Yesterday, one of the greatest novelists to ever live died at 87. Best known for his novels “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “Love in Time of Cholera” and “Autumn of the Patriarch” among others. His family, his wife Mercedes and his sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo had planned a private ceremony. Mexico’s government also planned to hold a public memorial for the deceased novelist on Monday in the Palacio de Bellas Artes.
In his native Colombia, the government declared three days of mourning. The decree said “A writer who changed the lives of his readership. All of Colombia is n mourning.” Since Miguel de Cervantes, García Márquez had been considered the most popular Spanish language writer.
The mayor of Aracataca said, “Respectfully, I asked Gabo’s family and the Colombian government that his ashes lay in the place where he lived for the first years of his life. It would be an honor for us.” President Barack Obama said in a statement, “The world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers and one of my favorites from the time I was young.”
García Márquez described Latin America as a "source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable."
He will always be remembered as one of the greatest talents to ever live. He will live in our minds forever.
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