Episode 6: The Banana Republic

The events that would deliver the fatal blow to Macondo take center stage in Chapter Fifteen of One Hundred Years of Solitude. That’s when the Colombian state teams up with the United Fruit Company to brutally suppress the workers’ strike through a massacre—and then strategically erase it from memory. In this episode, Nadia Celis is joined by Paula Cuéllar, and Elvira Sánchez-Blake to unpack the long-lasting impact of state violence and the evasion of truth in addressing recent armed conflicts in Colombia and Latin America. Through the eyes of mothers who, like Úrsula, are weary of bringing children into the world only for them to go off to war, and who have dedicated their lives to demanding justice, this conversation sheds light on how history keeps repeating itself, fueled by the “plague of forgetfulness.