Solitude & Company
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JOSÉ SALGAR: Editor, journalist, and director of newspapers in Colombia, he was the head of the editorial room at El Espectador when García Márquez arrived in Bogotá to work as a reporter. He died in 2013 after having worked in journalism for more than sixty-five years.
ENRIQUE “QUIQUE” SCOPELL: A Colombian photographer, the son of Cuban immigrants, he was the other Barranquillero still alive when I began this series of interviews in 1999. He was one of the group García Márquez joined when he came to work at El Heraldo in 1951. He called himself a professional drunkard. He died in 2014 in Los Angeles at age ninety-one and he made sure his body was laid to rest in Barranquilla.
ILAN STAVANS: Mexican writer and professor living in the United States. A student of Hispanic culture in the United States and Jewish culture in the Hispanic world. Among his books are a dictionary of Spanglish and one on the first forty years of Gabriel García Márquez’s life.
ROSE STYRON: A poet and human rights activist from the United States, she was the wife of the writer William Styron; García Márquez was a good friend of both of them. Since 1970, she has been part of the founding board of Amnesty International and many other nongovernmental organizations that fight for human rights. She worked with García Márquez in several Latin American causes, such as the case of Allende in Chile and the United States embargo on Cuba.
WILLIAM STYRON: An important author from the southern United States. He is famous for Sophie’s Choice, a novel about the life of a woman who survived Auschwitz, and for writing in the first person about his own alcoholism and depression. Because of his southern subject matter, in his earlier novels he was known as the heir to William Faulkner. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, among many other awards. He had a circle of very influential literary and political friends, among them two Latin Americans: Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez. He died in 2006 at the age of eighty-one.
BRAM TOWBIN: A born and raised Upper East Side New Yorker turned flower grower in Vermont.
GLORIA TRIANA: Director of the Festivities and Folklore section of Colcultura, a key element in making the award of the Nobel Prize to García Márquez a fiesta.
RAFAEL ULLOA PATERNINA: A distant cousin of García Márquez on his father’s side, he is a chemical engineer whose vocation is writing short stories about the Colombian coast. He was born in Sincé, the river town where García Márquez’s father was also born. He cuts out and saves everything the press publishes about “his kinsman.” He died in Barranquilla.
ARMANDO ZABALETA: One of the most respected composers and singers of the vallenato, a very popular musical genre along the Caribbean coast. Among his best-loved songs is “I’m Not Returning to Patillal,” written as an homage to Freddy Molina, his spiritual brother, another troubadour like him, when he died suddenly. In 1973, Zabaleta composed a protest song against García Márquez when he learned that he had given some prize money to a group of guerrillas in Venezuela and not to Aracataca. He died in 2010 at age eighty-three, thankful for the love he received for his compositions.
List of Images
Gabriel García Márquez in Mexico D.F. 1966, writing One Hundred Years of Solitude, courtesy of Guillermo Angulo
Photo of wedding between Gabriel Eligio and Luisa Santiaga, courtesy of El Malpensante archive
García Márquez at thirteen years old, courtesy of El Malpensante archive
García Márquez surrounded by friends, courtesy of Jorge Rendón
Alfonso Fuenmayor, courtesy of the Fuenmayor family
Germán Vargas, courtesy of Vivian Saad (photographer) and Susie Linares de Vargas (proprietary)
Álvaro Cepeda Samudio, courtesy of Tita Cepeda
Alejandro Obregón, courtesy of La Cueva Foundation
Julio Mario Santo Domingo, in April 1978, in Barranquilla, courtesy of El Heraldo archive
La Cueva (The Cave), courtesy of El Malpensante archive
García Márquez walking with a friend, 1954, courtesy of El Malpensante archive
Account of a castaway, 1955, courtesy of El Espectador, Fundación Palabrería archive
In Paris with an open hand, taken in 1954, courtesy of Guillermo Angulo
Mercedes Barcha, courtesy of the FNPI archive
María Luisa and Jomí, courtesy of Diego García Elío
Dedication from Gabo to Diego García Elío, courtesy of Diego García Elío
Map of the region that was originally Macondo, courtesy of Daniel Pastor
Gabo and Fuentemayor in Barcelona, courtesy of La Cueva Foundation
García Márquez greeting a cumbia dancer in Stockholm, courtesy of Nereo López
Carlos Fuentes, William Styron, and García Márquez, courtesy of the Styron family
García Márquez with a black eye, courtesy of the Rodrigo Moya Photography Foundation
Álvaro Mutis and García Márquez, courtesy of Diego García Elío