SOURCE: Siemens, William L. Review of El general en su laberinto, by Gabriel García Márquez. World Literature Today 65, no. 1 (winter 1991): 85.

In the following review, Siemens investigates the techniques that García Márquez uses to demythologize Simón Bolívar in The General in His Labyrinth.

A common phenomenon of the contemporary literary scene is the tendency to demythologize historical figures, and perhaps the greatest of these for Latin America is Simón Bolívar. In reading El general en su laberinto (Eng. The General in His Labyrinth, 1990), one gains the impression that García Márquez feels the author has no right to compose an epic concerning the founder of a nation that never truly came to be. A myth often concludes with the appearance of a new star or constellation, but in this work one of the general's companions comments that there are now...