Era Colombia and it was the fateful year of 1982. Disastrous resounding, without palliatives. Guerrilla attacks intensified, especially the M-19, who had signed the attack against the Attorney General of the Nation and the seizure of municipalities such as Almaguer. The FARC did the same: an ambush in January against a patrol of the Anti-Narcotics Police (three dead policemen), in April a massacre of peasants in the northeast of the country (five dead), an attack against the Army in June in San Vicente del Caguán (eight dead). Colombia lived in the middle of the crossfire, of an undeclared internal war, and although it was not talked about, drug trafficking was already beginning to corrupt the structures of power. In this adverse climate, President Belisario Betancur informed FIFA that the country was giving up organizing the 1986 World Cup, which had been designated as the venue eight years ago. The World Cup: that event that was going to change everything, that hope, one of the few illusions that the country had left. Colombia was depressed. everything was bad and there was nothing to celebrate.
Then, shining like the star that it was then, showed up Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the son of the telegraph operator from Aracataca, and discharged a colossal bomb of optimism in the spirit of the country. The news of primer Nobel Prize in Literature in the history of Colombia has many readings, the literary first, Of course, but also a social one in which little influence is made, and which has to do with the context, with that half-failed country that suddenly found a reason for pride. The explosion was of such magnitude that its shock wave extends to today, and is visible in the celebrations that have taken place to commemorate the award’s 40th anniversary. Few Nobel Prizes in literature have the meaning and social dimension that García Márquez has had in Colombia. few love them so much in his country. Few are called, from the president to the bricklayer, by their affectionate diminutive. Gabo. Gabito.
“Colombia in the year 82 was a democracy failed, a failed nation,” says Omar Rincón, director of the Center for Journalism Studies at the Universidad de los Andes. “The Nobel Prize occurred when the country was in one of its worst moments. Nothing went well, everything was a disgrace. That Nobel allowed us to exist”. Conrado Zuluaga, writer, editor and rigorous student of the work of García Márquez, says that the impact of the Colombian writer must be measured not in literary terms, or not only, but historical: “Before 1967, when ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ appears, what is there? There is nothing… Some historians, some politicians who exchange power… Anyone who studies the 20th century in Colombia should stop and analyze what projection his work and his award had on the country upon reaching García Márquez.”
Beyond the historical moment –which is important–, it turned out that the Nobel laureate was a man of popular extraction, oblivious to the corsets that identify the Colombian elites: that contributed to making his halo bigger. “The best of Colombia is in the popular,” says Rincón. “Colombian classism, the elites, have given us very little.” For Zuluaga, there is a charisma that explains his connection with the average Colombian (“he was a very nice guy, kind to people, he didn’t mind the mob, he signed books anywhere”), and to illustrate it, he uses an anecdote that occurred during the celebration of a Hay Festival in Cartagena de Indias: “I remember that one day I went to have a drink at the Hotel Santa Teresa and saw that there was a crowd at the entrance. So I went over and asked what was going on, and they told me: ‘Mr. García Márquez is in the courtyard with some friends and people are lining up to greet him.’ And so it was, just like that. He spent two hours greeting people in the midst of a tremendous uproar”.
There are hundreds of stories like this, as many as there were people Gabo shook hands with as he passed through Cartagena, Bogotá, everywhere. “In this country everyone needs to talk about their Gabo, everyone wants to talk about Gabito: when I met Gabito, when I met Gabito, when I talked to Gabito. But it’s normal, because we don’t have another icon of that magnitude,” says Rincón. “Gabo is our ‘Colombia brand’ abroad, the symbol of the creative Colombian for good, while the creative for bad would be Pablo Escobar. On the other hand, he was a character with a huge wealth of mythology behind him, with a number of stories surrounding him. For all that, I think was and still is a ‘pop-star’”. There are not many Nobel Prize ceremonies that can boast of a winner greeting the respectable in liqui liqui and a backstage party with a vallenato group included.
All of which allows us to formulate the following postulate: in terms of admiration, Gabo is to Colombians what –is the paradigmatic example– Maradona is to Argentines. That kind of idol. “He is our great idol,” confirms Zuluaga. “Gabo is a reference because he is Gabo”, says Rincón, “but also because he is a hero in a country where we don’t have many heroes”. Nor Rulfo in Mexiconor Vargas Llosa in Peruand Borges Argentina. “It is not the same, because they are all seen as very intellectual, and in the case of Vargas Llosa, as a politician.” After all, García Márquez rescued an entire country from depression. It’s not little.