Colombia near Santa Marta which took away the lives of 3000 people. Colombia is well-known for banana plantation and industry. The industry was taken over by the United Fruit Company (UFC). Marquez gives a detail description about the massacre which has no trace in the history books. In the novel, the Banana Company of Macondo is modeled based on the United Fruit Company. Macondo is the fictional village created by Marquez in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. The innocent nature of the village got spoiled at the time of the Civil War. People from different places have entered into the village. After this war the people of Macondo does not breathe the air of peace due to the arrival of the banana company and this company causes misery to the villagers and completely ruins the nature of the village. The middle portion of the novel narrates the arrival and malicious feature of Banana Company, "When the banana company arrived, however, the local functionaries were replaced by dictatorial foreigners .... The old policemen were placed by hired assassins with machetes" (OHY 237). The workers suffered due to the violent treatment of the banana company. It resulted in the strike, "the workers demanded that they not be obliged to cut and load bananas on Sunday" (OHY 297). The great strike broke out in Macondo, "Cultivation stopped halfway, the fruit rotted on the tress, and the hundred-twenty-car trains remained on the sidings" (OHY 302). The town is filled with idle workers and it resulted in the decay of fruits. The workers litigated a case in the Supreme Court. Even at the national level they did not get any support. The workers of the banana plantation demanded a written agreement which encloses the rule of the working hours. The workers stated that they will work for eight hours a day and six days in a week and also demanded to eliminate the food coupons. The story goes on as, The workers, who had been content to wait until then, went into the woods with no other weapons but their working machetes and they began to sabotage the sabotage. They burned plantations and commissaries, tore up tracks to impede the passage of the trains that began to open their path with machine-gun fire, and the cut telegraph and telephone wires. The irrigation ditches were stained with blood. ... The situation was threatening to lead to a bloody and unequal civil war when the authorities called upon the workers to gather in Macondo. (OHY 303) When Jose Arcadio Buendia went to take part in the union leaders meeting, he observed that, ... the army has set up machine-gun emplacements around the small square and that the wired city of the banana company was protected by artillery pieces. Around twelve o' clock, waiting for ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 231 a train that was not arriving, more than three thousand people, workers, women, and children, had spilled out of the open space in front of the station and were pressing into the neighboring streets, which the army had closed off with rows of machine guns. (OHY 304) The army lieutenant climbed on the roof of the station and had four machineguns pointing towards the crowd. People in the station got frightened and they started to run for their lives. This attack occurred after the lieutenant reads the order as follows, Decree No.4 of the civil and military leader of the province through an old phonograph horn. It had been signed by General Carlos Cortes Vargeas and his secretary, Major Enrique Garcia Isaza, and in three articles of eighty words he declared the strikes to be a "bunch of hoodlums" and he authorized the army to shoot to kill. (OHY 304) The panic among the strikers and their family members increased when, "The captain gave the order to fire and fourteen machine guns answered at once. But it all seemed like a farce. ... Suddenly, on one side of the station, a cry of death tore open the enchantment ... The people in front had already done so, swept down by the wave of bullets" (OHY 306). They bundled dead bodies of the people like the bunch of bananas, "They went through sleeping towns he saw the man corpses, woman corpses, child corpses who would be thrown into the sea like rejected bananas" (OHY 307). Macondo faced the greatest downfall after the massacre, The banana company tore down its installations. All that remained of the former wired-in city were the ruins. The wooden houses, the cool terraces of breezy card-playing afternoons, seemed to have been blown away in an anticipation of the prophetic wind that years later would wipe Macondo off the face of the earth. The only human trace left by that voracious blast was a glove belonging to Patricia Brown in an automobile smothered in wild pansies. (OHY 315) After the departure of the banana company, everything in Macondo started to decay. In history, this period is marked as the economic depression in Colombia which started in the year 1929 and ended at the beginning of the Second World War. The workers who launched the strike used the guerrilla technique to defeat the Americans. The Americans invited three thousand workers and also their families in order to solve the matter. But, this meeting ended in a massacre. The workers were surrounded by the armed force and they were killed by the opening fire. Herbert Butterfield rightly says about history in a classical essay, “The truth that all history perpetually requires to be corrected by more history” (48). Marquez has rewritten the whole episode of the massacre in his novel. As in real the result of the episode in the novel is equally tragic. Through his novel, he pays way for the better understanding of the conflicts and sufferings faced by the people of Colombia in their past. The purpose of this article is not only to showcase the Colombian past but also to raise a serious question that the novel can act as a medium to portray the historical source of the massacre and also its aftermath. Works Cited Neruda, Pablo. Canto General. Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1950. Butterfield, Herbert. The Whig Interpretation of History. No publisher, 1965. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Translated by Gregory Rabassa, Penguin Books India, 1996.