Finding Gabo
When people rise to greatness, we tend to think of them as super human, exceptional, not like the rest of us.
I’m thinking about Rosa Parks, Einstein, Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and of course, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
We see these people through the prism of their work and we wonder in amazement at their achievements that seem so far beyond what everyone else is capable of.
Yet if their genius is all we permit ourselves to see, we inadvertently rob them of their humanity.
One of my final stops in Colombia was to Aracataca, the town where Gabo grew up, living in a house with his grandparents, aunt and cousins.
But instead of finding the literary giant, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I found little Gablito, 5-years-old, in a house filled with stories.
Aracataca is a small town in the north-west of Colombia, about a 90-minute bus ride south from the port city of Santa Marta.
As soon as you step off the bus, it’s clear you’re in Gabo’s town - there are murals depicting him all over the place, as well as monuments and even the library is named after a character in his books.
But this is no tourist hotspot, I think I was the only international visitor in town that day.
The main attraction is Casa Museo Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a faithful replica of the home where he grew up (the original having been sold and subsequently pulled down).
Rooms are set around a courtyard, and as you wander around the kitchen, living areas, bedrooms and study, descriptions hanging on the walls give you a great insight into the life of the house.
Gabo was born in 1927 to Gabriel Eligio García and Luisa Santiaga Márquez Iguarán.
Soon after, his father was offered a position as a pharmacist in Barranquilla, and so his parents moved there, leaving him in the care of his maternal grandparents.
His grandfather was Colonel Nicolas Ricardo Marquez Mejia, a veteran of the 1000 days civil war, and a hero on the Liberal side (who eventually lost to the Conservatives). Gabo’s relationship with his grandfather, who died when he was 10-years-old, was the most formative of his life, he described him as:
“The person who I best get along with, and with whom I had the best communication in my life. Whenever something good happens to me, I feel the only thing I am missing to achieve ultimate happiness is sharing it with my grandfather.”
His grandmother, Doña Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes, was a woman with the ability to tell incredible stories as if they were the most normal thing in the world - a hallmark of magical realism, the literary genre her grandson would become synonymous with.
Living alongside them were Gabo’s aunt, Sara Emilia, who hoarded all kinds of books in her room, including Arabian Nights, which captivated young Gablito.
Gabo’s grandmother also had three servants - Alino, Apolinar and Meme - all Guajiro Indians, who would share their traditional myths and legends with him.
At one point there was also a Venezuelan nanny who would turn epic tales like The Odyssey and Don Quixote into children’s stories.
So for the first ten years of his life, Gabo soaked up story, after story after story, surrounded by an exuberant cast of characters.
This fresh understanding was a profound moment for me, I realised that the seeds of his seminal novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, had been sown many, many years before.
Gabo is the only person in the world who could have written that book, because he was the only person to have lived his life, influenced by his particular family in that particular house, at that particular time. He said himself:
“I cannot imagine a family environment more favourable to my vocation than that house of lunatics, in particular because of the character of the numerous women who reared me.”
Gabo’s writing didn’t spring from his literary genius but from his humanity, and for someone who wants to follow him down the road (however distantly) this is the ultimate source of inspiration and comfort.