So much so, one of them punched the other so hard, it became part of the legend that still surrounds the personal lives of two Titans of “Magic Realism” in Latin America, Poet Laurate Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) and Chief Architect of Spanish-language Letters, Don Mario Vargas Llosa (Perú).

Vargas Llosa, master of the finest syntax in Spanish, turned those fingers that has written over dozens of wonderful novels, into a dynamite fist, a manly punch, that landed straight, with all its physical power of the young man he was at the time, on the face of a respected colleague of his, one that later overcame him by snatching first the highest honor in Literature in the world: The Nobel Prize.

Yes, Mr Gabriel Garcia Márquez, revered author of “100 Years of Solitude”, may have lost that day of 1976 his ample personal reputation, today still largely unchallenged at his octogenarian age.

The incident, which took place over 33 years ago, is still taboo in Latin America. Proven recently by 2 writers who went on record recently in Bogotá, Colombia.

Simple: It involves 2 of the tallest Man of Letters in Latin America, the two with too many close friends in the highest circles of power, both political and economical.

The incident has gone over the decades unexplained.

One wished the 2 protagonists of the such a fracas, so infrequent among men of sharp intellect and elevated poetry as theirs, would have the courage to come out and explain it to their devoted fans, or even to fictionalize it for the literary enjoyment of rest of us.

It hasn’t been covered up, but remains in obscurity in the mass media, where the 2 still command category of Cardinals in the religion created by the “Latin American Boom”.

The little that has surfaced indicates that their difference wasn’t over politics (where they remain publicly in opposite corners), but, not surprisingly, over a woman, one who, at the time, was Mr. Vargas Llosa’s legitimate wife.

One more thing is clear in the obscure match:

Vargas Llosa had the guts to land the quick punch; García Márquez has had only the discretion of remaining silent about it over 3 long decades.

Attempting psychoanalysis, New Peruvian Writer Jaime Bayly (author of “El Cojo y el Loco”) recently stated that both Mario and “Gabo” --his elders in his writing career-- have in common “an evident fascination with power” (both are personal friends of Presidents, Primer Ministers and, in the second case, even Dictators).

“If Fidel has his hands stained (Fidel and “Gabo” friendship is a legend), I think Aznar (former primer minister of Spain, and Vargas Llosa’s close friend) inevitably does, too”, Baily said, expressing his surprise that such talented writers, with no need of Meacenas, because of their ample wealth and reputation, has chosen to be so close to Men Power, an overt contradiction for Artists of their caliber charged with the responsibility of being the last bastion of morality, in a Society that automatically grants them such status.

Another writer, journalist Lydia Cacho,  an outspoken woman from Mexico, went on the attack this month against García Márquez blasting him for his latest novel (“Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes”), which she considers a book cynically “complacent of the abuse of women” and also of “child pornography”.

She has been, as result of her iconoclast view, the target of virulent attacks from every quarter.

“It is as if there were an (implict) rule that prohibits that a patriarch such as ‘Gabo’ can’t be ever questioned,” she says mortified by the venom against her, taking a stand during a recent interview with a magazine in Bogotá.

Women got fight, too, as we said the last time here. So much so that a punch from Lydia today could prove more deadly than, for sure, the harsh one from Vargas Llosa 33 years ago.