This week, I came across a leader by the name of Jaime Abello Banfi, the caring man and busy steward no one acknowledges, but with a legacy of the tallest figure in journalism in the Américas: 1982 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, and brave writer of periodical chronicles, Gabriel García Márquez.

That is a long, LONG shadow to oversee and care about, dear Jaime. Not to flatter you (you get enough of that, I can see; although devoid of sincere appreciation) but I take my new Panamá hat off!

GABO, as he is better known all across the world, where his books have been translated into over 30 languages, left us only on April the 17th, 2014, followed quickly by ‘La GABA,’ his wife of 56 years, on August the 15th of 2020. 

Mercedes Barcha, the mother of his two children, was the shadow that loyally followed and watched over this errant writer on his consecutives trips through Venezuela, the U.S., Spain, Mexico — his second homeland — and a failed return to Colombia that saddens those of us who know the story.

Every step of the way, GABO proved himself a courageous writer, and responsible family man.

Every step of the way, GABO proved himself a courageous writer, and responsible family man.

In Colombia, when he was exiled as a young and rambunctious writer, to his voluntary hunger strike in Paris — where he wrote what he considered his masterpiece (“El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba”). From his trip as an undocumented immigrant across the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, to the bittersweet experience of seeing the fruits of Socialism. From his confrontations in NYC with both his employers at Prensa Latina, the Cuban Government’s news agency, to bureaucrats in the U.S. government. And finally, during his “long march” to Mexico via greyhound buses till reaching Mexico City. GABO arrived, it has been said, with $30 dollars, and a wife and child to support.

He went on to take a needed long break from journalism and concentrate on real writing (fiction, literature, Kafka’s men that wake up ‘Escarabajos,’ or Faukner’s “sound and furies” tales, told by a madman, meaning nothing..) that finally gave him fortune and fame — more than he ever desired.

I would like to write about the man that inspired my generation, but I guess I will do it on the digital page, because this stubborn printed page still imposes the barriers of brevity that is making me stop over the next stroke of this keyboard (TO BE CONTINUED).