I must try and break through the cliches about Latin America. Superpowers and other outsiders have fought over us for centuries in ways that have nothing to do with our problems. In reality we are all alone.

García Márquez rejects the stock narratives through which Latin America is often viewed—romantic exoticism, perpetual crisis, or a mere chessboard for great-power rivalry. He argues that external powers’ interventions and ideological contests have historically been driven by outsiders’ interests rather than by the region’s lived realities. The closing claim, “we are all alone,” underscores a sense of abandonment: when global attention arrives, it is instrumental; when genuine solidarity is needed, it is absent. The quote thus presses for Latin American self-definition and agency, urging readers to see the region not as a projection of foreign fears and fantasies but as a set of societies with their own problems, histories, and responsibilities.