MACONDO versus McONDO

Abstract

Macondo is the symbol of magical realism, the most important phenomenon of the boom, a time of great creativity and international renown for Latin American literature and undoubtedly also the literary roots of Gabriel García Márquez. Without the mythological town called Macondo, the key novels of one of the main writers of universal literature of the 20th century would not have existed: Leaf Storm (1955), No One Writes to the Colonel (1958), Big Mama’s Funeral (1961), In Evil Hour (1962) and above all One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). García Márquez’s youthful readings which contributed so much to the shaping of his fictional world were above all the novels and short stories of William Faulkner. Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County was his starting point for the chronotope called Macondo. After enjoying enormous success, especially in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Macondo departs from the imagination of Gabriel García Márquez and becomes the symbol of everything Latin American, a hallmark of the narrative of the entire Latin American continent.

A reaction to Macondo came in 1996 in the form of the Mexican literary movement called Crack (five novels by five authors) and then McOndo, in an anthology presented by two Chilean authors, Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez, with a prologue entitled “Presentation of McOndo Country”. This manifesto signifies the definitive decomposition of the boom and the post-boom movements, opening up new narrative perspectives to young writers.