Arran del Mar Caribe, by Ramón de Vinyes: a drama about the exile in La Guajira

Abstract

This article analyzes the play Arran del Mar Caribe (1944), of Ramón de Vinyes, well-known for being the “Catalan wise” of One Hundred Years of Solitude, of Gabriel García Márquez. Set in La Guajira and with migrated Catalans as the principal characters of the drama, it shows us the cultural confrontation and the strangeness of the exiled, who opposes his national affection to the ambiguous experience of the mixed races in the Caribbean. The geographic, literary and historic contexts, both the Colombian and international –including the Second World War, and the nazi presence in the Atlantic coast– allow to the authors to go into the multiple imbrications of the drama in depth, whose tragic elements and “pre-Macondian” context stress the Vinyes’ grasp about Colombian literature and culture.