There are a bunch of things that are happening against the backdrop of this book. Like cholera is one of them, a bunch of just like continuous little civil wars and unrest political situation. It does mention a few real worlds, like presidents and other people who would have been known in Colombia at this time. But that's all sort of ancillary to what is happening to these three people. Because none of them are ever really directly touched or directly paying a ton of attention to the stuff that's happening in, in society around this time.