CRONICA - GA2-240202501-AA1-EV03.

 GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

Gabriel Jose de la Concordia Garcia Marquez, born on March 6, 1927 in Aracataca, a town on Colombia's Atlantic coast, is an iconic literary figure. He is affectionately known as Gabo. Gabo was the eldest of a large family of twelve siblings. His father, Gabriel Eligio García, was one of the immigrants who arrived in Aracataca during the banana rush in the first decade of the 20th century. The boy Gabo grew up with his grandparents in Aracataca, considering his grandfather as "the most important figure in my life". These first eight years of "prodigious childhood" marked his narrative and mythical universe. The memories of his family, the vivacity of the peasant language and the coexistence with the magical would be reflected in many of his works, such as "La hojarasca", "Cien años de soledad" and "El amor en los tiempos del cólera". University life: In 1947, García Márquez moved to Bogotá to study law. However, his impressions of the capital were not positive. He saw it as a "gray and barren" city, full of "cachacos" dressed in black with umbrellas and coconut hats. Despite his disenchantment with Bogotá, this period also influenced his writing and worldview. The Boom of Spanish American Literature: García Márquez was a pivotal figure in the literary Boom of the 1960s. His masterpiece, "One Hundred Years of Solitude", published in 1967, became one of the most important novels of the 20th century. His importance as a storyteller was recognized worldwide in 1982, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Committed to leftist movements, he closely followed the Cuban guerrilla insurrection of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara until its triumph in 1959. He was also a friend of Fidel Castro and participated in the founding of Prensa Latina, Cuba's news agency. His writing career began with a short novel La hojarasca (1955). But the key work in his career would be One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). The author  developed an important literary career with works such as El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1961) or Crónica de una muerte anunciada (1981). His next great work, El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1987), was inspired by his parents' own love story. He returned to reportage with Miguel Littín clandestino en Chile (1986), wrote a theatrical text, Diatriba de amor contra un hombre sentado (1987), and even grouped some stories under the title Doce cuentos peregrinos (1992). Again, in his later works, we can appreciate the conjunction of the love and sentimental novel with reportage. García Márquez's works include more than a dozen short novels, two full-length novels (One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera), his autobiography (Living to Tell the Tale) and several collections of short stories and journalistic articles. "Gabo" left us on April 17, 2014. In short, Gabriel García Márquez left an indelible mark on world literature, fusing the magical with the everyday and creating a unique literary world. His legacy lives on through his words and his ability to transport us to Macondo and beyond.