Gabriel Gárcia MárquezGabriel José García Márquez was born on March 6, 1928 in Aracataca, a town in northern Colombia, where he was raised by his maternal grandparents in a house full of countless aunts and rumors. of ghosts. But to better understand García Márquez's life, it helps to first understand something about both Colombia's history and his family's unusual past.ColombiaColombia gained its independence from Spain in 1810, making it technically one of the oldest countries in Latin America. democracies, but the sad fact is that this "democracy" has rarely known peace and justice. In the beginning, of course, there was Spain and the Indians, blithely hating each other as the Spanish tore the land apart in search of gold, Eldorado, religious converts and political power. The English also played their part, with Drake's attack on Riohachi in 1568 and the countless colonial feuds of the following centuries. Declaring itself independent of Spain when Napoleon overthrew the Spanish king in 1810, the new country enjoyed a brief period of freedom then was quickly reconquered in 1815 thanks to the unpleasant and bloody campaigns of General Murillo. Their internal feuds allowed their young country to fall to Murillo's sword so much that this period is immortalized in Colombian history under the colorful name of Patria Boba, or "The Homeland of Fools." However, the second round fell to the Colombians, when Simón Bolívar liberated the country in 1820 and became its first-ever president. By 1849, the country was far enough along to concretize their feuds in the form of two political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, which still exist today. These two parties constitute the political framework for much of García Márquez's fiction, and understanding their true nature is both a key to his writing and, unfortunately, an important insight into Latin American politics in general. Although they initially formed around the core of two distinct parties and different ideologies, long years of bloody conflict helped to significantly erode the distinctions between the parties. Conservatives and liberals seem more like warring factions or clans than parties with firmly established and radically different ideologies. Both tend to be repressive, both are corrupt, and at the bottom...... middle of paper ... and the same year he wrote Viva Sandino, a screenplay about the Sandanistas and the Nicaraguan revolution. Politics would, however, be far from his mind for his next work of fiction, which would be a love story. Turning again to his rich past for inspiration and material, he has reworked his parents' strange courtship into a decade-spanning narrative. The story is said to be about two frustrated lovers and the long tome between their second romantic relationship, and in 1986, Love in the Time of Cholera was unveiled to the anxious world. It was very well received and there was no doubt that García Márquez had become a writer of universal influence. Now one of the world's most famous writers, he has embarked on a lifestyle focused on writing, teaching, and political activism. With residencies in Mexico City, Cuernavaca, Paris, Barcelona and Barranquilla, he ended the decade by publishing The General in his Labyrinth in 1990, and two years later Strange Pilgrims was born. In 1994, he published his most recent work of fiction, Love and Other Demons. Today, García Márquez lives with Mercedes in Mexico City, where he has quit smoking and is in a perpetual state of "writing a novel."