19. See ibid., pp. 44–60, on their courtship, a surprisingly lengthy narrative given that GGM had already told the story another way in Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).
20. Ligia GM, in Galvis, Los GM, pp. 151–2.
21. GGM does not directly mention his father’s surname in his memoir, which is noteworthy, to say the least.
22. GGM himself would meet Pareja as a student in Bogotá, where Pareja was a law professor, had a bookshop and took a leading role in the 1948 Bogotazo.
23. Cited by José Font Castro, “El padre de GM,” El Nacional (Caracas), July 1972. See also J. Font Castro, “Las claves reales de El amor en los tiempos del cólera,” El País (Madrid), 19 January 1986.
24. This is the version GGM reconstructs in his first novel Leaf Storm (1955).
25. All can still be seen today, with the exception of the house, which was demolished early in 2007 to make way for a reconstructed version and a museum.
26. In Spanish: “La niña bonita de Aracataca.” Both Vargas Llosa and Saldívar use this phrase.
27. People in Aracataca told me they never saw Luisa out in the street in the 1920s.
28. Love in the Time of Cholera is based to a significant extent, as mentioned above, on the courtship between Gabriel Eligio and Luisa Santiaga. García Márquez relates in Living to Tell the Tale that Aunt Francisca was an accomplice of the young couple; but Gabriel Eligio was always insistent that she was his worst enemy. He called her the “guard dog” (“la cancerbera”).
29. Leonel Giraldo, “Siete Días en Aracataca, el pueblo de ‘Gabo’ GM,” Siete Días (Buenos Aires), 808, 8-14 December 1982. Gabriel Eligio would never change. Many years later he and his wife were asked in an interview what was their best memory. Luisa answered, “When Gabriel Eligio gave me the ring.” Gabriel Eligio answered, “My bachelor days, how I enjoyed them!”
30. Ligia GM, in Galvis, Los GM. Interview with Ruth Ariza Cotes, Bogotá, 2007.
31. Interview, José Font Castro, Madrid, 1997.
32. Vargas Llosa, Historia de un deicidio, p. 14.
33. See Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 59-60. In fact the house where they spent their honeymoon was the home of the Márquez Iguarán family next to the customs house in Riohacha. It was there, according to Ricardo Márquez Iguarán, who took me there in June 2008, where Gabriel Eligio’s “excellent marksmanship” led to GGM’s conception on the night of 12-13 June 1926. After two weeks the couple moved to another, more modest house in the next street.
34. Clearly there are mysteries relating to the reasons why Nicolás reluctantly assented to their marriage and why García Márquez’s birth date has always been such a problem. The most obvious explanation, here as everywhere else in the world, at all times and in all places, is that Luisa Santiaga got pregnant out of wedlock and (since the date of the wedding seems not to be in doubt) that Gabito was born well before 6 March (or on 6 March but well overdue) and for that reason was not baptized and registered (by what was after all a very respectable, official, law-abiding and God-fearing family) until he was three. Luisa Santiaga insisting on marrying the illegitimate, unqualified Gabriel Eligio despite parental opposition is a remarkable story. Since there seems no doubt of her love for Gabriel Eligio, it is possible that her only way of securing her parents’ reluctant agreement was to get pregnant. However, there is no more than circumstantial evidence for this.
2 / The House at Aracataca (1927–1928)
1. Mendoza, The Fragrance of Guava, p. 17.
2. See John Archer, “Revelling in the fantastic,” Sunday Telegraph Magazine (London), 8 February 1981. “One of the ways they kept me quiet at night was to tell me that if I moved dead people would come out of every room. So when darkness fell I would be terrified.” And Germán Castro Caycedo, “‘Gabo’ cuenta la novela de su vida,” El Espectador, 23 March 1977: “I’m not afraid of darkness. I’m afraid of big houses because dead people only come out in big houses … I only buy little houses because dead people don’t come out in them.”
3. Aida GM, in Galvis, Los GM, p. 99: “So then the grandson just sort of stayed in my grandparents’ house.” In one interview the grandson himself would tell a journalist, “My parents gave me to my grandparents as a present, to please them,” a version which reconciles contradictions in several of the others.
4. Luis Enrique GM, in Galvis, Los GM, p. 123.
5. See Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 32–6, for GM’s evocation of the house. My description is based on careful comparison of GGM’s memoirs, the architects’ analysis quoted in Saldívar, GM: el viaje a la semilla, and the version established by the architects responsible for the 2008 reconstruction.
6. See ibid., p. 34, where GM says the room had “1925” inscribed on it, which is the year it was completed.
7. Margot GM, in Galvis, Los GM, p. 65.
8. See Leaf Storm; and Living to Tell the Tale, p. 35.
9. GGM himself would later “remember” a visit from Uribe Uribe, although the General was assassinated fourteen years before he was born. See Living to Tell the Tale, p. 33.
10. Like the character in Leaf Storm based upon him, Nicolás was always wandering around the house looking for little odd jobs like tightening screws and touching up paint. GGM himself would adopt this practice in later years as a way of relaxing between bouts of writing; by that time he was wearing workman’s overalls in order to write.
11. See Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 33 and 73-4: GGM says she was “my grandfather’s older sister.”
12. See GGM, “Watching the Rain in Galicia,” The Best of Granta Travel (London, Granta/Penguin, 1991), pp. 1-5, where GGM describes Tranquilina’s ways with bread and hams, the like of which he never tasted again until he visited Galicia: though already eating something similar (lacón) in Barcelona in the 1960s had brought back the pleasures but above all the anxieties and solitude of his childhood.
13. Ligia GM, In Galvis, Los GM, p. 152.
14. GGM, “Vuelta a la semilla,” El Espectador, 18 December 1983.
15. See “Growing Up in Macondo: Gabriel García Márquez,” Writers and Places, transcript (BBC2 film, shown 12 February 1981, producer John Archer).
16. See Germán Castro Caycedo, “‘Gabo’ cuenta la novela de su vida. 6,” El Espectador, 23 March 1977, etc., for the image of the immobilized child, full of terror, and the obsession in his work with burials.
17. BBC2, “Growing Up in Macondo”: “Everyone in the family is Caribbean and everyone in the Caribbean is superstitious. My mother still is today, there are still many African and Indian belief systems operating inside Catholicism … I myself believe in telepathy, premonitions, the power of dreams in ways we still don’t understand … I was brought up in that world, am still profoundly superstitious and I still interpret my own dreams and operate largely through instinct.”
18. From my discussions with Margot Valdeblánquez based on her memories and family photographs; see also Saldívar, GM: el viaje a la semilla, pp. 96-7, based on the recollections of Sara Emilia Márquez.
19. BBC2, “Growing Up in Macondo.”
20. “Recuerdos de la maestra de GM,” El Espectador, 31 October 1982.
21. Story told by Gabriel Eligio to José Font Castro.
22. See Mendoza, The Fragrance of Guava, p. 18.
23. See GGM, “La vaina de los diccionarios,” El Espectador, 16 May 1982, in which he recalls his grandfather’s misplaced respect for dictionaries and confesses his own pleasure in catching them out.
24. From my discussions with Margot Valdeblánquez based on her memories and family photographs; see also Saldívar, GM, pp. 103-4, based on the recollections of Sara Emilia Márquez.
25. White, Historia, pp. 19–20.
26. See Gabriel Fonnegra, Bananeras: testimonio vivo de una epopeya (Bogotá, Tercer Mundo, n.d.), pp. 27–8.
27. Ibid., p. 191.
28. Ibid., p. 26.
29. See Catherine C. LeGrand, “Living in Macondo: Economy and Culture in a UFC Banana Encl
ave in Colombia,” in Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds., Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham, N.C., Duke, University Press, 1998), pp. 333–68 (p. 348).
30. GGM, Living to Tell the Tale, p. 18.
31. Saldívar, GM: el viaje a la semilla, pp. 54, 522.
32. There is no definitive history of this event and no consensus as to the number of civilians killed by the army. Inevitably most writers view it through their own ideological prism.
33. Carlos Arango, Sobrevivientes de las bananeras (Bogotá, ECOE, 2nd ed., 1985), p. 54.
34. See María Tila Uribe, Los años escondidos: sueños y rebeldías en la década del veinte (Bogotá, CESTRA, 1994), p. 265.
35. See Carlos Cortés Vargas, Los sucesos de las bananeras, ed. R. Herrera Soto (Bogotá, Editorial Desarrollo, 2nd edition, 1979), p. 79.
36. Roberto Herrera Soto and Rafael Romero Castañeda, La zona bananera del Magdalena: historia y léxico (Bogotá, Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1979), pp. 48, 65.
37. White, Historia, p. 99.
38. Herrera and Castañeda, La zona bananera, p. 52.
39. Arango, Sobrevivientes, pp. 84-6.
40. Fonnegra, Bananeras, pp. 136-7.
41. Ibid., p. 138.
42. Ibid., p. 154.
43. José Maldonado, quoted in Arango, Sobrevivientes, p. 94.
44. White, Historia, p. 101.
45. See GGM, “Vuelta a la semilla,” El Espectador, 18 December 1983, in which he confesses that “it was only a few years ago I found out that he [Angarita] had taken up a very definite and coherent position during the strike and the killing of the banana workers.” It is extraordinary to discover that GGM did not know most facts relevant to the strike—not excluding the actions of his grandfather, Durán, Angarita and others close to him—at the time of writing OHYS.
46. Cortés Vargas, Los sucesos de las bananeras, pp. 170-71, 174, 182–3, 201, 225. Did GGM ever learn about the writing of these letters?
47. Transcripts of the documents, including Angarita’s testimony, can be found in 1928: La masacre en las bananeras (Bogotá, Los Comuneros, n.d.).
3 / Holding His Grandfather’s Hand (1929-1937)
1. See Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 11-13, 80 and 122-5, for memories of these two visits.
2. In ibid., p. 123, he has her saying “You don’t remember me anymore,” but this should probably be counted an example of poetic licence.
3. Margot was a disturbed child who would persist in eating earth until she was eight or nine years of age. She would inspire the characters of Amaranta and Rebeca in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
4. BBC2, “Growing Up in Macondo.”
5. “El microcosmos de GM,” Excelsior (Mexico City), 12 April 1971.
6. LeGrand, Frontier Expansion, p. 73.
7. Margot GM, in Galvis, Los GM, pp. 60–61. Evidently Margot and Gabito were thoroughly spoilt, as he acknowledges in “La conduerma de las palabras,” El Espectador, 16 May 1981.
8. It is generally believed in Aracataca that Nicolás bought and then rented out premises in the zone known as Cataquita which were turned into one of the “academias” or dance halls where both liquor and sex were freely available. See Venancio Aramis Bermúdez Gutiérrez, “Aportes socioculturales de las migraciones en la Zona Bananera del Magdalena” (Bogotá, November 1995, Beca Colcultura 1994, I Semestre, unpublished ms.).
9. BBC2, “Growing Up in Macondo.”
10. See Living to Tell the Tale, p. 82, on his lifelong fear of the dark.
11. See Carlota de Olier, “Habla la madre de GM: ‘Quisiera volar a verlo … pero le tengo terror al avión,’” El Espectador, 22 October 1982: “‘If my father were alive,’ says Doña Luisa, ‘he would be happy. He always thought that death would prevent him enjoying Gabito’s triumphs. He intuited that in time Gabito would achieve an outstanding position and often said, “What a pity I won’t be there to see how far this child’s intelligence will take him.”’”
12. See GGM, “Manos arriba?,” El Espectador, 20 March 1983, which notes that most visitors to the house wore guns.
13. See Nicolás Suescún, “El prestidigitador de Aracataca,” Cromos (Bogotá), 26 October 1982, pp. 24-7, which begins its portrait of GGM the child blinking like a movie camera and thus absorbing and processing the world and turning it into stories.
14. Margot GM, in Galvis, Los GM, pp. 64–5.
15. “La memoria de Gabriel,” La Nación (Guadalajara), 1996, p. 9.
16. Elena Poniatowska, “Los Cien años de soledad se iniciaron con sólo 20 dólares” (interview, September 1973), in her Todo México (Mexico City, Diana, 1990).
17. GGM told Germán Castro Caycedo, in “‘Gabo’ cuenta la novela de su vida,” El Espectador, 23 March 1977, that until he himself was waiting for money in Paris he had always considered this ritual something of a comedy.
18. Galvis, Los GM, p. 64. The Colonel also wrote frequently to his eldest son José María Valdeblánquez.
19. See GGM, “Vuelta a la semilla,” El Espectador, 18 December 1983, where GGM speaks with great familiarity—for the first time—of General José Rosario Durán’s house, which he and the Colonel must have passed, or even visited, on many occasions.
20. BBC2, “Growing Up in Macondo.” See GGM, Living to Tell the Tale, p. 84, on Father Angarita.
21. See GGM, “Memoria feliz de Caracas,” El Espectador, 7 March 1982; also Living to Tell the Tale, p. 43, on the Venezuelans in Aracataca.
22. See GGM, Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 24-32.
23. Saldívar, GM: el viaje a la semilla, pp. 67, 71-2.
24. Interview with Antonio Daconte (grandson), Aracataca, November 2006. See GGM, Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 18 and 87-8.
25. See GGM, Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 87-8 and 91-2.
26. GGM, “La nostalgia de las almendras amargas,” Cambio (Bogotá), 23 June 2000. Also on Don Emilio, see “El personaje equívoco,” Cambio, 19-26 June 2000.
27. BBC2, “Growing Up in Macondo.”
28. See Henríquez, El misterio, pp. 283–4.
29. Interview with Margot Valdeblánquez de Díaz-Granados, Bogotá, 1993.
30. See OHYS and Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 66-7, on the arrival of the seventeen bastards with ash on their foreheads.
31. BBC2, “Growing Up in Macondo.”
32. See GGM, Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 62–4.
33. See Galvis, Los GM, p. 59.
34. This was a traumatically confusing experience, to say the least. García Márquez has always said that he did not “meet” his mother until he was five years old. Clearly he must mean “remember,” because he must have seen her on at least one of the two visits to Barranquilla. In any case his first recollection, however conditioned by memory and desire, was a defining moment of his life, later recorded in both Leaf Storm and Living to Tell the Tale. To awareness of his grandmother, his aunts and the servants, then, was now added a concrete awareness of this new personage: his mother.
35. GGM, “Cuánto cuesta hacer un escritor?,” Cambio 16, Colombia, 11 December 1995. See Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 94–5, for GGM’s recollections and attitude to the school.
36. According to Fonnegra, Bananeras, pp. 96–7, a Pedro Fergusson was Mayor of Aracataca in 1929.
37. See GGM, “La poesía al alcance de los niños,” El Espectador, 25 January 1981.
38. Saldívar, GM: el viaje a la semilla, p. 120.
39. “Recuerdos de la maestra de GM,” El Espectador, 31 October 1982.
40. Margot Valdeblánquez, interview, Bogotá, 1991.
41. Saldívar, GM: el viaje a la semilla, p. 120.
42. See Saldívar, “GM: ‘La novela que estoy escribiendo está localizada en Cartagena de Indias, durante el siglo XVIII,’” Diario 16 (Madrid), 1 April 1989.
43. See Rita Guibert, Seven Voices (New York, Vintage, 1973), pp. 317-20, for GGM on the relation between his early drawing of comic strips and h
is desire for public performance, which he was ultimately too self-conscious to carry off.
44. BBC2, “Growing Up in Macondo.”
45. GGM, “La vaina de los diccionarios,” El Espectador, May 1982.
46. Luis Enrique GM, in Galvis, Los GM, pp. 123–4.
47. Family births: Gabito, Aracataca, March 1927; Luis Enrique, Aracataca, September 1928; Margot, Barranquilla, November 1929; Aida Rosa, Barranquilla, December 1930; Ligia, Aracataca, August 1934 (she remembers the house in Aracataca in Galvis, Los GM, p. 152); Gustavo, Aracataca, September 1936; then Rita, Barranquilla, July 1939; Jaime, Sucre, May 1940; Hernando (“Nanchi”), Sucre, March 1943; Alfredo (“Cuqui”), Sucre, February 1945; and Eligio Gabriel (“Yiyo”), Sucre, November 1947.
Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez Page 74