Portal 2: Personal Information

Personal Information

Full name: Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez

Nickname: Gabo and Gabito

Place of birth: Municipality of Aracata, Magdalena, Colombia

Date of birth: March 6, 1927

Colombian nationality

Religion: Agnostic

Family

He grew up with his maternal grandparents: Tranquilina Iguarán Cortés and Colonel Nicolás Márquez

The colonel, whom Gabriel called "Papalelo", describing him as his "umbilical cord with history and reality", was also an excellent narrator and taught him, for example, to consult frequently the dictionary

Her grandmother, Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes, whom García Márquez calls grandmother Mina and describes as "an imaginative and superstitious woman" who filled the house with stories of ghosts, premonitions, was as influential in García Márquez as her husband and is even pointed out for the writer as her first and main literary influence, for she was inspired by the original way in which she treated the extraordinary as something perfectly natural when she told stories and no matter how fantastic or improbable her stories were

Spouse: He married in Barranquilla in 1958 with Mercedes Barcha, the daughter of an apothecary. In 1959 they had their first son, Rodrigo, who became a filmmaker; and three years later, his second son, Gonzalo, was born. He is currently a graphic designer in Mexico City. Mercedes Barcha Pardo

Children: Rodrigo and Gonzalo

Education

Educated at: National University of Colombia

Although Gabriel García Márquez never finished his higher education, some like the University of Columbia and New York granted him a Doctorate Honoris Causa, in Letters

Professional information

Occupation: Writer, journalist, editor and screenwriter

Active years: 1947-2010

Movements: Latin American boom, magical realism

Political activity

He had a strong friendship with Fidel Castro.

Politics plays an important role in the works of García Márquez, in which he uses representations of various types of societies with different political forms to present his opinions and beliefs with concrete examples, even if they are fictitious examples. That diversity of ways that García Márquez represents political power is a sign of the importance of politics in his works

Language of literary production: Spanish

Genres Novel, story, chronicle, report

In the year of 1955 he published his first novel "La Hojarasca"

In the city of Mexico, he wrote Cien Años De Soledad, published in June 1967 in Buenos Aires (Argentina). The success of this novel was resounding and translated more than 24 languages ​​winning four international awards. In 1969 the novel won the Chianciano Appreciate in Italy and was named "The Best Foreign Book" in France.

Notable works:

One hundred years of loneliness

A Chronicle of a Death Foretold

The colonel has no one to write

Story of a castaway

Love in the times of cholera

Distinctions: Nobel Prize for Literature (1982)

Death: In 1999 he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, he died at 87 years old, on April 17, 2014 in Mexico City.