When early last September I announced that I had been awarded the Juan Rulfo Award, the joy I felt was double because by then I knew that Colombia had been designated as the guest of the Guadalajara International Book Fair in the year 2007. Colombia is the Latin American country most want, except, of course, Mexico, and Costa Rica, the country where I have aged and deep family ties nothing less than my sister, my only sister, my brother, my nieces and my nephews. And why I want so much to Colombia? Let me say that I enjoy an ajiaco with its guascas and good variety of potatoes, even more than a Colombian exile, Bogotazo and regret the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan much as any Colombian who is respected, and I love the translations of Saint-John Perse made the Colombian poet Jorge Zalamea, as much or more than they liked to own Saint-John Perse. Also, of course, and not as imaginary Colombian or false, but as Mexican and Latin American, I eventually hurts, endless violence it suffered so dear.
I owe one of the dedicatee of this speech, if I may use this extravagant neologism that the birth of my devotion to Colombia: Antonio Mountain, author of splendid novels, theater man, brilliant thinker, to whom he was unable to attend the fair for health. Antonio came into my life as the angel who initiated me into the mysteries of literature, thanks to lightning: The lightning that never stops of Miguel Hernandez. The wonderful sonnets of the great Spanish poet was the detonator of my literary career.
Thanks to Antonio Mountain I met the second dedicatee, Joseph Hill, and soon after Alvaro Mutis. And thanks to Mutis I met Gabriel García Márquez. Mountain and Hill were among my first teacher and literary peers. They taught me to read. They opened the doors of great literature that was for me, then, the great unknown. I remember, how could I forget !, the three got together Saturday evening at home, each armed with a portable Olivetti, to write, if not in tandem, yes in unison. Saturdays were the most glorious of my life. Antonio was then a friend of Fernando Botero, who lived for a short time in Mexico. When the eldest son of Botero, baby still, no longer fit in his bassinet, Antonio said, give it to me for a friend who just had a child. And that was how my first child, I called Fernando, inherited the bassinet Botero’s first son, also named Fernando. When Mountain returned to Colombia, he left us as a gift, a painting by Botero. I did not know then that he was giving us a house.
As a literary guide, and friend, Mutis was incomparable. He would also owe the knowledge of wonderful authors who have always accompanied me. Somehow, Mutis seems like a character out of a book of Marcel Proust. A character, of course, full of life and joy, to whom culture and good humor will come out through the pores. The name of Mutis figure, along with the Mountain and three or four other friends, in the third lining of my first book, in a note in which I express my wish that the names of these people always appear in it. His name also appears in a final note of my second novel, Palinuro of Mexico , which give him credit for having used, as the title of a chapter, the title of one of his most beautiful poems: This house of ill . Mutis is also present in the pages of Linda 67 , it was he who introduced me to this formidable collection of detective novel, The Seventh Circle, founded by Borges and Bioy Casares, and the enthusiasm that woke me authors like Patrick Quentin, Leo Perutz, Beverly Nichols, Nicholas Blake Cyril Hare or made me promise to write someday a detective story. Alvaro said, “is not possible because a special vocation for that you need not have.” Thirty-five years later, I answered the challenge. Or I believed respond. For as my readers may have noticed, Linda 67 is not a whodunit: a Thriller . Alvaro was right.
Álvaro also appears in the prologue I wrote for the book of Mexican cuisine my wife, Socorro, because he was one of the friends who most influenced our gastronomic education.
Alvaro, Alvaro, my dear Alvaro Mutis, who, I assure you, despite their monarchical proclivities is certainly one of the most beautiful and generous human beings I’ve ever met in my life.
Gabo also have very fond memories. We were good friends before I left for Europe to live almost twenty-five years old at the other side of the world not to mention friends, but also without write a single letter. Gabo lived first in an apartment in the Anzures neighborhood of Mexico City, at 21 Street Renan why a dear mutual friend, the poet Raul Renan, we put him as a nickname “Renan 21″. He then moved a few blocks from the house where I lived, in the Banjidal colony. I have very present those evenings when Mercedes, Mercedes Bella, came home with her children Rodrigo and Gonzalo, who used to play with my kids, Fernando and Alejandro, Gabo wrote furiously while One Hundred Years of Solitude . I say “anger” because I can not imagine that a book contains many wonders can be anything but the product of a demiurge glowing anger. I remember the time of the advertising agency Jimmy Stanton, that was not the gringo and fewer ugly old or bad: was the good gringo. Gabo wrote about sketches they were actuated by Mauricio Garcés and Silvia Pinal in a program sponsored by the Black Bear gin, for which I did the commercial. And a few extra cents Alvaro agenciaba the speaker’s voice recording of The Untouchables . Alvaro said: “Chicago, 1927: Elliot Ness faces smuggling largest Scotch whiskey in the history of the city …”. Do you remember, Gabo? Do you remember, Alvaro? One of you two sensational Ostioneria discovered in the Guerrero neighborhood of Mexico City, where we found great feasts, and one day suddenly decided to leave the port of Veracruz, with Socorro, two of my sons and Chaneca young children, and there in the socket, an unforgettable night in the hotel coffee errands, I stopped suddenly in a chair, raised my glass of beer as if the torch of the Statue of Liberty, and told the audience “Ladies and gentlemen, I want to inform you all that I am very happy.” The same could be said today, this day, in this room.
And then later, with the passage of time, my wife and I continued collecting Colombians. Dear friends, never forgotten, including Nicolas Suescún, Fernando Arbelaez Arbelaez another John Climaco, who worked with me at the BBC, Nestor Sanchez, Pancho Norden, Nancy Vicens, Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda, the late Rafael H. Moreno Duran, Bernardo Hoyos … and some more.
Today I sizing to increase the collection of Colombian Hector Abad, who will arrive next Tuesday to Guadalajara. Hector baptized with the name Palinuro, in honor of my second novel, bookstore several years ago founded in Medellin.
This is why, as a Mexican and as a writer, as Rulfo Prize, as a teacher emeritus of the University of Guadalajara, may I add my personal welcome to all the other officers who were welcome given to the delegation and give its representation of Colombia in this twenty-first Guadalajara International Book Fair. Welcome all.
I take this presence to request in the most careful and respectful way, a favor to the Colombian delegation … In the Book Fair 2006, a group of actors in this university , directed by Daniel Constantini, staged a play, written in verse, I wrote: The death is going to Granada , which is about the last days he spent in that city the great Andalusian poet Federico Garcia Lorca, his arrest and his murder by the forces of the Falange. The staging of the master Constantini was splendid, beyond anything I had imagined, and splendid performance of all actors, especially Marcos Orozco.
I would love this set scene in The death is to Granada participated in the International Theater Festival of Bogotá is undoubtedly the most prestigious in the Spanish-speaking world. I beseech you, to the Colombian delegation, claiming his good offices to you that this work is considered by those who are able to judge how worthy or not the Festival. The death is going to Granada was filmed by the same university, and the corresponding record is available.
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