All of my books have loose threads of Cartagena in them. And with time, when I have to call up memories, I always bring back an incident from Cartagena, a place in Cartagena, a character in Cartagena.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Upon Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s death in 2014, then-President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos called him “the greatest Colombian who ever lived.” That is high praise indeed, and especially when you consider that this is a region where those held in the highest of esteem are generally leaders of independence, whether from the political or military side. But Gabriel Garcia Marquez, affectionately called Gabo, was a novelist and essayist.

Here in Cartagena for two weeks, I of course have a book along to read while sitting and enjoying the blue Caribbean waters. And it just so happens that it is Garcia Marquez’s classic “Love in the Time of Cholera.” The book is set in a Caribbean city in Colombia, one seen as an amalgamation of nearby (and slightly larger) Barranquilla and this, Cartagena, where the acclaimed author would move during his university studies and spend much of his life.

Born in the Colombian town of Aracataca in 1927, Gabriel Garcia Marquez moved around a lot as a boy, following his father, a pharmacist. His talent for writing was apparent early on, and his first journalistic article was published when he was still a teenager. In 1948, he arrived in Cartagena to study law, a profession his family believed was more appropriate for the young man.

Journalism soon overtook law, and Garcia Marquez had a successful first career writing for the paper El Espectador, based in Bogota. After being assigned to Europe for two years, he returned to Colombia in 1958 to marry his childhood sweetheart, Mercedes Barcha. The couple moved to Mexico City shortly after, and he would split his time between Mexico and Colombia for the remainder of his life, with some stints back in Europe.

While a successful journalist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez had always dreamt of writing a novel set in his hometown of Aracataca. In 1967, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was published. (While based on that small town, it was instead set in a fictional place, something that would be a theme in the remainder of his novels.) The critical acclaim was instantaneous, with it not only being a best seller in the Spanish speaking world, but also translated and becoming a top read in France and Italy within a couple years. In 1970, it was translated into English, and immediately became a U.S. sensation, being referred to by author William Kennedy as “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.”

(It should be noted here that while “One Hundred Years of Solitude” received such high praise, and has sold more than 50 million copies, I personally didn’t love it when I read it roughly ten years ago.)

Other novels followed. “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” was published in 1981, and the following year Gabriel Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. And in 1985, “Love in the Time of Cholera” joined the author’s pantheon. (The 2007 film adaptation of the latter was filmed here in Cartagena.)

“Love in the Time of Cholera” is set in a nameless city, but it is easy to imagine Cartagena being it. From the stately homes of Spanish nobles of eras past to the huge harbor and its myriad of ships to the green expanses of Parque del Centenario, each scene of the book can come to life here, although under a different name and with just enough changed to make a reader fully aware it is fictional.

Despite years abroad, Garcia Marquez always considered Cartagena his home. And the feeling was mutual. When the author died in Mexico City in 2014, his remains were arranged to be re-interred here, in a court of honor in the cloisters of the University of Cartagena. The monument is a simple bust, with his name on one side and that of his wife on another, standing in a beautiful arched atrium of one of the university buildings in Cartagena’s old city.

A timeline on one wall of the courtyard traces Gabo’s life and major events, from his books to his awards, from his friendship with Fidel Castro (for which he was banned from the U.S. for a period of time) to his family, from his birth to his death.

And just a couple blocks away, the author lived here in the old city, although his house is not able to be visited, sitting behind a wall.

Both in the old city of Cartagena and in the trendy neighborhood of Getsemani, visitors will come across murals dedicated to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. These feature quotations, portraits, and embellishments of one of the city’s most esteemed citizens.

At the bookshop-cafe Abaco (a lovely place you should visit anyway), the most central bookshelf is entirely dedicated to Garcia Marquez. The various editions of his most famous works are all available, and from the look of it, widely purchased, although I only see Spanish versions.

Sitting here in my apartment in Cartagena, the author still lives through a book that so far – as of this writing I am about 150 pages in – I can honestly say that I love. And I’m not the only one. Only last year, in 2023, Gabriel Garcia Marquez became the most widely translated Spanish-language author of all time, passing Miguel de Cervantes. And when you consider how many centuries Cervantes and Don Quixote have on Gabo, that is incredible indeed.

So I read, and I walk the streets that inspired Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I celebrate the life of an author whose beautiful words are able to capture me in a way few others have. Cartagena was his home, a city forever linked to Gabo and to his legacy.

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