Bolivian lament: The death of Marciano Cantero is felt in the country

“It doesn’t matter where you are,” Alejandro Lerner tells Marciano Cantero in Amigos, the obligatory song when it comes to celebrating friendship. The phrase seems to sound today more than ever in the heads of those who enjoyed the music of the Enanitos Verdes and lament the departure of Cantero, the voice of the Argentine group, one of the great references of rock in Spanish in the 1980s. and 90.

Horacio Marciano Cantero died yesterday (Thursday), at the age of 62, at the Cuyo Clinic in Mendoza, his hometown. The artist had been admitted days ago due to abdominal pain, which forced him to be hospitalized. Doctors detected a kidney condition. His health condition worsened and a kidney and part of his spleen were removed. Cantero did not resist and died.

Marciano was at the helm from the beginning of the group, which became one of the most exportable of Argentine music. Comprised for most of their career by Felipe Staiti on guitar, Daniel Piccolo on drums and Marciano Cantero on vocals and bass, Los Enanitos Verdes left their mark on Latin America with hits like The Green Wall, Unmarked Letters, I Saw You on a Train, For the rest, Same as yesterday, Eternal loneliness and Bolivian Lament.

They also left an indelible mark in Bolivia, where they performed for the first time in 1988. La Paz, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Sucre, Cochabamba and Oruro were the cities where they played on the various visits they made to the country.

The writer Alfredo Rodríguez remembers that he went to see the Green Dwarfs at the 1988 Carnival to the coliseum of the La Salle school, when he was 16 years old. Rodríguez highlights that Cantero put the soundtrack to one of the most beautiful stages: adolescence.

The announcer Marjorie Vega remembers the occasion that Cantero and the other ‘Enanos’ visited the FM HIT radio station: “I have it in the retina of my eyes; simple, jovial, cautious when speaking, with a calm even meditative voice, that’s how I remember him and that’s how I will keep this beloved and iconic Argentine singer-songwriter in my memory.”

For his part, Wálter Reyesvilla, better known as Puka, who was one of the producers of the first shows of the Argentine group in Bolivia, pointed out that they were planning a reunion these days with Cantero. “We postpone it for when I have to cross the green wall,” he said.

Musician and producer Vladimir Suárez told about the time he produced an album for Sony Music, in which he recorded a version of Tus Viejas Cartas, alongside Marciano Cantero. “I was always a fan of the Enanitos Verdes, one of the bands that marked a very important stage of my adolescence. It was very difficult for me to talk with Marciano, in my role as producer, because my fan side made me nervous. Over time and the talks, he took it upon himself to remind me that we were colleagues and that we were walking the same path”, he indicated.