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The legacy of the world’s literary titan and Colombia’s top figure has helped reshape the small mountain in the city of Aracataca, where he was born.
By Geneviève Glatsky
Photographs through Nathalia Angarita
Report from Aracataca, Colombia
Statues and works of art bear his image. Schools and libraries are named after him. Hotels, hairdressers, nightclubs, and bicycle repair department stores refer to his work.
In the fiery Colombian mountain of the city of Aracataca, it’s walking down a street without seeing allusions to its most prominent former resident: the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, Gabriel García Márquez.
Yellow butterflies can be seen all over the city, a nod to one of its prominent literary images. The space where he lived as a child has been turned into a museum filled with his original furniture, adding the crib where he slept.
The library, called the Remedios La Bellos Ángeles Municipal Public Library, in honor of the character Remedios los Ángeles Bella from her novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” presents a sample of her books translated into several languages.
Aracataca, a once dusty and dilapidated city of 40,000 people, plagued by unemployment and a lack of basic services, has been redeveloped thanks to its connection to M. García Márquez, Colombia’s most famous and one of the world’s literary titans.
Ten years ago, the town had little to offer tourists and did little to publicize its connection to the author, beyond a museum and a billiards corridor he called Macondo Billiard, named after the fictional town in “One Hundred Years of Solitude. “»
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