The Gabo Foundation says goodbye to a “teacher of the Spanish narrative”
The Gabo Foundation of Colombia, created by the writer and Nobel Prize for Literature Gabriel García Márquez, has expressed his regret for the death of the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, who died today in Lima. The Foundation has communicated from its profile of the social network X: “The Gabo Foundation laments the death of Mario Vargas Llosa, master of the narrative in Spanish and key figure of Latin American literature. We accompany his family, friends and readers in the duel”
García Márquez and Vargas Llosa were not only companions of letters in the so -called Latin American literary boom, but also maintained a close friendship for many years. In 1971 the Peruvian writer was a doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid with a thesis entitled History of a deicideconsecrated who was already a very dear and admired friend, the Colombian author. Both had met in Caracas in 1967, the same year that García Márquez published his great editorial success, One hundred years of loneliness. Vargas Llosa had traveled to the Venezuelan capital to collect the Romulo Gallegos prize for The Green Househis second novel. They found that same year in Lima again, to participate in a colloquium organized by the University of Engineering on Latin American Literature. Thus was born a strong friendship and complicity united by passion to literature – Faulkner was, said Vargas Llosa, “our common denominator” – and the admiration for the work of the other.
Vargas Llosa saw a classic writer in his friend. It was the Cuban revolution that began to move them away. When they arrested the poet Herberto Padilla, Vargas Llosa wrote a letter to Fidel Castro signed by other intellectuals such as Juan Goytisolo, Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Jorge Semprún, Pliny He rode in anger when his name appeared without his permission in the letter addressed to Fidel Castro. Despite political differences, they maintained friendship, but in 1976 an incident occurred in Mexico that is already mythical in Latin American literature: Vargas Llosa approached García Márquez and gave him a brutal punch, which knocked the writer. The causes of the incident are not known, although some witnesses say that the Peruvian snapped: “This is why you did Patricia!”, His wife. Since then the friendship broke completely.
