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Garcia Marquez hometown holds vote to change name
2006-06-25
The people of Aracataca, where Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born and first heard the ghost stories that would inform the "magical realism" of his novels, decide on Sunday whether to change the town's name to honor him. A banner stretching across the road leading to this impoverished community in Colombia's northern banana-growing region already takes the new name for granted, saying "Welcome to the magical world of Macondo." Macondo, as the Nobel laureate's fans know, is the name of the fictitious town where his masterwork, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" unfolds. In the novel, Macondo is a place where anything can happen. It rains for four years after a massacre of banana workers and there is a plague of insomnia. A tour of the mostly unpaved streets of Aracataca shows that something really magical may be needed to bring this community into modernity. In a move to jump-start the economy with tourist dollars, Mayor Pedro Sanchez is sponsoring a referendum on Sunday on changing the town's name to Aracataca-Macondo, a proposal some here call an offensive gimmick. "I've always known this place as Aracataca and that's good enough for me," said 27-year-old Manuel Almanza, who fixes punctured tires at the edge of town and has never read anything by "Gabo," as Garcia Marquez is known here. In a bid to convince Almanza and other opponents to change their minds, Sanchez on Saturday climbed atop four loudspeakers perched precariously on the roof of a dilapidated Dodge Dart to lead a caravan through town, using an amplified megaphone to make his pitch. ATTRACT TOURISM "We need to attract foreign investment in the tourism sector," he shouted. "This is not for me. It is for our community." Many of those lining the streets to see the caravan flashed thumbs-up signs while others waved their index fingers back and forth, shaking their heads to say no. But most agree that Aracataca, where people seeking diversion were torn Saturday night between the town's cock-fighting ring and a grainy, bootlegged copy of the new film "Poseidon" shown on local television, needs something new. Sanchez said he wants to exploit the community's claim to fame "in the best sense of the word." Some of the mayor's neighbors are a step ahead of him. A local bus company is called the "Nobel Line" in honor of the prize Garcia Marquez won more than 20 years ago. The sagging, wooden house where he was born and lived with his grandparents until age 10 has been turned into a museum. This is where Garcia Marquez listened to the ghost stories of his superstitious grandmother, Tranquilina, which later found expression in his novels. "Tranquilina was the type of person who would stop in the middle of a conversation, look up and say, 'Look, an angel is passing by,"' said museum director Rafael Jimenez. Garcia Marquez, who credits Aracataca with providing the raw material for his fiction, is neutral on the idea of changing the town's name. But people here are anything but neutral about the campaign to capitalize on his legacy. Those in favor of the name change have taken to wearing T-shirts saying "Aracataca-Macondo SI!" while others have the same shirts saying "NO!." Results of the referendum are expected to be announced on Sunday evening.
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