The Lost Legacy of Gabriel García Márquez
Published on Saturday, April 19, 2014 by Common Dreams
The Lost Legacy of Gabriel García Márquez
by César Chelala
I met Gabriel García Márquez and Fidel Castro at the Convention Palace in Havana during a medical meeting I attended in Cuba in the early eighties. I also had the honor of being extensively quoted in one of his articles, “Con las Malvinas o sin ellas,” (With or Without the Malvinas). My article (which I had signed under the pseudonym of Juan Montalvo, to protect my family in Argentina) was a long interview with two leaders of the “Madres of Plaza de Mayo” organization in Argentina. They are a courageous group of women who still search for their sons and daughters who were “made to disappear” by the Argentine military ruling the country.
In his article, García Márquez reflects on two of his main preoccupations: the abusive relationship between big industrial powers and Latin American and Caribbean countries, and the state of human rights in the continent. Although comments on his life and work talk primarily about his literary achievements, they don’t deal with political aspects of his life.
“The world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers — and one of my favorites from the time I was young,” said President Obama in a statement, and called the author “a representative and voice for the people of the Americas.” President Obama is absolutely right about this: in his long career as a writer Márquez has always sided with the less fortunate and against those who abuse them.
In his Nobel acceptance presentation Márquez elaborated on some of the topics that haunted him. He talked about two presidents that were suspiciously killed in airplane accidents, the reasons for which were never discovered. One of them, Jaime Roldós Aguilera, a president of Ecuador known for his firm stance on human rights, died in a plane crash on May 24, 1981, together with his assistants and their spouses.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/19-9
