Our thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.

A report by Juan Carlos Díaz M. for El Tiempo

Officially, since last Wednesday, April 24, the new home of the Colombian Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel García Márquez, has opened its doors for visitors from around the world who want to know details of the life and work of the famous writer, as well as the chosen place where part of his ashes rest.

It is the Gabriel García Márquez Cultural Space, inaugurated by the University of Cartagena, and located in the Cloister of La Merced, framed within the so-called Cultural Observatory of Cartagena.

By opening the doors of the new ‘home’ of the Nobel Prize for Colombian Literature this place becomes officially a place of pilgrimage and a door to understanding various aspects of Márquez’s work, its cultural and academic agenda centering on the writings and personal vision of the Colombian Nobel Prize winner.

The president of the Committee of the Cultural Space Gabriel García Márquez, the historian Alfonso Múnera Cavadía, revealed that the Nobel’s own wife, Mercedes Barcha, will donate some personal objects and books of the award-winning writer to the Cloister of La Merced.

“These elements will be delivered in person by Mercedes Barcha, whom we thank infinitely, because what museum in the world would not want to have a donation of this kind,” he said.

According to Múnera, the donation is due to the good offices of people like Cecilia Bustamante and Raimundo Angulo, who personally explained to Mercedes Barcha the importance of this new cultural space in honor of Gabo.

Bertha Arnedo, who will be the director of the Cultural Observatory of Cartagena said that the Cultural Space will also have an audiovisual room called Eréndira, where seminars, workshops, and onferences will be held and the presentation of films and videos related to ‘Gabo’.

The Tieda de Melquiades
Arnedo also announced the launch, within a few weeks, of the Melquiades Store, where the works written by the Colombian Nobel Prize winner can be obtained, as well as a craft shop to honor the Caribbean that Gabo always carried in his soul.

During the inauguration of the new Cultural Space there was a live show of various scenes from some of the books by the most famous Colombian author of all time.

An accordion player sang the vallenato songs that so excited the writer, while visitors took the opportunity to take photographs near the bust of Gabo and the photograph of him with the yellow flowers.

The literary critic, Ariel Castillo, presented a keynote address on the relationship of García Márquez with popular music, stating that not only the so-called vallenato music had influence on the work of the Nobel, but others such as the Corraleros de Majagual, Calixto Ochoa, Guillermo Buitrago’s, among others.

Castillo pointed out that, like other great literary geniuses of Latin America such as Neruda, Cortázar, Borges, among others, who also received influences from popular song, García Márquez also had it because of its proximity to the orality of the Colombian Caribbean.

See also:

Observatorio del Patrimonio Cultural inicia actividades en Cartagena
Caracol Cartagena, 25 de abril 2019
https://caracol.com.co/emisora/2019/04/25/cartagena/1556189940_313385.html

Lanzamiento del Observatorio del Patrimonio Cultural y el Espacio Cultural Gabriel García Márquez
Universidad de Cartagena, 23 de abril 2019
http://universou.unicartagena.edu.co/sala-de-prensa/item/175-lanzamiento-del-observatorio-del-patrimonio-cultural-y-el-espacio-cultural-gabriel-garcia-marquez