García Márquez and Love in Latin America
Buy Love in the Time of Cholera on Amazon.
Latin culture is the most romantic in the world. Is this good or bad?
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez is set in an unnamed town assumed to be Cartagena, Colombia and spans from the late 19th century – early 20th century. As a teenager, Florentino Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza the first time he lays eyes on her. He embarks on a letter-writing campaign professing his love. She falls in love with him and they begin to write regularly. They plan a marriage and life together, without ever having spoken and behind the back of Fermina’s overbearing, ambiguously-criminal father.
Fermina’s father learns of the relationship and is infuriated, for Florentino is the illegitimate son of a shopkeeper. The marriage would run contrary to his plans of social-climbing by marrying his daughter off to blue blood. He grabs Fermina one day and takes her on a weeks-long trip through the Colombian countryside in an attempt to break the affair. The lovers keep a secret correspondence with the help of Fermina’s cousin and make plans to marry when she finally returns.
When Fermina returns, she meets Florentino and impulsively ends the affair. Florentino is devastated. Fermina marries a promising young doctor who’s just returned from a university in Paris. Florentino vows to have her someday despite the fact that she has just married. Dr. Juvenal Urbino and Fermina Daza have two children and lead a compatible life. Fermina’s father’s dream is fulfilled as the couple ascend to the town’s social elite through the good doctor’s public service and Fermina’s beautiful grace.
The book begins with Urbino’s death at an old age and proceeds to recount the characters’ histories. While the married couple led their perfect marriage of convenience, Florentino Ariza embarked on 622 affairs in hopes to distract the love burning in his heart – all the while waiting patiently for the good doctor to die so he could reclaim his precious Fermina. On the night of the good doctor’s funeral, after all the mourners leave, the now 70-something Florentino says to Fermina: “I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.” On the night of her husband’s funeral. It was 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days after first professing his love to her as a teen. He knew the exact number because “not a day passed that something did not happen to remind him of her.” After some resistance, Fermina succumbs to Florentino and they live happily ever after sailing the Magdalena River.
Aside from the surrealism seen in all of Garcia Marquez’ work and other Latino writers, the theme of love is unrealistically portrayed with a passion absent in other cultures.
In America, “dropping the L-bomb” is slang for when your significant other first says, “I love you” for the first time. I got just as many A-bombs (Te amo in Spanish) from one year in Peru as the previous 29 in America – 3. And one of the L-bombs in America came from a Brazilian exchange student. Now granted, the Peruvian women were surely enchanted with my gringo-ness, the dreams of visiting America and meeting my gringo relatives, the assumed life of security, and being seen by her family / friends being married to a big, handsome gringo. But the quick-to-love sentiment did not just apply to me. I was not special. Peruvian males I knew experienced the same thing, as I saw with my basketball teammates. And the females aren’t the only ones quick to love. I saw my buddy Roy crying his eyes out for a girl he’d been dating for just a few months.
The passion for love is palpable. Almost every neighborhood in Latin America has a small park. And in every park on any night you see couples huddled up on all the benches – cuddling, kissing, talking and holding hands. Every park in every town. Public displays of affection are controversial to nobody. Latinos spend much more time in intimacy. The married couples I’ve gotten to know are different than typical American couples. The men seem to enjoy their wives’ company. They’re proud of their wives. They love their in-laws.
A higher percentage of Latin music is about love and relationships. There are certainly party songs and political songs, but love songs are more common. Even in reggaeton – Latin America’s version of hip-hop – love is a more consistent theme than in American rap. If you look at pictures of reggaeton artists or hear the music and don’t understand Spanish, you’d probably assume it’s the same subject matter as in rap. But it’s not. There’s none of the misogynistic lyrics, the bitches and hoes, the player and pimp shit. .
Contrast that with what you hear in American music. The most popular rapper of all time, Tupac Shakur, wrote one song in praise of women: Keep Ya Head Up. Ironically, it was released around the time he was convicted / in prison for sex abuse. His other songs professed that he’d never love a woman. Snoop said in ’94, “We don’t love them hoes.” And you probably have your own examples in your head right now.
Merely playing romantic music in America can be a cultural faux pas. I dig love songs. Probably because I wasn’t desired by many women until well after puberty, I used to dream about love. I dreamed about loving a woman and having a perfect marriage, in which neither of us ever cheated and we had a ton of kids and lived happily ever after with no divorce. I built the idea up in my head just as Florentino Ariza did with Fermina Daza. I listened to R&B from a young age.
But it ain’t cool to play that music in gringo culture. My college buddies made fun of me. Or they’d yell at me to turn it off. It’s gay (I never understood how songs about love between a man and a woman were gay, because “We don’t love them hoes” seems more gay to me).
Latinos don’t usually say “tener sexo” - or ‘to have sex’. They say “hacer amor” - ‘to make love’. Saying “make love” in English is corny. Gringos don’t talk like that. Gringos “play it cool.” They protect their hearts. They date casually and take it slow. They delay commitment. They try many different potential “partners.” This is considered wise, practical. I’ll never forget when I was 16, a high school crush told me that she hates “mushy love shit.” You could search your whole life without finding a teenage Colombian girl say that.
Latinos say “gringo frio” – cold gringo. They say our culture is cold. It’s a unanimous opinion. One Colombian girl, with a confused look on her face, asked me why gringos are like that.
My last girlfriend in Peru was an odd relationship. Milagros and I had sex the first night we met – including anal. Later 69, ATM, etc. Our entire relationship was spent in my apartment, plus a few times going to the local chicken joint when we were hungry. In relationships that follow this course in America, both the man and woman know exactly what the relationship is about – and more importantly what it’s not about.
That understanding didn’t exist in this case. After a month together, Milagros bought me an alpaca scarf and a cute Christmas card with a heart-felt message inside. Being romantically-inclined as I am, her passion for me attracted me to her more. We spent my last night in Arequipa cuddling without having sex. I miss her.
I posed the question at the start of this essay: Is this passion for love good or bad? What did Gabriel García Márquez believe? What was he really saying in Love in the Time of Cholera? Literary scholars began to point out that the story may be critical of such passionate love. When asked if his story was something other than a heart-warming tale about the enduring power of love, García Márquez was quoted as saying that readers “have to be careful not to fall into my trap.”
Look closer at the details of the story. The title uses the words “love” and “cholera” together. Cholera is a nasty, sometimes fatal sickness – and it’s an ugly way to go out. Stories of cholera ravaging Colombia permeate the novel as often as stories of love. Is this meant to be a contrast of opposites, or an analogy of two diseases?
What happens because of love in the story? One character’s lover allows him to commit suicide because she loved him too much to stop him. When Fermina writes Florentino that she’ll marry him, he eats so many roses in a romantic euphoria that he vomits. In trying to treat his symptoms of love, Florentino has 622 affairs and contracted an STD on more than one occasion. One of his lovers was promptly murdered by her husband when he learned of the affair. His last affair as an old man was with a teenage second-cousin he was charged with taking care of while she was in town. When he broke off the affair to pursue Fermina, she committed suicide. And because of his life-long love, Florentino never had children.
Let’s examine how Dr. Juvenal Urbino is the perfect contrast of the romantic Florentino Ariza. Dr. Urbino actually tells his wife that love is not as important to marriage as stability and compatibility. Through his stellar performance in transforming the town’s health services and other public interests, the couple became beloved local celebrities. Many critics say the novel deals with the challenges in Colombia (and all of Latin America for that matter) in implementing sound political systems, making societal progress, and developing healthy cultural attitudes. If this is true about García Márquez’s intent, then Dr. Juvenal Urbino would be the story’s hero. And love would be the antagonist.
The fact that García Márquez approved adapting the novel into a cheesy Hollywood love film skews his intent further. But moving past his intent, what’s the truth about the utility of love?
Modern advances seen in the developed world require cold, hard intellect free of romantic delusion. Cold, calculating gringos have made some impressive societal advancements throughout history. And what about love? There is a seemingly much higher prevalence of brothels and prostitution in Latin America. I’ve met more than a couple married guys who openly told me they bang whores or have girlfriends on the side.
Am I really the romantic I think I am? I had various other women during my relationship with Milagros. In addition to the ATM and sex-on-the-first-night factors, I never put much stock into our relationship because of her age – 20. My cold gringo nature, the natural skeptic / realist inside told me that she’s way too young. She’s not going to love me forever. She’s going to want another man within five years. It would never work. And if she ever pooped out a kid that didn’t match my DNA in a mandatory blood test, I’d leave her ass penniless in Peru. Nobody wants that.
Aside from my basic gringo tendencies in love and coldness, I am a romantic. I prefer life here. The passion is refreshing. Exciting. Invigorating. I love it. But a balance is surely needed.
Fun facts:
- Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982
- One Hundred Years of Solitude (also by Gabriel García Márquez) is one of Bill Clinton’s favorite novels
- Gabriel García Márquez convinced Colombia’s own Shakira to produce 3 tracks for the movie
- Gabriel García Márquez was once very close to fellow Latin American literary giant, Mario Vargas Llosa from Peru. One night in 1976, Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez at a cinema in Mexico city. The two have been rivals for the 30+ years since. Here’s the story.
- Buy Love in the Time of Cholera on Amazon.
The movie trailer:
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Like you, I love the passion, energy, and wackiness. But I’ve met more than a couple married Colombian guys who cheat … MUCH more than a couple. In fact, I’m convinced the infidelity rate for men is 100%, and only slightly lower for women. The guys who say they don’t are lying. Maybe there are a few outliers here and there, but they’re definitely the oddballs. The culture is not geared for fidelity.