HERIBERTO FIORILLO: In La Cueva there were four principal actors; three of them appear later in the last chapter of One Hundred Years of Solitude. They are Alfonso, Germán, Álvaro, and Alejandro. The Vaivén was a store that was at Victoria and Veinte de Julio, and it became La Cueva. The owner, Eduardo Vilá, was Alfonso’s cousin and it humiliated him to have to sell groceries. He only wanted to wait on his hunter friends. Alfonso called Álvaro who transformed the store into the bar La Cueva. The urinals were very close to the bar, as proposed by Obregón. In the late fifties I lived two blocks from there, and would walk past with my father on our way to the nearby movie theaters. One day he said to me: “This is where some gentlemen who are artists get together and drink beer and come to blows and then they argue and drink and come to blows again and . . .” He also told me this as a warning, and that awakened a great curiosity in me. Later, when I began to read Colombian literature, you know, Cepeda Samudio, Rojas Herazo, García Márquez, I realized they were those same friends. And from Tarzan and Batman, my heroes at the time, I passed on to my new heroes, the madmen in La Cueva.
MIGUEL FALQUEZ-CERTAIN: When One Hundred Years of Solitude came out, he referred to the jokers of La Cueva, and called them the “four arguers.” He used a number of regional words that weren’t known in the rest of the country. People began to ask themselves what he meant by them. For example, the term “male swallow,” which they thought was a bird, and everybody knows that the male swallow in Barranquilla is when the pores in your armpits become clogged and you get boils.
Like the term “prankster,” or “mamar gallo,” also appeared. They began to speculate in El Tiempo, in El Espectador, about what García Márquez meant by that, and they asked questions and such. That was the origin of that theory, which is the one I remember. It comes from cockfights. I never went to a cockfight in Barranquilla in my life. That wasn’t common. I never saw a cockfight until I went to La Guajira. It’s a ritual there; like drinking contraband whiskey and listening to vallenatos, being in the group that went from house to house with the trio, going to cockfights too. In the cockpits people were very belligerent but also great jokers; then it was between making jokes and being aggressive. The comic thing could change and the man would take a revolver and kill you because you were mocking him. Then the etymological origin is that the rooster has a natural spur. But roosters never fight with their own spurs but they put things on them that are made of copper. Then, to put the copper on, as an imitation of a spur, they put wax inside and then set that wax on a candle, put it in fire. When the wax has melted they put it on the rooster’s spur and set it in place so that it stays on the natural spur. And then, to cement it, they put it in their mouth and suck the spur. That’s why they say “nurse,” or mamar; to nurse is to suck.
So that’s the etymological origin and meaning. It’s very difficult to translate, not only to another language but to other cultures too. The phenomenon most similar to being a mamagallista or to mamar gallo is the teller of the tall tale. The Irish tell unbelievable stories with a serious expression on their face.
I’ll give you an example: I would tell my friend Joaquín the most absurd lies. That I did this and I did that and I swore it was true. Then he would keep looking at me and I would tell him: “No, man, no, that’s a lie.” And he would say: “But why do you tell me that stuff? You swore it was true and all this time I thought it was true.” That’s when you’re “nursing on a rooster.” That is what makes you a prankster of La Cueva. You’re making situations that are completely false and you’re making another person believe them.
MARGARITA DE LA VEGA: That’s what mamagallismo is: constructing a tiresome joke.
As for Gabo being one, he was. And he loved to tell stories that can be truth or fiction. It’s using hyperbole, to use an elegant term. Exaggeration. It’s telling a story where there’s some silly thing. When they tell you on the coast that there was a lunch that lasted until the next day, well, in Valledupar there really are lunches like that. Gabo certainly was a mamador de gallo. He liked to play jokes. That’s where certain things in the novels come from. That comes from the culture. That’s what he was living.
RAFAEL ULLOA: You couldn’t have a serious conversation with Gabito without its being a joke. Later on he must have changed, but when he was here he was a full-fledged mamadera de gallo. And he’s a guy who . . . how shall I say it? Popular. He talked to everybody and said fuck you to life. So one day Gabito said to me: “Listen, Rafa, have you already smoked the tobacco?” “What tobacco?” “The grass your cousin gave you.” Doña Victoria, who was a relative of mine, would say, “Just be patient, my son Alfonso smokes marijuana.” So when he sees me, Gabo says to me: “Aha, burro.” You know that here [in Barranquilla] they call people who smoke marijuana burros. And I come from a town where burros are the ones that fuck burras. And he was asking me if I was a burro . . .
JUANCHO JINETE: Gabito was another mamador de gallo.
JAIME ABELLO BANFI: The pranksters of La Cueva were basically a group of friends who had a central nucleus. The people who were part of the central nucleus were people dedicated to literature, to journalism, to art. Very cultivated people who always preferred a sense of humor and laughter and the ability to mock everything to pretensions of seriousness or even to leaving a legacy or a very clear body of work. I believe they valued being alive, having a good time, sharing. And they valued their surroundings very much. Gabo said to me: “Barranquilla is Macondo when it became a city.”