 Gabriel García Márquez 's The Autumn of the Patriarch ( El <unk> del <unk> , 1975 ) details the life of an eternal dictator , " el macho " , a fictional character who lives to be over 200 years old . The book is divided into six sections , each retelling the same story of the infinite power held by the archetypal Caribbean tyrant . Márquez based his fictional dictator on a variety of real @-@ life <unk> , including Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of his Colombian homeland , Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain ( the novel was written in Barcelona ) , and Venezuela 's Juan Vicente Gómez . One of the key characters of the novel is the Indian General <unk> Santos , who devotes himself to " inscrutable service to the patriarch . " In this novel , García Márquez proposes an interesting contradiction : " that Latin America 's patriarchs owe their most intimate support to their victims of longest standing ; and that America 's revolution is inconceivable without the Indian " . Illustrating the importance of the Indian in Latin America is all the more prudent given that García Márquez 's home country , Colombia , is distinguished as <unk> not recognizing the Indian populations which are very much alive today . 
