Mixing Fantasy and Reality in Aracataca, Colombia
For more on life in Aracataca and Gabriel García Márquez, explore the Aracataca location page.
Aracataca, Colombia, is a place where reality and fantasy seem to blend. Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel García Márquez was born here, and it was the inspiration of Macondo, the fictional town in his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
“It’s a small town submerged in its own history. People still live from old traditions,” says Wilfrido Mercado (@wilfridomercado), a local resident who says every time he travels and feels nostalgic, he opens one of García Márquez’s novels. “Reading his books, I can remember the smell of wet soil in Aracataca on any April’s afternoon.”
Life in Aracataca runs at a different pace. People bathe in the river and take a long nap after lunch to withstand the severe heat. “In Aracataca anything can happen, any lie can become a truth,” says Wilfrido.