Gabriel García Márquez almost never wrote letters. This is stated by his granddaughter Emilia García Elizondo and his son Gonzalo García Barcha. However, he was the recipient of a large correspondence sent by personalities such as Pablo Neruda, Bill Clinton, Woody Allen and Fidel Castro. Now for the first time the public will be able to read them.
After an unexpected discovery of more than 100 unpublished letters, the family decided to open the doors of the author’s house in Mexico City to expose them under the title “Gabo 40 years after the Nobel Prize: The writer does have someone who writes to him,” according to a report by Mónica Rubalcava, a journalist from Eph.
“Gabo hardly wrote letters, he liked to have conversations in person (…) he lived talking on the phone. I believe that most of these letters were probably answered in conversations over the phone or in person. There are very few letters from Gabo,” says García Elizondo, also director of the Gabriel García Márquez House of Literature (CLGGM), where the exhibition will take place until mid-August.
For the same reason, his son Gonzalo confesses to having “zero letters” from his parents. And he believes that, if he had lived in the days of mobile phones, García Márquez “would have been a ruthless cell phone user.”
A TREASURE OPENS
Gonzalo and Emilia were in a study of the house, located at 144 Fuego Street in Mexico City, looking for a photo for the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Nobel Prize that ended up consecrating García Márquez worldwide as one of the most important writers. of Latin America and the world in 1982.
But, instead of finding photographs, approximately 150 letters were found in a mysterious box with the legend “Grandchildren”.
“I had never seen it before, I assumed they were photos, but they were letters. Letters that are part of a much larger archive that has already gone to the Ransom Center in Austin, but that I suppose Mercedes (Barcha, the writer’s wife) had saved to deliver later. None of us knew they were there,” says García Elizondo.
Gonzalo explains that among the letters there were also some of Gabo’s own grandchildren, such as the writer Mateo García Elizondo, and his nieces, but since they are so personal they are not part of the exhibition, in which only approximately 35 to 40 writings.
POLITICIANS, ACTIVISTS, WRITERS, FILMMAKERS AND ACTORS
The words that Robert Redford, Woody Allen, Fidel Castro, Subcomandante Marcos, Enrique Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderón, Carlos Fuentes, Augusto Monterroso, Bill Clinton and other personalities dedicated to Gabo and his wife Mercedes Barcha on paper will be exhibited from now on at the CLGGM before becoming part of the collection of the Harry Ransom Center in the capital of Texas.
“The one I like the most is Pablo Neruda’s because I love poetry, it’s a letter from 1972, that means my parents were young and Neruda not so much, he must have moved them a lot,” says Gonzalo about the poet’s letter Chile in which he invites Mercedes and Gabo to an event in which Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar were also apparently invited.
Being an actress, Emilia confesses that the most impressive for her were those she found from actors and film directors. But, it was her greatest surprise to learn about her grandfather’s friendship with characters such as former United States President Bill Clinton or Cuban President Fidel Castro.
“I really like the letters with Fidel, there is a certain tenderness in the friendship they had, and those of Bill Clinton are quite fatherly (good)”, confesses the granddaughter, who never ceases to be amazed at the life of her grandparents due to the discretion they They always drove.
“Everything (what is exhibited is) vintage (old), very 20th century, the Cold War, Cuba, Clinton. I guess it was a bit of keeping things very secret, (Gabo and Mercedes) were very discreet”, adds Gonzalo.
“Actually, I don’t know if they would have liked this to be shown, but on Sunday they are going to be balconed (exhibited) even more,” he acknowledges, since the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City will also exhibit secrets of the writer of One hundred years of solitude (1967) in “Gabriel García Márquez: The Making of a Global Writer.”
Although legend has it that the love letters that García Márquez wrote to his wife Mercedes in his youth were burned, Emilia promises to keep looking for them.
Efe/Monica Rubalcava.
