García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez, (March 6, 1927, Aracataca, Colombia-April 17, 2014, Mexico City, Mexico), Colombian novelist and one of the greatest writers of the 20th century,  was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. He was the fourth Latin American to be so honored,  preceded by Chilean poets Gabriela Mistral in 1945 and Pablo Neruda in 1971 and by Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias in 1967. With Jorge Luis Borges, García Márquez is the best-known Latin American writer in history. In addition to his masterly approach to the novel, he was a superb crafter of short stories and an accomplished journalist. In both his shorter and longer fictions, García Márquez achieved the rare feat of being accessible to the common reader while satisfying the most demanding of sophisticated critics.

Life

Born in the sleepy provincial town of Aracataca, Colombia, García Márquez spent the first eight years of his life with his maternal grandparents, Colonel Nicolás Márquez ([a veteran of the War of a Thousand Days [1899-1903]) and Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes de Márquez. After Nicolás's death, they moved to Barranquilla, a river port. He received a better-than-average education but claimed as an adult that his most important literary sources were the stories about Aracataca and his family that Nicolás had told him. Although he studied law, García Márquez became a journalist, the trade at which he earned his living before attaining literary fame. In the late 1950s and early '60s, he worked in Bogotá, Colombia, and then in New York City for Prensa Latina, the news service created by the regime of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Later he moved to Mexico City, where he wrote the novel that brought him fame and wealth. From 1967 to 1975 he lived in Spain. Subsequently he kept a house in Mexico City and an apartment in Paris, but he also spent much time in Havana, where Castro (whom García Márquez supported) provided him with a mansion.

Works

Before 1967 García Márquez had published two novels, La hojarasca (1955; The Leaf Storm) and La mala hora (1962; In Evil Hour); a novella, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1961; No One Writes to the Colonel); and a few short stories. Then came One Hundred Years of Solitude, in which García Márquez tells the story of Macondo, an isolated town whose history is like the history of Latin America on a reduced scale. While the setting is realistic, there are fantastic episodes, a combination that has come to be known as "magic realism," wrongly thought to be the peculiar feature of all Latin American literature. Mixing historical facts and stories with instances of the fantastic is a practice that García Márquez derived from Cuban master Alejo Carpentier, considered to be one of the founders of magic realism. The inhabitants of Macondo are driven by elemental passions-lust, greed, thirst for power-which are thwarted by crude societal, political, or natural forces, as in Greek tragedy and myth.  

Continuing his magisterial output, García Márquez issued El otoño del patriarca (1975; The Autumn of the Patriarch), Crónica de una muerte anunciada (1981; Chronicle of a Death Foretold), El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985; Love in the Time of Cholera; filmed 2007), El general en su laberinto (1989; The General in His Labyrinth), and Del amor y otros demonios (1994; Of Love and Other Demons). The best among those books are Love in the Time of Cholera, about a touching love affair that takes decades to be consummated, and The General in His Labyrinth, a chronicle of Simón Bolívar's last days. In 1996 García Márquez published a journalistic chronicle of drug-related kidnappings in his native Colombia, Noticia de un secuestro (News of a Kidnapping).

After being diagnosed with cancer in 1999, García Márquez wrote the memoir Vivir para contarla (2002; Living to Tell the Tale), which focuses on his first 30 years. He returned to fiction with Memoria de mis putas tristes (2004; Memories of My Melancholy Whores), a novel about a lonely man who finally discovers the meaning of love when he hires a virginal prostitute to celebrate his 90th birthday.

--Roberto González Echevarría

Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literatures, Yale University.

Death and Immortality

He was 87 when he died of pneumonia in his Mexico City home.

His passing, unlike the death of Big Mama in "Big Mama's Funeral" was not tumultuous by design, but the news, as is the case in "Big Mama's Funeral" shocked readers the world over. Newspapers from New York to Bangkok, Mexico City to New Delhi, from Madrid to Cairo, from Buenos Aires to Teheran, and every imaginable city in the world reported the death of Gabriel García Márquez.

Most readers and admirers around the world were waiting for a wake of unmatched attendance and a tomb where they could visit, whether in Mexico or Colombia. Gabo chose to be cremated. The funeral was not more festive and boisterous than it was, because his wife Mercedes Barcha and his sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo wanted a small-scale memorial. His memorial was honored by the presence of Presidents Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico; covered by national Mexican television, newspapers around the globe, and reverenced by many close friends. 

There were many bouquets of yellow roses, as if floating around the festive and somehow carnivalesque mourning, on the first floor of Mexico City's Fine Arts Palace. But there was only one freshly opened yellow rose, atop the shiny black urn holding his ashes. Among the many other garlands there was one with an imprint reading "De Fidel Castro Ruz al amigo entrañable." If only symbolically, he was there. Fidel Castro could not have missed the occasion to pay public homage to his beloved friend. Their friendship was such that Fidel Castro often read the manuscripts García Márquez wrote before he sent them to press.

García Márquez

Muerte e Inmortalidad

Tenía 87 años cuando murió de neumonía en su casa de la Ciudad de México.

Su muerte, a diferencia de la muerte de La Mamá Grande en "Big Mama's Funeral" no fue tumultuosa por decisión propia, pero la noticia, como es el caso en "Los funerales de la Mamá Grande", conmocionó a los lectores de todo el mundo. Periódicos de Nueva York a Bangkok, ciudad de México a Nueva Delhi, de Madrid a El Cairo, de Buenos Aires a Teherán, y todas las ciudades imaginables del mundo informaron de la muerte de Gabriel García Márquez.

La mayoría de los lectores y admiradores de todo el mundo esperaban una estela de asistencia inigualable y una tumba donde pudieran visitarlo, ya sea en México o Colombia. Pero Gabo eligió ser cremado. El funeral no fue más festivo y bullicioso de lo que fue porque su esposa Mercedes Barcha y sus hijos Rodrigo y Gonzalo querían un memorial a pequeña escala. Su funeral fue honrado por la presencia de los presidentes Juan Manuel Santos de Colombia y Enrique Peña Nieto de México; cubierto por la televisión nacional mexicana, periódicos de todo el mundo, y reverenciado por muchos amigos cercanos.

Había muchas coronas de rosas amarillas, como si flotaran alrededor del luto festivo y de alguna manera carnavalesco, en el primer piso del Palacio de las Bellas Artes de la Ciudad de México. Pero sólo había una rosa amarilla recién abierta, encima de la urna lustrosa que contenía sus cenizas. Entre las muchas guirnaldas había una con una evocación que decía "De Fidel Castro Ruz al amigo entrañable". Si sólo simbólicamente, hacia acto de presencia. Fidel Castro no podía faltar a la ocasión para rendir homenaje público a su querido amigo. Su amistad era tal que Fidel Castro a menudo leía los manuscritos que García Márquez escribía antes de enviarlos a la prensa.

April 17, 2014, Mexico City, Mexico.  

17 de abril de 2014, Ciudad de México, México.