Gabriel García Márquez, your word is life
As of April 17, five years have passed since the death of the Nobel Prize for Literature winner

Madeleine Sautié Rodríguezapril 23, 2019 08:04:23

Fidel and García Márquez, two men who will never leave us.

Photo: Granma Archives

At the Concert Hall in Stockholm, where he was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, Gabriel García Márquez, who left the real world five years ago, to live eternally in the hearts of his millions of readers, expressed to a mostly European audience: “… Solidarity with our dreams does not make us feel less alone, as long as it is not concretized with acts of legitimate support for the peoples that assume the illusion of having a life of our own in the world’s making.”And later he questioned: “Why is the originality that is admitted without reserve in literature denied us, with all kinds of suspicions, in our difficult attempts at social change? … Nonetheless, in the face of oppression, plunder, and abandonment, our response is life.”

This is an excerpt from a speech that is consistent with his conduct and social commitment, delivered with the title of “La soledad de América Latina,” (The solitude of Latin America), words that seem made for these days, as imperialism tramples the dreams of Latin Americans.

At that time, Gabo, a journalist and one of the greatest authors of the Spanish language of all times, also expressed his solidarity with Cuba, where he arrived in January of 1959 on the invitation of Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro.

Always pained by social injustice, the author of Cien años de soledad participated in the founding of the news agency Prensa Latina; and in 1986 headed the New Latin American Cinema Foundation, created in 1985, and the International Film School in San Antonio de los Baños.

It is no surprise that the creator of impressive works in which the heart of the continent beats, the fierce critic of dictatorships across Latin America, would develop a friendship with Fidel that would last until the end of their days.

He wrote of Fidel in this newspaper’s pages, “Seeing him very preoccupied by the weight of the destinies of so many others, I asked him what he would like to do most in this world, and he answered immediately: Stand on a corner.”

The distinguished Colombian, who Fidel recognized as “a man with the kindness of a child and cosmic talent” cannot abandon us. Works in which all of humanity can see ourselves and his immeasurable love for the destiny of America do not allow his farewell, at a time when we need him so much.