Garcia Marquez Strikes

Throughout the course of the world, a common occurrence has been repeated throughout history. The exploits of the urban worker have led to the workers leaving their stations of work and initiating a strike. In the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez helps drive the plot through the action of a strike. Like in the novel, these strikes hurt key manufactures and leave the leaders to make a decision. The leaders can either give in to the worker’s demands or take the issue into their own hands. The latter of the issues can lead to deadly consequences. In the novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the banana manufacturers decided to take the issue into their own hands and eliminate the threat through the use of force. While
Three hundred soldiers were brought in from the Columbian capital to stop the strike at all costs. The government set up machine gun nests upon the buildings roofs and sealed off the main square. The leader of the regiment called for the protestors to leave but immediately began to fire into the crowd after the warning. (“This Day in History”) Comparing to the historical description, Garcia Marquez never revealed what month the massacre occurred, but most of the details remain constant. The General Vargas was involved to order the soldiers to commit mass murder. The novel has the soldiers to man machine gun nests and the leader calling for the protesters to leave the square. However, the novel has the soldiers wait five minutes to give the protesters a chance to leave. After the allotted time limit, the machine guns rang down upon the crowd. Garcia Marquez captured the key essence of the massacre and the exact means of how it actually
Arcadio Segundo claimed that there was “more than three thousand and that they were all thrown into the sea.” (Garcia Marquez 343). The massacre was completely covered up and the locals believed that the protesters had peacefully left the country. The massacre has no major repercussions on the Columbian population. In contrast, the strike of 1982, took a different route. It is not for certain how many civilian protesters were killed during the massacre. It is for certain that there was more than one survivor of the incident. Many people survived the ordeal and spread the news by their own means, such as the instrument of public radio. General Vargas claimed that only 47 people were killed in the attacks, but many eyewitness accounts tell a different story. It is believed that between 800 and 2000 people were killed during the strike. No clear record of the account was written down by the Columbian government, and it is believed that they fabricated the false record of 47 casualties. (Amelinckx) The major difference between the strike of 1928 and Garcia Marquez’s version is the after-effects of the event. While the Macando incident did not have any serious repercussions, the historical massacre of 1928 did. After the slaughter, the word of the attack was spread across Columbia. This began to lead to a serious opposition to the Conservative government and the rise of the Leftist