Marquez and Castro, the writer and the dictator

MADRID: Gabriel Garcia Marquez is best known as an author, but like many intellectuals he has never been far from politics.
 
Many of his forays into politics have been low profile, attempts to encourage peace in Colombia, his civil-war-ravaged native country, for example, Garcia Marquez has been much more open about his close association for more than 30 years with Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, a friendship that has sometimes made the author a lightning rod for criticism. Marquez turns 80 on Tuesday.
 
In fact, Garcia Marquez mediated talks in Cuba between the Colombian government and Marxist guerrillas.
 
Gabo, as the writer is nicknamed, and Castro became close in the mid-1970s, when the writer had already published his work 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' (1967) and was renowned all over the world.
 
Their relationship grew out of a shared interest in literature. Garcia Marquez says that he soon 'discovered what only a few people know: Fidel Castro is a voracious reader who loves and knows very seriously the good literature of all time and who, even in the most difficult situations, has an interesting book at hand to fill any void."
 
Even during periods when large parts of the world's intellectual community became critical of the Cuban Revolution over issues such as censorship and the treatment of artists deemed part of the anti-Castro opposition, most recently after a 2003 crackdown by Havana, Garcia Marquez always remained loyal to Castro.
 
Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa even called Gabo 'the courtier' of the Cuban president.
 
The famous author's political detractors say that he "gave prestige to the revolution, while Garcia Marquez's defence of Caribbean socialism benefited him a great deal to win the Nobel Prize when he was not much older than 50," as Angel Esteban and Stephanie Panichelli put it in their book "Gabo y Fidel: El Paisaje De Una Amistad" (Gabo and Fidel: The Landscape of a Friendship).
 
Garcia Marquez has always rejected accusations of 'loving power,' insisting that his friendship with Castro transcends politics, and that his access to the ear of Cuba's maximum leader has allowed him to quietly save many dissidents.
 
Garcia Marquez, who penned the novel 'The Autumn of the Patriarch' (1975), has himself overlooked Cuba's continued application of the death penalty, which he has always universally opposed.
 
Since Castro was forced by illness last year to relinquish power indefinitely, Garcia Marquez has remained on the scene.
 
When he travelled to the island in December for the public celebration of Castro's birthday, he stayed for a month but was unable to meet with his old friend. The Colombian magazine Semana noted that it was the first time they had not met when Garcia Marquez visited the island, reading it as a sign of Castro's widely speculated upon condition.
 
However, Garcia Marquez played down the incident.
 
"What makes me happiest about being able to come here now, for Fidel's 80th birthday," he said, "is that I will come for his 100th."