Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” one of the world’s most revered literary masterpieces, is getting the Netflix treatment.
After five years of developing and producing the highly anticipated television adaptation of the acclaimed novel, the streaming service is releasing part one of the series on Wednesday.
The show is also one of three ambitious projects released this year reimagining beloved Latin American classics treasured by book lovers for their use of magical realism.
In addition to “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Netflix also recently adapted Juan Rulfo’s Mexican novel “Pedro Páramo” into a film. Its streaming competitor Max turned Laura Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate” into a series so successful it was recently renewed for a second season.
“I love to see that domino effect in which these works of literature are being made into shows,” said Cruz Castillo, external relations and digital manager at the National Hispanic Media Coalition, a nonprofit advocating for better Latino representation in media.
Hollywood’s growing obsession with acquiring book rights to produce content — as well as streaming services betting on period pieces to expand their international footprint — may help explain why these Latino-focused adaptations emerged at the same time, according to Castillo and Ana-Christina Ramón, director of the entertainment and media research initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The three books’ screen adaptations have garnered praise for their lush cinematography and storylines that focus around sweeping generational sagas.
They also have something else in common: They’re not associated with themes and stereotypes that have long informed media portrayals of Latinos. A comprehensive 2014 Columbia University media study found that Latinos on TV are often represented as criminals, law enforcers, hyper-sexualized beings and low-wage workers.
“It does offer that kind of alternative storyline from what really audiences have grown accustomed to,” Ramón said about the new shows’ content.
While there have been successes in between, opportunities to break through these stereotypes still remain limited, said Ramón, whose research shows that Latinos have accounted for only about 6% of main cast and lead roles on television over the past few years amid chronic Latino underrepresentation on television.
“It’s definitely better to not just have something focused on drugs,” she said. “But still, I don’t think it’s going to really change a lot of the stats in terms of representation overall.”
Still, for Ramón, series of the scale of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Like Water for Chocolate” offer important opportunities that may propel the development of future projects and boost the number of Latinos behind and in front of the cameras.
Magical realism is having its TV moment
García Márquez, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982, was best known for novels and short stories that use magical realism to blur the lines between fantasy and reality.
An important literary tool for many Latin American authors, magical realism allows these writers to both explain sociopolitical realities and the abstract feelings associated with them.
“The power of magical realism is that we don’t see it as magical realism. It’s not fantasy to us. For many of us, it feels real,” Castillo said. “It is a part of us, our culture, our heritage.”
Published in 1967, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” has sold over 50 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages.
The novel tells the intergenerational story of the Buendía family, from the founding of the utopian town of Macondo to the sequence of dramatic events that ultimately condemns those in the fictional town to 100 years of solitude.
Beautifully shot in García Márquez’s native Colombia, the Spanish-language series is one of the most ambitious productions in Latin American history, according to Netflix. Directors Laura Mora and Alex García López said there were days in which more than 1,300 people were on the grandiose set built to recreate Macondo.
“It was about living up to something that will always be bigger than all of us,” Mora said in Spanish.
Some consider García Márquez to be the father of magical realism, though it may make more sense to bestow that title on Rulfo, the author of the 1955 novel “Pedro Páramo,” which is considered a precursor of magical realism.
Set between the late 1800s and early 1900s, the novel and the Netflix film tell the story of Juan Preciado, who in the wake of his mother’s death, returns to the remote village where he was born to search for his father, Pedro Páramo. But when he arrives, Preciado encounters a literal ghost town, where he meets a series of mysterious characters — some living, others long dead — and learns about his late father’s ruthless quest for wealth and power.
Rulfo’s book influenced generations of magical realist authors, including García Márquez, who once said Rulfo was as enduring as Sophocles.
Rulfo also influenced fellow Mexican Esquivel, who published “Like Water for Chocolate” in 1989.
The book and the Max series center around Tita de la Garza, a young woman who finds refuge in her cooking as her strict mother keeps her away from the love of her life. Set during the Mexican Revolution, the book has become a global bestseller because of the way it blends Mexican culture, memorable food scenes and magical realism.
“It’s been incredible to see such an important Mexican story resonate with audiences around the world,” Salma Hayek Pinault, executive producer of the series, said during an event in London this month announcing the show’s second season.
García Márquez also had a big appreciation for films, writing several screenplays and even presiding over the Foundation of New Latin American Cinema in Cuba until his death in 2014 at 87.
Yet, he was famously reluctant to film “One Hundreds Years of Solitude,” believing that the time constraints of a feature film or not producing it in Spanish would do it a disservice, according to his sons Rodrigo García and Gonzalo García, both of whom are executive producers of the new TV series.
“In the current golden age of series, with the level of talented writing and directing, the cinematic quality of content, and the acceptance by worldwide audiences of programs in foreign languages, the time could not be better to bring an adaptation to the extraordinary global viewership that Netflix provides,” the García brothers said in a statement in 2019, when they announced they had entrusted the streaming service with the novel’s first film adaptation.
In a recent showing of the series in Havana, director Alexis García López told Reuters that “we almost always export these stories of drug traffickers, illegal immigrants, prostitution, poverty and dictatorships.”
Instead, the sweeping generational saga of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” focuses on whether humans can “beat our destiny,” García López said, “or if we are programmed to keep making the same mistakes generation after generation.”