The Artist Martín Bayona and his Meeting with the parents of Gabriel García Márquez “Gabo” Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

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You should take one of these works to the parents of “Gabo”... you find your father, Don Eligio, playing “dominoes” with his friends near the mayor’s office in Cartagena, maybe you will receive it, he did not want us journalists to receive.

 

By: MARTIN BAYONA
I was working as a caricaturist in the newspaper El Heraldo de Barranquilla, when I arrived to deliver my drawings and there was an impressive party! The director of the newspaper ordered all the drawings and caricatures of the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez alias “GABITO” to be published.
The next day I took a well-framed painting (a sanguine) to the director of the newspaper, he liked it immediately, he paid me by check and told me:
You should take one of these works to the parents of “Gabito” Pope Don Eligio finds him playing “dominoes” with his friends near the mayor’s office in Cartagena, maybe you will receive it because he did not want to receive any national or international journalist or give any kind of feedback.The following week I was traveling to Cartagena.

 

 

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-I came to Cartagena because they told me that the parents of the new Nobel Prize winner for literature, Gabriel García Márquez, lived here.-- He goes to sunbathe and talk with his friends around noon, near the town hall- I told some street vendors. It is a promise to the director of the newspaper El Heraldo de Barranquilla, that he would come to see it and bring them my work of art.As soon as I saw him I squeezed his hands as a sign that I admired him, because when I saw his simplicity I felt more admiration for him, I looked at the painting and he showed me a big smile - “I was looking for him all over Cartagena” I told him.-I still have the letter that President Belisario sent us for the Nobel Prize my son won, there are two lines, look at them, “at least say that you are going to put on light in Aracataca”, my wife did not like it very much and we agreed that we would not receive media nor journalists, and lots have come.-Don Eligio García told me.
I came from Barranquilla to bring you this humble gift, I replied. -Oh! - He said. And we went back to silence. We walked through the little streets, listening to the trot of the horses that give tourists a ride in their carriages. Don Eligio’s small pensive eyes watched me surreptitiously. -Prettyfithis one is going to arm him - I heard the voice of the one who was there next to me again. She will be happy to see that after so many comments someone brings us an excellent gift, that no one here imagined. Then he added:
“Whoever you are, she’ll be glad to see you.”
In the reverberation of the sun, at noon in Cartagena it is sultry, in my mind it seemed jovial to be walking and listening to stories and comments from the Nobel Prize for Literature through the mouth of his own father, Mr. Eligio García.

-What is Garcia Márquez’s mother like? -That’s where we’re going. And I followed it. I went after him trying to catch up with him, until he seemed to realize that I was following him, slowing down his running. Then the two of us were so close that we almost touched shoulders. Do you have another son who writes? - asked.
Yes, of course, my other son Eligio Gabriel García, and his mother writes excellently, Luisa Santiaga Márquez tells me that he writes better than “GABO”, but he does not have the ability and the relationships and the zeal of the other.
-They say that mothers love their children equally; but there is always a favorite - I told him.
-I also believe that a little, Don Eligio García answered me, opening the doors of his house and inviting me to continue.A white-haired woman was there. He told me: -Come in. -And between
He was very happy and gave me a big hug.
What a beautiful work of art, it looks just the same, I congratulate you, young Martin!
Thank you very much, I replied to the lady, Luisa Santiaga Márquez, mother of the Nobel Prize winner. -He offered me a “tamarind” juice that I enjoyed a lot while I drew the caricature for them and they exploded with laughter, come so they can draw you- Don Eligio said to his niece-, a very pretty girl, who ran out and said : I did not draw caricatures, you want to make fun of me … and they soundedlaughter from everywhere.

 

LUIS A SANTIAGA MADRE DE GARCIA MARQUES copia

 


“-Not even half an hour ago and this is already full of people, they are our neighbors, we appreciate each other very much, Don Eligio commented. Maybe you’d like to have lunch with us all of a sudden? …Doña Luisa Santiaga told me.
Thank you ma’am, it’s an honor for me, I replied. An exempt lunch, very coastal, I was struck by the rice that had coconut and its flavor was between salty and sweet, delicious. While they told me anecdotes and stories about “Gabito”. -A friend of Doña Luisa Santiago arrived, dressed entirely in black, saw the painting and exclaimed: What a beautiful gift you can’t complain, God bless you Luisa!
.For me this meeting was very apotheosis, I said goodbye to that beautiful family with big hugs, Days later we met again with Mr. Eligio García and he autographed for me all the books I took him from his son Gabriel Garcia Marquez “gabito” are from my private collection .
“.” Her name was Luisa Santiaga, and she was the third daughter of Colonel Nicolás Márquez Mejía and his wife and first cousin Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes, whom we called Mina. He had been born on the banks of the Ranchería River, on July 25, 1905, when the family was beginning to recover from the disaster of the civil wars, and two years after his father killed Medardo Pacheco in a duel over an honor dispute. The first name was given in memory of Luisa Mejía Vidal, her paternal grandmother, who died one month that day. The second fell in luck because it was the date of the apostle Santiago el Mayor, beheaded in Jerusalem. She hid this middle name for half her life because it seemed masculine and ostentatious, until an unfaithful son gave her away in a novel.passed away at the age of 97, ‘the girl Luisa’ will always be the protagonist of the works of the Nobel. The love story she lived with Gabriel Eligio García, whom she met when she arrived as a telegraph operator in Aracataca, inspired the romance between Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza in Love in the time of cholera, “a love story that was made with dots and lines”, as the bookseller Alvaro Castillo explains.