Struggling out of its solitude

Aracataca, Colombia — Here in the birthplace of Latin America's most famous living writer, security is an ephemeral concept. Locals will swear to you that the surrounding roads are safe, even in the queasy hours between dusk and dawn. But just two years ago, 11 government soldiers were blown to pieces after being lured into a guerrilla minefield on the edge of town. Even the majestic Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta hides nasty surprises: In fall 2003, eight foreign backpackers were kidnapped while searching for the ancient "Lost City" in the nearby mountain jungle.

Getting here from the nearest airport requires driving nearly an hour south from Colombia's Caribbean coast, past the Great Swamp, along a two-lane road strung with vast banana plantations and disheveled villages. Every mile or so brings a sandbagged bunker or a posse of troops, part of the Bogota government's quixotic campaign to crack down on the Marxist rebels who've waged a four-decade civil war against it.

Then suddenly the banana fields part, giving way to humble concrete domiciles and dusty streets lined with almond trees. Traffic slows to a crawl. A sign appears with a picture of the Nobel Prize-winning author swarmed by monarch butterflies, welcoming visitors to the pueblo where Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born on March 6, 1928, but seldom sets foot anymore. That hasn't stopped people here from cherishing private mementos of him or curbed their gratitude for the fame he has brought to their town, which he rechristened Macondo in his fiction, including his breakthrough novel, "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Now more than ever, it seems, this municipality of 20,000 is trying to preserve Garcia Marquez's connection to Aracataca and use his legacy to attract cultural pilgrims from South America, Europe and the United States. But that will require building a bridge between the fantastical world of Macondo, where human beings take flight and love affairs smolder across decades, and the more troubling reality of Aracataca, a poor, remote community, hemmed in by geography and violence, that time has largely passed by.

Town leaders say their efforts have been hampered by a lack of money and federal support and by Colombia's reputation as a country torn apart by 40 years of civil war and murderous narco-traffickers. Even Lonely Planet, the intrepid traveler's bible, didn't list Aracataca in its 2003 Colombia guide.