The general in his Labyrinth with constipation

I have two things I would like talk about. This first has to do with constipation. I hope it doesn’t mean that I have some subconscious fixation on feces that everything seems to have do with poo in this novel.
Early in the novel we learn that the general suffers from constipation. Constipation of course is that condition where one has trouble passing. That is shit builds up inside you. I couldn’t help but see this as some kind of metaphor for the general. This is a depressed man. It’s suggested that he believes he will die alone in a bed without the gratitude of his country. He has mental brake downs every night. During these brake downs he rambles about how no one understood what he was doing. What I’m trying to say that this is a man intensely troubled by the failures in his life. And as constipated man has a certain build up inside himself, the general’s failures build up inside his mind, and result in terrible anxiety attacks. So this is man constipated by his failures.
Unfortunately constipation has more to offer us… A continent that’s on the verge of unification, that collapses from within? Columbia it’s self is unable to advance because the generals want to maintain control and don’t listen to sucre’s advice that they should separate from the government. Is this sort of internal turmoil that’s restricting Latin America from achieving it’s destiny something like constipation? I don’t know. I imagine if one had chronic constipation achieving goals would be difficult….
Thank god I’m done with that. My next issue has to with dying. The novel starts off with an image of the general as being dead. It turns out he’s only meditating, but the truth is that he is already mostly dead. We get this sense that he’s been dying for some time. Death isn’t a thing that hit’s a person all at once, but rather its this extremely slow occurrence.
Physically it’s as if he’s this dying rotting body. Corpses don’t fart, but still, it’s disgusting like a corpse. And people around him act like he’s dead. When he leaves the country his going away gathering is described as something which looks a lot like a funeral.
There is something more to this slow death. The country slowly dying? His dream? The possibility of for the realization of what he once thought was the destiny of America? I don’t know.
Sucre mentions how what starts off as wanting independence from Spain leads to other countries wanting independence from each other. That is, in a way the destiny the general had imagined was self defeating. The independence required to realize he dream would ultimately make it impossible to achieve. It seems like he had it for a moment, and then it broke away.
Maybe this is the generals life, and life in general. There is a point where the human body is growing new cells and is fresh and thriving, but ultimately it has to die away, everything reverses and you slowly die.