Gabriel García Márquez: The Last Interview

by Gabriel García Márquez

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I can tell you with my hand on my heart that I have nothing more to say in a novel; I’ve backed myself into a corner. So I’m terrified that I’ll wake up one day and have nothing to do. I’m looking for a job, do you know of anything?

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: I’m in the same position.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Until a job comes up, I’m working with Rui Guerra, the Brazilian director, on a film adaptation of “Blacamán the Good, Vendor of Miracles.” We’ve found that that story allows us to give a complete cinematic account of colonialism in the Caribbean, from the Spanish conquest to North American imperialism.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: I heard you were also doing something with Francesco Rosi.†

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Yes, we’ve been working on an idea for a few years. Rosi and I are old friends, and in the interludes between films, he comes to Barcelona or I go to Italy to see him. I think we’re nearly there now; what I can tell you in advance is that it will be a political film, quite an original discourse on imperialism—or at least, we think so.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: Any more visual work?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: For television. I wasn’t very happy with the handling of the mechanics of La Violencia‡ in In Evil Hour. And now I’ve been given the opportunity—a rare one for a writer—to go back to it a little later. Now that I’ve had time to gain some perspective, and I think some maturity, I’m going to work on an adaptation of the novel for Colombian television, in twenty hour-long episodes. Little old ladies doing their knitting at three in the afternoon will watch something about La Violencia in Colombia, and whom it benefitted. And other people too.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: Stories?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I have a hundred ideas, one for every spare moment I have left after activism for Chile.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: I was struck by some statements you made on that topic in Rome, about the need for Latin American revolutionaries to enter into a period of reflection; you called for more use of imagination than of heroism.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: We need to use our imaginations in Latin America, after so many years of ideological petrification, of swallowing things whole; the right already knows all our tactics.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: What’s the role of the writer in these matters?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Everything’s about defining things these days, and some of the definitions are contradictory and bear no relation to reality. I think writers’ political roles must be determined by the circumstances of each moment. When it comes to political work, writers like to be given concrete tasks. I must have done a good job on the Cuban Revolution for Prensa Latina, because afterward people said, “You’re going to work here, on this front.” I think I provided a good service in my work supporting the Cuban Revolution, too, and also now with the Chilean resistance. The Chileans have given me the great honor and privilege of allowing me to work with them, and I’m simply putting the enormous political capital that comes with my reputation as a writer in the service of the Chilean resistance.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: What results has the support for Chile yielded so far?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: The Chilean military junta mustn’t be given any breathing room whatsoever, and it hasn’t been. We’ve disseminated a bad image of them around the world. They did everything in their power to create that bad image all on their own; all we’ve done is make sure it’s well known.

  Results, you said? I think we’ve ensured that the Chilean government is viewed more poorly than any other on earth. Even the very governments that work with and help the Chilean military have to hide their cooperation as best they can. Pinochet himself has been offended by this “international lack of understanding.”

  We know that the things we’re working on won’t be the decisive factor in solving Chile’s problems, but they’re a very effective aid to the resistance working within the country, which ultimately will be the thing to effect change.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: A little while ago I saw that a journalist had asked you which Latin American country you thought was most likely to have revolution in its future, and, I imagine to the journalist’s surprise, you said Chile.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Well, after what’s happened, it has the most organized, radicalized popular workers’ movement, it has enormous international support and sympathy, and it has ever more unity on the left. Which other Latin American country has all that?

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: It’s almost a year and a half since the coup in Chile. What has the junta done?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Taken power and repressed the opposition. That’s all, apart from increasing inflation by two thousand percent and spending $500 million on weapons.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: It seems obvious that they’re getting more isolated all the time.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: More lonely all the time. Something fundamental is happening, which I mentioned in the telegram I sent to the Chilean military on the day of the coup, and that’s that “the Chilean people will never allow themselves to be governed by a gang of criminals on the payroll of North American imperialism.”

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: Okay, let’s talk about that telegram.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: When I wrote it, in Bogotá, at eight o’clock at night, as soon as I found out about Allende’s death, some friends told me it read like something from a children’s book; it wasn’t my fault that the situation was like something from a children’s book. And I wanted to write it before my fury subsided; as you can see, a year has gone by and my fury still hasn’t subsided.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: Régis Debray told a Mexican journalist, not long ago, that he might not know what’s to be done in Latin America, but that he does know what should not be done on the battlefield. Do you feel the same way? What are the things that must not be done?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: One of the main causes of division in the Latin American left has been the eternal debate about the means of struggle. And the other is that some on the left align themselves with the Soviet Union and others with China. Since these are causes of division, we must be very careful with them.

  Choosing the means of struggle can’t be done mechanically or in advance; what happens in advance is that the revolutionary movements that emerge in every country as cultural as well as political entities gain political strength.

  The conditions themselves will dictate the best forms of struggle, and there’s no reason they should be the same in every country. I want to get to the point where Che’s failure in Bolivia isn’t interpreted as the fundamental failure of armed struggle, and where the failure of the Unidad Popular in Chile isn’t interpreted as the failure of the electoral route.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: What about that other cause of division?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: The answer seems to me to be that it shouldn’t matter to revolutionary movements who supports one and who supports the other; that they needn’t concern themselves with other countries disagreeing with them. That’s nothing but a remnant of the old colonial mentality; the one that says we’re nobody unless we have a mother country. And this way of thinking isn’t the same as opposing international solidarity; not at all. It just means getting rid of the fear of the catechism.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: In another interview you hinted at something about revolution and how to start it.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I don’t know who the hell it is that’s ended up convincing us—the people who want to start a revolution—to accept the idea that revolution is apocalyptic, catastrophic, and bloody. We need to grasp once and for all that it’s counterrevolution that’s apocalyptic and catastrophic and bloody. You already know the figures: more than thirty thousand dead, thousands imprisoned, thousands tortured by the leaders of the Chilean military coup.

  My idea of revolution is of the search for individual happiness through collective happiness, which is the only just form of happiness.

  We need to put an end to the practice of martyrology that’s emerged in Latin America. I want revolution for life, not for death; so that the whole world can live better lives,
drink better wine, drive better cars … Material goods aren’t inherent to the bourgeoisie, they’re a human heritage that the bourgeoisie has stolen; we’re going to take them back and distribute them among everyone.

  Death isn’t a necessary condition of revolution; revolution doesn’t have to continue to be an inventory of disaster.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: But blood might be unavoidable.

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: It might be; but if the revolution is bloody, that will be because the counterrevolution made it that way, and it will be as bloody as the counterrevolution makes it. The thing is to make sure there’s no confusion about who’s responsible, because it’s those misunderstandings that scare our mothers. My mother doesn’t understand how I can be a revolutionary if I can’t even kill a fly, and I tell her that’s precisely why I am one: for as long as there’s no revolution, I live in constant fear that I’ll be put in a situation where I have to kill a fly.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: You’ve been becoming a powerful political man for a while now; you’ve even got Kissinger’s attention. He told a meeting of international diplomats about a book whose human value had really struck him, even though he didn’t agree with its author’s politics, and he said that he hoped that Latin America wouldn’t be condemned to a hundred years of solitude any longer. What do you say about that?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I think I ought to thank Kissinger for the clarification, because if he hadn’t made it, people might have thought we shared the same political views.

  But I must tell you something: a friend of mine asked an official very close to Kissinger whether it seemed strange to him that the author he’d cited in that speech wasn’t allowed to enter the United States. I wasn’t allowed a visa for twelve years, and I think the reason was my work for Prensa Latina in New York; then they gave me one again for two years, and now they’re rejecting me again. I don’t think you have to look very far for the reason: my activist work in support of Chile.

  GONZÁLEZ BERMEJO: They must be worried about what you’re going to do. Last time, you donated the ten thousand dollars you won for the University of Oklahoma’s Books Abroad Prize to pay for defense for Colombian political prisoners. Speaking of which: Who are you going to donate your Nobel to?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: My wife has totally supported my prize donations, but she’s told me to remember her and my children next time. So I’m going to give the next one to her. And do you know why? Because I’m sure she’ll donate it to a good political cause.

  * Juan Carlos Onetti, a prominent Uruguayan novelist.

  † Francesco Rosi was an Italian director and one of the central figures of 1960s and ’70s Italian cinema. He directed film versions of Christ Stopped at Eboli and Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

  ‡ La Violencia refers to a period of civil war (1948 to 1958) between supporters of the Colombian Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. It was a brutal conflict that cost the lives of some 200,000 people.

  WOMEN

  SUPERSTITIONS, MANIAS, AND TASTE

  WORK

  THREE INTERVIEWS BY PLINIO APULEYO MENDOZA

  FROM THE FRAGRANCE OF GUAVA, BARCELONA

  1983

  TRANSLATED BY ANN WRIGHT

  1. WOMEN

  MENDOZA: You once had the good fortune to meet (was it at a cocktail party?) the most beautiful woman in the world. Apparently, there was a kind of coup de foudre between the most beautiful woman in the world and you. You arranged to meet her next day at the entrance to a bank. You kept the appointment, but just when everything looked set for something special to happen between you and the most beautiful woman in the world, you turned tail and ran. Just like a rabbit. Since she was the most beautiful woman in the world (you thought) it was bound to be more than just a banal affair and, as all your friends know only too well, Mercedes and your marriage are more important to you than anything else. Do we take it, then, that heroic sacrifice of this kind is the price to pay for a happy marriage?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: The only thing wrong with your version of that old story is that the dénouement had nothing to do with conjugal happiness. The most beautiful woman in the world was not necessarily the most desirable, in the way I understand a relationship of this type. After a brief conversation, something in her personality just made me feel that in the end her beauty would not compensate for the emotional problems she could cause me. I’ve always found women to be incredibly loyal if the rules of the game are established from the start and if you keep faith with them. The only thing which can destroy this loyalty is the slightest violation of the established rules. Maybe I felt that the most beautiful woman in the world hadn’t heard of this universal chess game and wanted to play with different colored pieces. Or perhaps I felt that, after all, she had only her beauty to offer and that this wasn’t enough to start a relationship which would be good for both of us. So you see, there was a sacrifice, but it wasn’t all that heroic. The whole episode lasted only half an hour, but it did leave behind something very important—a short story by Carlos Fuentes.

  MENDOZA: How important have women been in your life?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: You can’t understand my life without appreciating the important part women have played in it. I was brought up by a grandmother and numerous aunts who all showered me with attention, and by maids who gave me many very happy childhood moments because their prejudices, while not fewer than those of the women in the family, were at least different. The woman who taught me to read was very beautiful and graceful, and I used to like going to school just so I could see her. All through my life there has always been a woman to take me by the hand and lead me through the confusion of existence, which women understand better than men. They find their way more easily, with fewer navigational aids. I’ve begun to feel almost superstitious about it by now: I think nothing awful can happen to me if I’m with women. They make me feel secure. Without this security I couldn’t have done half the worthwhile things I’ve done in my life and, in particular, I think I wouldn’t have been able to write. This also means, of course, that I get on better with them than with men.

  MENDOZA: In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the women establish order while the men introduce chaos. Is this how you see the historical role of the two sexes?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: The allocation of roles between men and women in my books was quite unconscious and spontaneous before One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was the critics, especially Ernesto Volkening, who made me conscious of it. I wasn’t too happy about having it pointed out, because now I no longer create female characters with the same spontaneity as I used to. However, analyzing my own books in this light, I have found that it does in fact correspond to my view of the historical role of the sexes: namely, that women uphold the social order with an iron hand while men travel the world bent on boundless folly, which pushes history forward. I’ve come to the conclusion that women lack any sense of history. Otherwise, they could not fulfill their primordial function of perpetuating the species.

  MENDOZA: Where does this idea of yours of the historical division of roles come from?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: Probably from my grandparents’ house, listening to stories of the civil wars. I’ve always felt they wouldn’t have happened if women didn’t have that almost geological strength which enables them to face the world so fearlessly. My grandfather used to tell me how the men would go off to war, guns over their shoulders, not knowing even where they were going, without the slightest idea when they were coming back, and, naturally, without worrying about what was going to happen at home. That didn’t matter. With only their strength and imagination to rely on, the women were left behind to keep the species going, to create new men to replace the ones who died in battle. They were like Greek mothers bidding farewell to their menfolk as they went off to war with the words “Come back bearing your shield or borne on your shield.” Alive or dead, that is, but not defeated. I’ve often wondered if these attitudes, so typical of Caribbean women, aren’t the cause of our machismo. Or rather, if m
achismo isn’t a product of matriarchal societies in general.

  MENDOZA: It seems to me that you’re always attracted by the same type of woman—the Mother Earth figure designed for procreation and epitomized by Úrsula Iguarán in One Hundred Years of Solitude. But there are other women in the world (you must have met them) who are unstable, castrating, or simply flirts. What do you do with them?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: These women are usually looking for a father figure, so the older you get the more likely you are to meet them. All they need is some good company, a little understanding, and a little love, and they are usually grateful for it. I say “a little” because of course their solitude is incurable.

  MENDOZA: Do you remember the first time you were excited by a woman?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: The first woman to fascinate me was the one I mentioned earlier, the teacher who taught me to read when I was five. But that was different. The first to actually excite me was a girl who worked in our house. One night there was some music in the house next door and, completely innocently, she asked me to dance with her in the garden. The contact of her body with mine—I must have been about six—was an emotional cataclysm I still haven’t recovered from. I’ve never felt with the same intensity again or with the same sense of abandon.

  MENDOZA: And who has excited you most recently?

  GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I wouldn’t be lying if I told you it was someone I saw in a Paris restaurant last night. It happens to me so often that I’ve stopped counting. I have this special instinct. When I walk into a place full of people, I feel a kind of mysterious signal drawing my gaze irresistibly toward the most intriguing woman in the crowd. Not necessarily the most beautiful, but the one with whom I obviously have a deep affinity. I never do anything, I just have to know she’s there and I’m quite happy. It’s something so pure and beautiful that even Mercedes sometimes helps me to locate her and choose the best vantage point from which to see her.