Macondo (Spanish pronunciation: [maˈkondo]) is a fictional town described in Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Macondo is often supposed to draw from García Márquez's childhood town, Aracataca, near the north (Caribbean) coast of Colombia, 80 km south of Santa Marta.
[1] In the first chapter of his autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale, García Márquez states that he took the name Macondo from a sign at a banana plantation near Aracataca.
In In Evil Hour, published the year before One Hundred Years of Solitude, García Márquez mentions Macondo as the town where Father Ángel was succeeded by the one-hundred-year-old Antonio Isabel del Santísimo Sacramento del Altar Castañeda y Montero, a clear reference to the novel to come.
In the narrative of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the town grows from a tiny settlement with almost no contact with the outside world, to eventually become a large and thriving place, before a banana plantation is set up.