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Loss of Communal Identity
When García Márquez wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude, Latin America had been a world neglected by Westerners and Europeans. This led to its political, geographical and cultural isolation from the rest of the world. Explorers to Latin America came away with bizarre accounts of flora, fauna and local customs foreign to their sensibilities. History books written by government officials further distorted the cultural identity of the region.
As a journalist, García Márquez witnessed this tearing of the very fiber of Latin American identity, which sought to replace, absorb or erase the local oral tradition and popular culture in favor of Westernization. This development had the potential to obliterate the culture of the region with the promises of a modern world.
