The exercise of masculinity and the performance of violence in Gabriel García Márquez’s Crónica de una muerte anunciada

Abstract

Crónica de una muerte anunciada (1982), by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, articulates many narrative resources to explore Latin America’s structural violence, essentially caused by men. This work discusses the cultural and social aspects of this masculine violence through the characters of the book most directly involved in the death foretold, from the title, and turned into a public performance for the recreation of an apathetic and distant town’s inhabitants. To do so, we use the works of Lia Machado, Luiza Leonini and Daniel Welzer-Lang, who deepen the naturalization of male violence motivated by an enhancement of virility culture.