Sombras que repiten nombres: la eternidad en Cien años de soledad, Gabriel García Márquez

Abstract

Gabriel García Márquez, recognized as the great exponent of Latin American  magical realism, creates in One Hundred Years of Solitude a literary universe where the  mythical, the tragic and the magical intertwine to represent a cyclical and inescapable  vision of time. Through the Buendía family and the town of Macondo, the author  constructs a metaphor of the "eternal return", where names, destinies and mistakes are  repeated from generation to generation as a condemnation without redemption. This  repetition is not only narrative, but ontological: the characters have no choice, they are  trapped in a loop that symbolizes both the personal and historical fatality of Latin  America. From the death of Prudencio Aguilar to the birth of the last pig-tailed  Aureliano, the novel exposes how traumas and guilt are inherited unconsciously.  Through Freudian analysis, it is understood that Prudencio's ghost represents the return 

of the repressed, a transgenerational guilt that affects even those who did not commit  the original act. The figure of Melquíades reinforces the idea that everything is already  written and destined to happen. His symbolic presence and his role as narrator  determine the tragic character of the story: knowledge always comes too late. Incest,  reiterated throughout the novel, ceases to be a simple taboo and becomes a symbol of  confinement and repetition: the Buendía lineage turns in on itself, refusing to change,  until it destroys itself.