GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ’S USE OF NARRATIVE AND LITERATURE TO PORTRAY HUMAN SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

Critical examinations of sexualities in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s work have often been metaphoric in nature and intended to highlight the experience of colonial oppression and other embedded postcolonial experiences. The current article refers to five selected works to situate Garcia Marquez’s work in lived experience as opposed to allegory. The focus is on the concrete realities of such key issues as prostitution and the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The representations of specific sexual practices in their social contexts and drawn from the five novels discussed clarify this aspect of Garcia Marquez’s work, an aspect that has been largely silenced. The article examines previously unremarked-upon concerns such as brothel life, legal issues versus social practice, the link between labour and capital, child commercial sexual exploitation (including by women), the lack of social safety nets, ‘risky’ sex and sexually transmitted infections and the absence of serious reflection on HIV and AIDS. The reflections on prostitution and child exploitation are placed at the core of the present analysis to counteract the more recent common dismissal of some of Garcia Marquez’s works as pornographic. Through a vigorous analysis of the selected works, the article offers a complex and shifting take on the traditional views of Garcia Marquez’s apparent championing of sexual freedom.