March 6 marked the 91st birthday of the revered Colombian author who passed away four years ago aged 87. A giant of Latin American culture credited with popularising magic realism, the man behind One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) is not only a hero across the Spanishspeaking world but is a global giant in the literary world.
Today fact and opinion have become entangled: there is comment in news reporting; the editorial is enriched with facts. The end product is none the better for it and never before has the profession been more dangerous. Unwitting or deliberate mistakes, malign manipulations and poisonous distortions can turn a news item into a dangerous weapon… It is some comfort to believe that ethical transgressions and other problems that degrade and embarrass today’s journalism are not always the result of immorality, but also stem from the lack of professional skill. Perhaps the misfortune of schools of journalism is that while they do teach some useful tricks of the trade, they teach little about the profession itself. Any training in schools of journalism must be based on three fundamental principles: first and foremost, there must be aptitude and talent; then the knowledge that “investigative” journalism is not something special, but that all journalism must, by definition, be investigative; and, third, the awareness that ethics are not merely an occasional condition of the trade, but an integral part, as essentially a part of each other as the buzz and the horsefly.
This in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s words is about the second oldest profession in the world which he wrote in an article titled, The Best Profession in the World.
Dear Gabo, you once said that life isn't what one lived, but the life one remembers and how he remembers it to retell it... your life, dear Gabo, will be remembered by all of us as a unique and singular gift, and as the most original story of all. It's difficult to say goodbye to you, with all that you’ve given us! You will always be in my heart and in those of all who loved and admired you.
And this is Latin American singer-celebrity Shakira on Marquez.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the intrepid reporter, and not the great magic realism novelist and Noble prize winner, once travelled with Shakira for many days, the singing and dancing sensation, and the famous ‘Waka Waka Girl’ of the famous World Cup of football when the whole world was dancing with her song, who could move her body like a million whirlpools and a million tides on a full moon night on a turbulent sea. And, yet, she would not be over. He covered her hard and arduous ‘live’ performances, backstage, where the audience would go mad.
Certainly, they had a special relationship of deep love and respect, and he wanted to discover her ‘live’ as a star on and off the stage. They were both Latin American icons, and continue to be. In a long essay, ‘The Poet and the Princess’, published in The Guardian, London (June 8, 2002), Gabo wrote: “She’s been known to give up to 40 interviews a day without repeating herself. She's got her own ideas about art, this life and the next, the existence of God, love and death. But her interviewers and publicists have tried so hard to get her to elucidate these views that she's become an expert in evasion, giving answers more notable for what they conceal than what they reveal. She rejects any notion that her fame is fleeting and is exasperated by speculation that overexertion could damage her voice. "’n the full light of day, I don't want to think about the sunset.’ In any case, specialists think it's improbable, since her voice has a natural range.”
Everyone knows about his great novels, especially, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, Love in the Time of Cholera, Autumn of the Patriarch, Living to Tell the Tale, Leaf storm and other stories, among other great works of literature. Not many know about his seminal journalistic-fiction masterpiece: ‘News of a Kidnapping’.
As we remember him on his birth anniversary (Born on March 6, 1927, Aracataca, Columbia; Died on April 17 , 2014, Mexico City, Mexica), the world might re-watch the thrilling Netflix serial on ‘Carlos’, the underworld mafia dawn, who was the king of drugs in Columbia, north and south America, and who out-manoeuvred the huge might of the American law enforcement and intelligence agencies for years. Few would know the investigative reportage and meticulous documentation of the entire drug industry, including the kidnappings of top officials and their wives and relatives by emaciated, young, nervous, restless mercenaries, trigger-happy, with itching fingers, forever on their guns, holed up in small holes, their hostages without light, or food, or water to drink, and no communication whatsoever with the outside world. Only Marquez could do it.
That was one of his another great journalistic classic turned into a novel: ‘News of a Kidnapping’, first published in Spanish in 1996.
He made Carlos – Pablo Escobar — look like an ordinary guy, just doing what he thinks he must do, conquering the world with drugs and killings, watching a dog being shot by another mafia don, feeling sad but distracted, or humans being killed, feeling sad but full of precision and cold-blooded at the same time, or turning the government’s powerful chess-game upside down with one masterstroke after another. Carlos, shadowy and inaccessible, was no mythical batman or a comic strip American superhero. He was real, as real as a man can be, with a devoted wife and a Robin Hood image, so unlike the Italian epic of the Godfather, part one, two, three, with both Marlon Brando and Al Pacino becoming larger than life. Pablo Escobar was as ordinary as any man on the street.
But, as he said, when stopped by the cops with loads of illegal stuff in his van, that, yes, he could be the next president. So beware! Feared and admired equally by the masses, he was often a shadow of his own glorified self. And he carried his own difficult baggage, of remorse, love, sex, with a gun on a woman’s private parts, feeling her insides with the total Latin American dominant male, macho principle. With a gun and the power of being a mafia don. She was his willful, pseudo-lover and ambitious sex-partner, chasing her own dreams of millions and power; she, herself, choosing to be handcuffed in the bed. He also had compassion, perhaps, while letting loose a bloody trail of dead bodies which shook Columbia and other nations. While he is having violent, misogynist sex first time with a journalist (the same woman), who is his power-broker with politicians, she says, “Do you do it with your wife like this?” He clutches her throat, ready to kill, and says, “Never talk about my wife like this.”
Check out the response of the international media on this book: Fascinating... Possesses all the drama and emotional resonance of García Márquez’s most powerful fiction.” —The New York Times. “Brilliant... Deeply affecting... A story rich in characters who are both heroic and contradictory.” —The Wall Street Journal. “A potent mixture of the newshound’s well-documented detail and the novelist’s tragic vision.” —Chicago Tribune. “A powerful story... In a series of telling strokes, shifting subtly from one perspective to another, García Márquez conveys the madness of the hostages’ imprisonment, the despair, the anger, the false hope, the resignation.” — San Francisco Chronicle.
This is far far away from the great love story of rebellion and family traditions in a town called Macondo in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, where the mother-figure, Ursula, blind, and, yet, is able to spot every dead and living object in that huge house of memories and dead and invisible legends, including Aureliano Buendia, who took up an armed rebellion for decades against the oligarchies and American imperialists, now content with making gold fish in his hidden corner, as dead and alive like the blind eyes of Ursula.
Equally distant is the love and longing of the man who celebrated his unrequited love in ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ for years, which became unrequited centuries. Finally, when she agreed, her skin had become old, and their armpits perhaps smelled of onions and moist clothes dried in the incessant rain, it was true love. And then they became naked, celebrated love, full sexual and spiritual love, full of passion and beauty because the flesh was weak, but the spirit was still alive and young. That is Marquez. Shakira’s Marquez.