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

Abstract

Critical examinations of sexualities in Gabriel García Márquez’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 García Márquez’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 García Márquez’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 García Márquez’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 García Márquez’s apparent championing of sexual freedom.