A Reader-Response Study of the Relationship between the Wayuu Peoples and the Literature of Gabriel García Márquez: The Influence of Ethno-Education on Language Use and Narratives of Identity in an Indigenous Bilingual Context

Abstract

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's literature shares a number of aspects with the cultural and literary traditions of the indigenous Wayuu of Colombia: e.g. symbols of death, the afterlife, dreams, and divination. This article examines the results of a reader-response survey undertaken in La Guajira region of Colombia with 148 bilingual members of the Wayuu community. The survey aims to examine the correlation between Wayuu discourses of identity and the Colombian writer's novels by focusing on theories of transculturation and translanguaging. The participants' responses also reveal facets of the indigenous community's relationship with literature written in Spanish and the Spanish language.