Mexico bids farewell to Garcia Marquez
A large photograph of late Colombian 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez hangs over the entrance to the National Library in Bogota, on April 21, 2014. Garcia Marquez, the author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude", died on Thursday at age 87 in Mexico City. Inset View of sunflowers placed by fans at main door of late Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's house on April 19, 2014 in Mexico City. AFP/PHOTO
What you need to know:
- Garcia Marquez, who died in Mexico City on Thursday aged 87, will be eulogized in the domed Bellas Artes Palace, a cultural centre where Mexico pays tributes to its late artistic icons.
- His wife, Mercedes Barcha, and sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo, will bring the late writer's ashes from their house in southern Mexico City, where they have grieved in private while friends, fellow writers and politicians visited them.
- "Garcia Marquez never became a Mexican national but he has Mexican family: His sons, grandchildren as well as his house and friends," said Jaime Abello, director of the Ibero-American New Journalism Foundation founded by Garcia Marquez.
MEXICO CITY,
Mexico bids farewell Monday to its favourite adoptive son, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, with a national tribute filled with the late Nobel winner's favourite music and roses.
Garcia Marquez, who died in Mexico City on Thursday aged 87, will be eulogized in the domed Bellas Artes Palace, a cultural centre where Mexico pays tributes to its late artistic icons.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is heading to Mexico to take part in the ceremony alongside Mexican leader Enrique Pena Nieto and Garcia Marquez's wife and two sons.
The veteran journalist first moved to Mexico in 1961 and it was here that he wrote his seminal novel, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," which was published in 1967.
His wife, Mercedes Barcha, and sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo, will bring the late writer's ashes from their house in southern Mexico City, where they have grieved in private while friends, fellow writers and politicians visited them.
MEXICAN FAMILY
The ceremony at Bellas Artes, which starts at 2100 GMT, will include a string quartet that will perform music by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok.
The palace will be bedecked with his favourite flower, the yellow rose that he so often wore on his lapel for good luck. But there are no plans to publicly read his stories.
"Garcia Marquez never became a Mexican national but he has Mexican family: His sons, grandchildren as well as his house and friends," said Jaime Abello, director of the Ibero-American New Journalism Foundation founded by Garcia Marquez.
"He loved this country. He was very grateful and felt as Mexican as any other person," Abello told MVS Radio.
His biographer, British writer Gerald Martin, said he understood the secular nature of the ceremony because Garcia Marquez was not a religious man.
"But he was a man who respected other people's beliefs, like his mother. Almost his entire family was very Catholic," Martin told Colombia's Caracol radio.
"He joked that he didn't believe in god but feared him a lot," said the author of "Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life."
His native Colombia will hold its own ceremony at Bogota's cathedral on Tuesday for the man Santos has hailed as "the greatest Colombian of all time."
Then on Wednesday, to mark World Book Day, Colombians will have readings of Garcia Marquez's novel "No One Writes to the Colonel" in more than 1,000 libraries, parks and universities.
The family has not said where the author's final resting place will be but Colombia hopes that the family will divide Garcia Marquez's ashes between his homeland and Mexico.
Barcha "says that it is a very difficult decision that will be taken in due time," said Rafael Tovar, president of Mexico's National Culture and Arts Council.
