No name change for hometown of Garcia Marquez
Last Updated: Monday, June 26, 2006 | 2:08 PM ET
CBC Arts
A referendum to change the name of the Colombian hometown of Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez had such a low turnout, the results were invalidated.
Only 3,600 of Aracataca's 22,000 eligible voters turned out for the Sunday referendum. Although 93 per cent of those casting ballots marked them in favour of a name change, the total was less than half the minimum needed.
Mayor Pedro Sanchez had spearheaded the move to alter the name to Aracataca-Macondo.
Macondo is the fictional town at the heart of Marquez's masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. The book, published in 1967, put him on the literary map.
The 79-year-old author has not set foot in the northern Colombian town for more than two decades. He was born there and raised in the town by his maternal grandparents. Marquez credits Aracataca for inspiring him to become a novelist and providing fodder for his stories.
His grandmother's ghost stories, he says, helped imbue him with a sense of the surreal in everyday life.
Mayor Sanchez had hoped the name change would attract badly needed tourist dollars to the sleepy town of 53,000: "In honouring the maestro, the community will perceive tangible benefits."
Critics of the name change say the town already has an esteemed moniker, which honours Cataca, a powerful indigenous chief.
But Sanchez blames his defeat on something more basic — his campaign lacked financial resources.
"The problem here is that people long ago grew accustomed to receiving money and gifts in exchange for votes."
The author, who lives in Mexico City and Los Angeles, remained silent on the issue.
Garcia Marquez said in his autobiography that he invented the name "Macondo" because it had a similar ring to the name of a banana farm he spotted while travelling by train as a youth.
Garcia Marquez was awarded the French Legion of Honour medal in 1981 and the Nobel Prize for Literature a year later.
