Latin American Military History through Literature - Research Paper Example

Indeed the character of the General is largely seen as an amalgam not only of the Venezuelan dictators Gomez and Pinilla, Castro and Franco, but also of many other leaders that have emerged through Latin American history: Peron, Trujillo and a few others (Kennedy). Focusing on the parallel lives of the fictional General and the Venezuelan dictator Gomez, we see in the work that the General's life mirrored the personal life of Gomez, and in turn, the state that the General ruled in the fictional work mirrors the social and military arrangements in Venezuela during the rule of Gomez.

In the fictional work by Marquez the General is portrayed as someone who is totally corrupted by his own power, and through his old age he lived the life of one victimized by the excesses of his own absolute power. His power was vast and extended to control of the various processes of nature. His family and progeny also was vast, as vast as his wealth. Not reason, but the rule of the whimsy, was the operating principle of the General's leadership for the country. The military, of which he was head, reflected his power, and likewise ruled not on the basis of protecting the interests of the people but that of the state.

State-sponsored crime was employed as a means to control the people, the military was the instrument of the crime, and the General sat at the totem pole of this arrangement, directing everything from his lofty perch in order to tighten his grip on power and accumulate his vast wealth (Kennedy; “Juan Vicente Gomez”). The life of the real-life Venezuelan military, and of the real life Gomez, mirrored the fictional military and the fictional General in Marquez's work. Gomez was the product of a the private army from which he would rise to prominence under the guidance and.

The research paper posits that an examination of the work would yield fascinating insights into the history of Latin American military history, in particular Venezuelan military history. From the onset there are many parallels between the fictional character of Marquez and the real life Gomez, chief among them that they both were dictators, Gomez having died one of the richest despots in all of South America, and ruled Venezuela with an iron fist from 1908 all the way to his death in 1935. A close examination of the literature therefore would yield a personal glimpse into the vast powers of the military during that period, in Venezuela and as reflected in the imagined life of Gomez.

In this research paper the reader sees from the work of Marquez aspects of the psychological conditions that bred the military dictatorships and the despots of Latin America, and in Venezuela in particular. One of the most noticeable effects in the work by Marquez, it's the general's genius lay in his effective use of fear as an instrument of control. It was a fear that was generated by the General's capacity to subvert reason and the rule of law, and to transplant his own whims and irrational ways of thinking in the place of rationality and law.

Reason and sanity having been yanked out from its foundations, society had to live in fear. To conclude, the researcher states that much of military history in Venezuela during the time of the Gomez dictatorship was shaped by this psychological dynamic that the work by Marquez so vividly describes.