García Márquez's character, "Big Mama," the despot who ruled the Macondo region with an uneven

hand ... claiming dominion over the land, the flora, the fauna and other natural resources, including the
air we breathe …

In the case of the story , the text presents itself as an amalgamation of Latin American history and
experience, the result of five hundred years of progress through conquest and colonialism, through
independence and the vicissitudes of governmental processes …

The term "Magical Realism" can be used to examine the softening of the boundaries between realism
and imagination found in selected examples of postmodern artistic production that appear in popular
culture, such as film, television programs, photography and the world of computer gaming ….

Magical Realism, or sometimes magic realism, integrates elements of fantasy, or an imagined world into
a life-like, or realistic text.

Magical realist authors discern moments when the text opens itself to the possibility of the magical.

Although the term "Magical Realism" is often understood as a Latin American literary construct, the
term itself comes to us from the world of art criticism. German art critic Franz Roh used the term in 1925
to describe the change in art form from expressionism to new realism. Artists rediscovered simple
objects and depicted them in a newer and simpler form, but with a clarified sense of reality. Post-
expressionism did not slavishly represent objects, but represented objects with a heightened sense of
understanding that went beyond their physical nature. Roh called this new view of subjects, "spiritual,"
referring to the artist's depic- tion of both a physical and metaphysical reality. As Roh explained, "After
art has been spiritualized, objectivity once again becomes the most intense pleasure of painting. This
new technique was also referred to as "new objectivity" by the German museum director, Gustav
Hartlaub.

Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel Prize-winning author from Colombia- certainly not the first or only
author of Magical Realism-but definitely one of the best known, weaves his narratives in, around, and
through the real and the magical. He has spent many years of his career as a writer trying to persuade
us, to teach us, that the magical can be found in the real and the real in the magical. He has laid before
his readers a world rich in cultural detail and alive in practice and belief. His works become a
postmodern artifact for us to examine, one that renders transparent the borders between fact and
fiction, fantasy and the real, and at the same time exhibits itself as a cultural trend. García Márquez
presents the real and the fantastic existing side by side and flowing into each other in a revitalizing
stream.

García Márquez's short story, "Big Mama's Funeral," is the last story in the collection No One Writes to
the Colonel and Other Stories, published in 1968.

It details the passing of Big Mama, the ruler of the kingdom of Macondo,

Records her impressive, extravagant funeral and notes its impact on the community.

Big Mama is the representative of a powerful family that has governed the people of Macondo for
generations.
It is common for magical realist texts to model resistance to the ambient social order, and "Big Mama's
Funeral" is no exception. As the family and community progress through the funeral ritual, the failings of
both religious and community officials become evident. Underneath it all, Garcia Márquez's story traces
the paradigms of hegemony in this fictional Colombian "kingdom."

"In "Big Mama's Funeral," the reader is constantly aware that the realist strand of narration, which
mirrors human experience, is regularly enriched or expanded by the introduction of elements or events
that exaggerate, parody, or defy that same experience.

The realist strain of narrative in Garcia Márquez's story presents, on the one hand, a death, the natural
process that occurs at the end of life, and the ceremonies that mark that life's passing. The magical
strain, on the other hand, exaggerates and stretches the details of the ritual beyond reason.

Big Mama's body awaits burial for many days while the "Wise Doctors of Law" search the statutes of law
for the justification which would allow the President of the Republic to attend the funeral (164). The
reality is that bodies often do wait for burial, but the magical strain here makes the body wait for days
and days in the hot sun (164)

It is usual for many types of people to attend the funerals of political leaders, but it is unusual that this
particular funeral was attended by every conceivable type of person including the "255-mile-long-string-
of-iguana-eggs-queen" and the Pope him- self (169)

García Márquez outlines the origin of the magical in his works. He first traces the magical influences in
his childhood, as he grew up in the home of his paternal grandparents surrounded by the beliefs and
stories of his grandmother and aunt.

García Márquez finds in the history of his own family, not only Caribbean traditions and beliefs, but
strains of the magical from his Galician ancestors (Apuleyo Mendoza 59). He believes that the Caribbean
region and Brazil are unique with a culture woven of strands from indigenous peoples, as well as Spain
and Africa. Each of these cultural influences has its own relationship to the magical, as evidenced in
customs, traditions and rituals still practiced today.

The Solitude of Latin America," he notes that nature alone in Latin America is so fantastic that it
influences descriptions of day to day reality. It is a natural world full of exuberance and exaggeration,
with exotic plants, for instance, which practically defy description. There are towering tropical plants
that produce sweet fruits in numerous colors and shapes; there are trees which produce cashew nuts
that grow suspended on the outside of large pods; there is the costly fruit of the cacao, the source of
chocolate.

King of Spain, Philip II, appointed Francisco Hernández as his official botanist and medical doctor, who
would attempt to record this supernatural natural world the Spaniards had chanced upon

What followed the wide-eyed documentation of the Spanish conquest, how- ever, was that the
conquering power moved in swiftly to subsume the existing culture and replace all of the key elements
such as language, educational institu- tions, religion, and government with European experience and
design. Garcia Márquez, as a native Colombian inherited this weight of colonialism when he was born in
the early years of the twentieth century, approximately one hundred years after the end of Spanish
colonial rule in his native country.
"History with a capital H has often been described as a fiction written by the conquerors, yet there are
other histories, often hidden, sometimes literally buried”

In the writings of Garcia Márquez, that of "valuing the local" (Hutcheon 61). This emphasis on the local
finds expression in descriptions of hot, steamy, tropical villages and in introductions, by way of the text,
to local characters that populate those villages. It is important to note that this particular aspect of
García Márquez's writings becomes an intersection of the post-colonial and the postmodern, as the
post- colonial approach seeks to re-establish a cultural identity and the postmodern approach seeks to
contest the current "centralization of culture" (61)

Modern Latin American texts rarely considered or highlighted indigenous cultures, but imitated
peninsular Spanish or European writing conventions of the time. However, the magical strain in magical
realism has direct ties to indigenous cultures, centering on their reliance on religion, myth, and
superstition, as well as the prominent place of nature within that mystical framework.

Indigenous groups in Latin America have historically relied on oral tradi- tion to preserve their cultural
outlook and shared experiences. García Márquez places value in that oral tradition in the beginning of
"Big Mama's Funeral" when the narrator states: "now is the time to lean a stool against the front door
and relate from the beginning the details . . . before the historians have a chance to get at it"

In addition to noting the worth of oral tradition, the introduction also situ- ates this particular story on
the brink of change, between oral tradition and writ- ten history, between the old ways of remembering
and the newer ways of re- cording. At the end of the story, it is clear that Macondo itself has crossed
over a line into something new. Mama Grande is dead, the dynasty has ended, and a new age has
begun. As the narrator notes: "the President of the Republic could sit down and govern according to his
good judgment and the common people could set up their tents where they damn well pleased in the
limitless domains of Big Mama."

In "Big Mama's Funeral," the character of the doctor gravitates between science, indigenous healing
practices and religion Big Mama sends for him, he first treats her with the salves and medicines of
science. As her condition worsens, he employs alternative medical remedies such as toads and leeches.
Since all of these have no effect on her, he finally calls for the priest, Father Anthony Isabel, to hold an
exorcism (156). Even these combined efforts, however, fail to save her.

"Big Mama's Funeral" demonstrates the equal standing of the magical and real strains during the
enumeration of Big Mama's possessions before her death. She prepares, with the help of her eldest
nephew, Nicanor, twenty-four folios that list all of her possessions. It takes her three hours to read the
entire list to her assembled family. The process of reading the list itself contains both a realist and
magical strain.