DICTATORIAL RULE, POLITICAL REPRESSION, AND THE THIRD WORLD: AN ANALYSIS OF GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ’S THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH

Abstract

Dictatorial rule has been a serious threat to the progress of most of the under-developed part of the world. Since Latin America constitutes a substantial part of the Third World and is mostly governed by either civil or military dictators, the causes and effects of dictatorial rule have been a favourite subject of the fiction writers of this region. The magical-realist fiction writers have been most eloquent in highlighting flaws inherent in such type of governments, weather in Chile, Colombia, Argentina, or Venezuela. García Márquez’s novel The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975/2007) is a protest against the dictatorial system in Latin America. The present study deals with the way García Márquez used the technique of magical realism to establish that autocrats and despotic rulers are a challenge to the development of a place and prosperity of its people. The close-reading approach/technique has been adopted to determine the causes and effects of dictatorial rule in the miniature world of the selected novel and the way it can be generalized vis-à-vis the contemporary circumstances of the Third World countries. Keywords: Third world, dictatorial rule, magical realism, close-reading, Latin America