The Autumn of the Patriarch
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The Autumn of the Patriarch (original Spanish title: El Otoño del Patriarca) is a novel, written by Gabriel García Márquez in 1975.
A "poem on the solitude of power" according to the author, the novel is a flowing tract on the life of an eternal dictator. The book is divided into six sections, each retelling the same story of the infinite power held by the archetypical Caribbean tyrant.
García Márquez based his fictional dictator on a variety of real-life autocrats, including Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of his own Colombian homeland, Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain (the novel was written in Barcelona), and Venezuela's Juan Vicente Gómez. The product is a universal story of the disastrous effects created by the concentration of power into a single man.
The book is written in long paragraphs, each a single sentence. The general's thoughts are relayed to the reader through winding sentences which convey his desperation and loneliness alongside the atrocities and ruthless behaviour which keeps him in power.
One of the books most striking aspects is its focus on the god-like status held by the protagonist and the unfathomable awe and respect with which his people regard him. Dictators such as Stalin, Franco, and Trujillo managed to hold sway over the populations of their respective nations despite internal political divisions because of the mythical aura which surrounded their persons. García Márquez symbolizes this with the discovery of the dictator's corpse in the battered presidential palace; the newly liberated subjects are unable to identify the body of a man whose image has marked their entire lives because they are unable to see him as a human being (hence: "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead").
The Autumn of the Patriarch incorporates a variety of real-life incidents interwoven with the fiction created by García Márquez. The expulsion of the Roman Catholic Church from Mexico in the mid-19th century is played out here in exaggerated proportions, as are the constant political games played between military and political leaders under Latin American juntas. García Márquez mocks the practice of bestowing high military rank on the young heirs of autocrats and the overspending of their families and cronies. A frighteningly accurate portrait is drawn of the intelligence director who soon directs the general's every move and constructs and apparatus of terror and political repression.
This last portrait is one of the most compelling: "advisors" have often marked the corruption and descent into oppression of some of Latin America's most outstanding dictatorships. Trujillo's Dominican Republic carried out dozens of assassinations and terror campaigns against Dominican exiles under the direction of intelligence chief Johnny Abbes García, and Peru under Alberto Fujimori was corrupted down to the last congressman by SIN chief Vladimiro Montesinos.
Among García Márquez's most haunting and realistic novels, The Autumn of the Patriarch gives an understanding the phenomenon of caudillismo and a perspective into the mindset of a nation living under oppression.
Despite the great realism shown, especially when describing the atrocities of the patriarch, the book is full of magic too. Unbelievable and fantastic things occur, such as the sale of the sea to the English, who put it in a ship and took it away.
The book was also written with a great sense of humor and sarcasm, which are typical in García Márquez, making the reader laugh, sometimes even at tragic events.
A translation is available in English, published by HarperPerennial of HarperCollins and translated by Gregory Rabassa.es:el otoño del patriarca