Garcia Marquez, Gabriel - Introduction

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Chronology

1928. Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez is born 6 March in Aracataca, Colombia, a tiny coastal town between Barranquilla and Santa Marta controlled by the Liberal Party, to Gabriel Eligio Garcia and Luisa Santiago Marquez Iguaran His father will later contend that the year of his birth was actually 1927

1928-1936: Garcia Marquez lives in the house of his maternal grandparents, Colonel Nicolas Ricardo Marquez Mejia and Tranquihna Iguaran

1936-1940: When he is eight years old, Garcia Marquez’s grandfather dies, and he goes to live with his parents in Sucre, where his father is working as a pharmacist He is sent to study at a boarding school in Barranquilla

1940: At the age of twelve, Garcia Marquez receives a scholarship to a secondary school run by Jesuits, the Liceo Nacional in Zipaquira

1946: Garcia Marquez earns his bachillerato (high-school diploma)

1947: Enrolled as a law student at the Universidad Nacional in Bogota, Garcia Marquez publishes his first story, “La tercera resignacion,” in the newspaper El Espectador (Bogota) The editor hails him as “the new genius of Colombian letters!”

1948-1949: Following the assassination of the Liberal senator Julio Eliecer Gaitan on 9 April 1948 and the subsequent noting (called El Bogotazo), the National University is closed Garcia Marquez transfers to the Universidad de Cartagena, where he studies law while writing a column for El Universal (Cartagena)

1950-1952. Garcia Marquez writes for El Heraldo and El Nacional in Barranquilla He joins a literary circle called “el grupo de Barranquilla” and reads the works of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.

1953: Quitting journalism temporarily, García Márquez travels around Colombia working at various jobs, including a stint selling encyclopedias in La Guajira. He becomes formally engaged to Mercedes Barcha Pardo.

1954: García Márquez moves back to Bogota and joins the staff of El Espectador as a reporter and movie reviewer.

1955: García Márquez wins the Colombian Association of Writers and Artists Award for the story “Un dia despues del sabado.” El Espectador sends García Márquez to Italy to cover the death of Pope Pius XII, believed to be imminent. Back in Colombia, García Márquez’s friends discover in his desk drawer the manuscript of a novel he had finished and take it to a publisher; his first novella, La hojarasca, is published in Bogota. The Rojas Pinilia dictatorship closes down El Espectador, and García Márquez remains in Europe, where he studies in Rome at the Centro Sperimentale Cinematografico.

1956: A freelance journalist in Paris, García Márquez also works on the manuscripts for La mala hora and El coronel no tiene quien escriba.

1957: García Márquez and his friend Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza travel through the countries of the Communist Eastern Bloc; he then lives in London for two months. Late in the year, García Márquez goes to Venezuela and• begins working for the newspaper Momento (Caracas).

1958: In March, García Márquez marries Mercedes in Barranquilla, Colombia. The couple returns to Venezuela. The novella El coronel no tiene quien escriba is published in Mito (Bogota) magazine.

1959: García Márquez’s son Rodrigo is born. García Márquez helps set up the Bogota bureau of the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, and works at the main office in Havana, Cuba. In 1960 the family moves to New York City, where García Márquez supervises the North American branch of Prensa Latina.

1961: García Márquez resigns from Prensa Latina and moves to Mexico City, traveling by bus across the United States. In Mexico City, García Márquez is an editor for the magazines Sucesos and La Familia. He wins the Colombian Esso Prize for La mala hora.

1962: García Márquez’s second son, Gonzalo, is born. Los funerales de la Mama Grande is published in Mexico. La mala hora is published in Spain; García Márquez repudiates the book after the publisher removes “objectionable passages” and all Latin American idiom.

1963: García Márquez moves to a house in the San Angel Inn section of Mexico City. El coronel no tiene quien escriba is published (in book form) in Medellin, Colombia. He works for the Mexican branch of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and cowrites his first screenplay with Carlos Fuentes.

1965: In January, García Márquez begins writing Cien anos de soledad.

1966: The authorized edition of La mala hora is published in Mexico.

1967: In June Cien años de soledad is published in Buenos Aires. Within a week all eight thousand copies are sold. Isabel viendo llover en Macondo, a novella, is published in Buenos Aires. In October, García Márquez moves to Barcelona, where he meets Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian novelist.

1968: No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories is published in New York. García Márquez and Vargas Llosa publish La novela en America Latina: Didlogo.

1970: One Hundred Years of Solitude is published in New York and is chosen as one of the twelve best books of the year by U.S. critics. Relato de un naufrago is published in Barcelona.

1971: García Márquez receives an honorary Doctorate of Letters (LL.D.) from Columbia University in New York City. Vargas Llosa publishes the first book-length study of García Márquez’s writing, García Márquez: Historia de un deicidio.

1972: La increible y triste historia de la Candida Erendira y su abuela desalmada is published in Barcelona. Unauthorized publications of Ojos de perro azul in Argentina and of “Nabo, el negro que hizo esperar a los angeles” in Uruguay appear. Leaf Storm and Other Stories is published in New York.

1973. Garcia Marquez travels in Spain, France, and Mexico A collection of early journalism, Cuando era feliz e indocumentado, is published in Venezuela

1974. Garcia Marquez founds Alternativa, a leftist magazine, in Bogota

1975: El Otoño del patriarca and Todos los cuentos are published in Barcelona Garcia Marquez leaves Spain and alternately resides in Bogota and Cuernevaca, Mexico

1976: The Autumn of the Patriarch is published in New York

1977: Operacion Carlota, a nonfiction account of Cuban participation in the Angolan Revolution, is published in Peru

1978: Innocent Erendira and Other Stories is published in New York De viaje por los paises socialistas 90 dias en la “Cortina de Hierro,” a collection of pieces Garcia Marquez wrote about his 1957 trip through Eastern Europe, is published in Colombia Two collections of journalistic pieces, Cronicas y reportajes and Periodismo militante, are published in Bogota

1980-1983: Garcia Marquez writes a weekly column syndicated in Hispanic newspapers and magazines on subjects ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach to the “disappearances” of writers under the Argentine military regime

1981: Garcia Marquez is awarded the French Legion of Honor Medal and attends the inauguration of President Francois Mitterand When he returns to Colombia from Cuba, the Conservative government accuses him of financing M-19, a guerrilla group He flees Colombia and seeks political asylum in Mexico Cronica de una muerta anunciada is published simultaneously in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and Spam

1981-1983: Obra periodistica, four volumes of Garcia Marquez’s journalistic pieces, edited by Jacques Gilard, is published

1982. Garcia Marquez wins the Nobel Prize in literature El olor de la guayaba, conversations with his friend Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, is published in Buenos Aires Garcia Marquez writes Viva Sandmo, an unproduced screenplay about the Nicaraguan Revolution, which is published in Nicaragua El rastro detu sangra en la nieve: El verano feliz de la señora Forbes is published in Bogotá, as is Chronicle of a Death Foretold in London.

1983: García Márquez returns to Colombia from his exile in Mexico. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is published in New York and is nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. -The motion picture Erendira, with a screenplay adapted from García Márquez’s novella La increible ye triste historia de la Candida Erédira y su abuela desalmada, is released by Les Films du Triangle. The Fragrance of Guava is published in London.

1984: García Márquez and Guillermo Nolasco-Juarez collaborate on Persecucion y muerte de minorias: dos perspectivas, published in Buenos Aires. Collected Stories is published in New York.

1985: El amor en los tiempos del colera is published in Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, and Spain. García Márquez founds the New Latin American Cinema Foundation in Havana, of which he is president. Tiempo de morir, a motion picture based on a screenplay by García Márquez and Fuentes, is released in Mexico.

1986: García Márquez addresses the inaugural ceremony of the Ixtapa Summit in Mexico, attended by the presidents of Argentina, Mexico, and Tanzania and the prime ministers of Greece, India, and Sweden; his speech is later published as El cataclismo de Damocles in Bogota. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor is published in New York and La aventura de Miguel Littin, clandestino en Chile: un reportage is published in Madrid.

1987: Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin is published in New York.

1988: Love in the Time of Cholera is published in New York. García Márquez’s play Diatriba de amor contra un hombre sentado: monologo en un acto is produced at Cervantes Theater, Buenos Aires.

1989: The historical novel El general en su labertino is published simultaneously in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Spain.

1990: The General in His Labyrinth and Collected Novellas are published in New York, as is Primeros reportajes in Caracas. A stage adaptation of the novel Cronica de una muerte anunciada is performed at the Public Theater in New York.

1991: A collection of journalism, Notas de prensa, 1980 —1984, is published in Madrid.

1992: Doce cuentos peregrinos is published simultaneously in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Spain; and Elogio de la Utopia: Una entrevista de Nahuel Maciel is published in Buenos Aires.

1993: Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories is published in New York as are The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World: A Tale for Children, in Minnesota; the play Diatriba de amor contra un hombre sentado, in Bogota; and the novel Del amor y otros demonios, in Barcelona.

1995: Of Love and Other Demons is published in New York.

1997: News of a Kidnapping is published in New York. It is reported that a motion-picture adaptation of Autumn of the Patriarch will be made, with Marion Brando in the title role and Sean Penn as director.

1998: García Márquez is a guest of Fidel Castro during the historic visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba.

1999: García Márquez purchases Cambio, a Colombian newsmagazine, and begins writing for it. In June he is hospitalized in Bogota for fatigue; in September it is announced that he is in Los Angeles undergoing treatment for lymphatic cancer.